Danmon in one of the replies checked the backlinks of cars.com and said that it had 17k! Now not all links are equal by any means, but if you assume that you are going to attract a similar quality of links, then 17k is your target. If you go to backlinkwatch.com you can check the back links of cars.com and see their link strategy. You might be able to nab some links in the same places as them, and it might give you some ideas for your own link building campaign.
@JonRhodesUK, thanks, I missed that. Backlink Watch is a good, you can see just where the links come from. I wish we would get more then 1000. Not that cars.com is in my niche but you can clearly see that they "sponsor" large sites such as PBS (read into it, pay for links) I used http://www.seotoolbag.com/g_backlinks.php to look at the Google backlinks and do see the 17k mentioned earlier in the post. Other then using a third party tool, is there a way to see the actual backlinks that Google considers valid. @straw33 I'd prefer not to share the site name because I want to watch their natural link development.
Once you've got your site you'll need to rely on yourself for getting backlinks. Since it's such a highly competitive keyword you can't just go around paying people to get you backlinks. If you learn how to get backlinks, it'll then be a matter of going out there and actually getting them. I'm just assuming you'll need to purchase backlinks (which can hurt you in the long run ie sandbox) because building 600,000+ legit backlinks would take an extraordinary amount of time.
Yeah man theapparatus has a point you are going to need a lot more than a couple of hundred a month to get in there for the keyword "cars"
Just curious, why do you want to rank for cars? I don't know who would search on google for "cars" People searches for "best cars to drive" or "cheap cars". People searching for cars are people that don't know what they need.
Ok, I know you say "cars" is just a generic term you are using, but I suggest you look further into general category advertising/marketing. Everything I have read, and my own success has shown that the traffic is there with those bigger words, but they do just not convert. Think about it - no one searches for the term "cars". If they are, they are searching for the movie. Let's take "boats". Someone looking to spend money will search for "boat parts", "boat parts for sale", "boats for sale", and the list goes on. Don't underestimate the power of the "long tail keyword". If you haven't heard of it, read up on it. It's a good read, and will point you in the right direction. Start small and focused, and you will do well with those bigger keywords down the road. It all snowballs.
Consider doing pay per click advertising (if only for a few hours or a day) first to see how many clicks you get and how many conversions you will get. Doing this alone may persuade you to focus on another keyword if you find that you cannot convert on that keyword. In terms of your budget (assuming you outsource the off-page SEO), it is nowhere near enough. You will need to multiply it by at least 10 and keep up this spend for a number of years.