I'm not trying to take way your limelight my friend, but going from such a small monthly global search keyword is not difficult to get to number one in Google with without many links t all. If you have domain name relativity, page title relativity, content relativity and really good SEO, then there is no reason why you can't get to number 1-3 in Google anyway without doing all of what you said. If it was a global search of say... 250,000+ then yeah, you need your backlinks, article links, directory links etc etc, but as things are, 2,600 per month is so low and hardly worth worrying about. You wont get that many hits from those keywords alone. I recommend, different keywords with a much higher Global Monthly Search. Take a look at my website (I cannot post my website here sorry), it may not look great, but I have got the SEO right, and it is going up all the time with very little back links. In less than a month from now, I will be number 1-3 for most of my keywords because of the SEO alone, but I will add back links and articles links for the more competitive keywords. However, I love your enthusiasm!