Old PBN user needs some help

Hi Folks,

I wanted to start off and say that I have been lurking here for some time now. Several years ago my SO started a private practice and I wanted to boost the sites traffic. I figured "this would be easy" and built the site, tried on-page SEO and waited. Well, after a while nothing happened. I then ran into this forum and began researching. I starting buying expired domains, running WordPress sites with spun articles that I hand wrote/altered with Chimp. Not before long, I was running a PBN of about 12 sites and was obsessed. I got her on page 1 (top 5) for several targeted keywords. I did no paid backlinking, no paid traffic outside of my little PBN.

As with everything, we re-focused our life priorities and I stepped away from doing that work and ultimately the business. Fast forward 5+ years later and I am being forced off several auction sites, where I run a different side business, due to their policy changes. I recently spun up a site, started a little backlink building but DO NOT want to get back into building my own PBN unless its absolutely critical.

Here is my goal:

• Target 2-3 primary keywords that are high volume in my niche
• (NEW) Target 10+ long tail keywords that are are medium/low volume in my niche but seem easy to rank on

What I'm doing:

• SEO optimized my site for the 2-3 primary keywords. Audits have come out great thus far.
• Purchased some backlink packages to focus on the primary keywords
• Running a blog on the site which allows me to publish frequently and force keywords, links, etc. (competitors are NOT doing this)

It seems the latest strategy is to also target long tail keywords to pull in low/medium niche phrases that I could rank on, and eventually have the traffic and usage drive up my primary keywords. Several pages on the site are already on top 50 without any effort other than on page SEO optimization (and not for those words specifically). I have a few questions I'm hoping some members can assist with

Questions:

• Should I continue to pursue backlinks for my primary keywords given that the site is new?
• For long tail keywords, do these need to be in product pages or just having them on the Blog suffice?
• Does image meta data with short tail keywords help?
• Do my product pages need short tail keywords, or is it enough to have the blog support this
• Does it make sense to get backlinks pointing to my site for the long tail keywords even if the site is not filled with them?
• Finally, should I consider rebuilding a private PBN with expired domains or are the SEO packages available on this forum enough to cover that

I know the above is a lot but I am really trying to make a site that will last. I am in this one for the long haul and have gotten SO approval to go forward as well

I appreciate your time for reading this, and even more so if you can assist.

Thanks in advance.