I've been doing some SEO work on my site for the past several weeks. I found that I'm now ranking on the first page for several keywords that don't get that many searches (6500 per month). Still not ranking anywhere in the first 5 pages of results (that's all I checked) for the main keywords I'm targeting that get more (100,000+) monthly searches. I assume this is a good sign that Google is starting to see my site's credibility right? Should I keep doing what I've been doing and over the next few months I'd start ranking better for my main keywords?
Absolutely, you're not going to get magical results for all your KWs, the harder the competition the longer its going to take to get ranked. I've had sites that have taken 6 months to get to the 1st page for KWs I've been targeting. I suggest checking out the 1st page competition and see where they're getting their links from.
Excellent. Thanks! I thought it was a good sign but since I'm new I wanted to be sure. How can I check to see where the first page sites are getting their links?
You can use SEO Spyglass from link-assistant to check the backlinks of your competitors. Traffic Travis is yet another good program.
You could also use Yahoo Site Explorer. Just go to Yahoo and type "link:yourcompetitor.com" and you can see a list of their backlinks.