Say I have an ecommerce website with 100 products (each have a subpage) that can potentially individually rank top 10 google for each 2nd tier keyword. I don't think its feasible to SEO each product, correct? How would you go about SEOing each product? I don't see making article submissions or directory submissions for all 100 products? Am I missing something or is there a way to mass rank for those keywords or what? thanks!
You wouldn't want to SEO all 100 products, optimize the niche that covers all these products. Example, let's say you sell all types on shoes, you won't start optimizing each and every kind of running shoes that you have and so on. I would only the optimize the highest keywords globalizing what I sell. This means I would most probably optimize "running shoes", "dress shoes", "hiking shoes", and so on. These keywords probably have more searches per month than all of my other products put together. A thorough keyword research should be done before to be sure you are optimizing the right keywords.
You're definitely going to want to build up the strength of your domain so you've got enough weight to get those 100 pages actually ranking. Home page links are good, so are links to product pages. I don't know what you sell, but any other content you can add that's easy to get links to is a good idea. Whatever puts you ahead.