I'm new to the SEO and link development game...but I was wondering how difficult it would be to get into #3 position on Google based on the following... 1-word keyword searched about 2000 times per day. 1,050,000 results on Google. #3 position on 1st page (Google) has 86 backlinks with about 50% coming from the same domain (looks like a blog)...and 50% of the anchor text is the 1-word keyword. I've got a page that is keyword rich content that I want to get into the #3 position or better. First, is this much competition? What would be some of the first things/tasks I'd want to do to accomplish my goal quickly with link building? What would be a realistic time-frame to get to the first page and then get into #3? FYI, #4-#10 are even WORSE for backlinks and SEO optimization. I look forward to everyones feedback.
My guess is that it wouldn't be too tough. A couple of quality PR 4 or 5 type related links plus a bunch of web directory and forum type links with variations of that keyword would probably do the trick. I've got a similar keyword with 1,000,000 results on one of my sites. It is to an internal page so the keyword isn't even the site's main theme. It got 1 PR5 related link and 7 PR2 related links and ranks #2 for that keyword. It only took about a month for the page to rank after the links were added.
Yah, that's not tough at all... depending on your domain age though, dont build links too fast..... that will maybe get you sandboxed.