You are quite right, getting valued links is the hard part for any online shop, but I still believe copying links is easy, sure if your site is of low value they may not link to it, but if you have targeted a high ranking website, you will not be producing a low value website.
The serps in my humble opinion can be played with, depending on how well you know your seo. I took a website to the top of its keyword in under two weeks of me working on it. In 1 week it was sitting at third place in G. It has no or few back links, the top ranking website has many keyword title links including DMOZ. I do not pretend to understand the SE or serps, nor to be a guru or an SEO expert, I just know what I have learnt by trial and error, but G especially changes daily on what it ranks as relevant or not and is, in my humble opinion, a nightmare to out think.
Seo spy glass is I think a back link tool worth its weight in gold, well was, until G decided to decommission links from directories, link pages, reciprocal links, etc etc
Last edited by Oscarwantsit; 21-06-2008 at 12:55 AM..