Confused about SEO for Minisite...

I have been trying to make money online for the past two years or so, but I have always fallen short whenever a method relied on SEO.

I have never SEO'd a site of mine to the first page of Google for any moderately competitive keyword, but a couple of months ago I decided to try again. This time to make sure I got it right I purchased a minisite where the keyword research was done for me, and purchased a backlink service for the site. The site is in an incredibly low competition niche, and in addition to the backlinks I used Onlywire to submit every page of the site to 25+ high PR social bookmarking sites, and for good measure submitted an Ezine Article targeting my main keyword.

Here is the situation I now find myself in. I am number one in Google for two of my keyword phrases, and on the second page for my main keyword phrase. However, I only am this far up if the search is done with quotes around the keyword phrases. Each of my keyword phrases is 3 words long, and if I search any phrase without quotes around it my website is not even in the top 5 pages. (After that I just stop looking). I don't think that anyone would ever search any of my keyword phrases with quotes around them, because they just aren't phrases you would ever do that type of search for.

Why is the broad search so much harder to rank for than the exact search? I should have way more backlinks than most of the sites in front of me, and my site is perfect for SEO, it has the keywords in the titles and everything.

Can you guys tell me how much extra effort it usually takes you to go from the first page for exact match searches to the first page for broad match searches?

One ezine article is not enough. Try to do some blog commenting by hand using anchor text for the term you want to rank for and try to find a few good .edu or .org blogs to comment on in your niche. Better to comment manually imho; actually read the post and make relevant comments.

Also submit an article to articlesbase, spin one for hubpages and if u can afford it uaw and vary your anchor text.

Is your site an Exact Match Domain for the keyword you are trying to rank for? I have had blank wordpress sites start on the second page right after indexing by Google because it was an exact match domain.

You can also try purchasing an Xrumer blast from here or fiverr. That usually helps the rankings especially if its the first time you're blasting the site. Besides that, just give it some time. SEO can take weeks of work to rank for competitive terms.

The amount of backlinks does not tell you the full picture. It also has to do with how strong those backlinks are. You also have to factor in the authority of the site that is outranking you.

The exact search is a waste of time to look at except to see how many people are competing for the keywords. People rarely search with quotes.