Day 36: Think I've got good keywords

My plan is to write review/howto articles on Amazon products, published on free web properties.

Playing with Google Keyword Tool, I got really excited when I found long tail buying phrases (these people are having conversations with the search engine).

The reason for my excitement is that, the surfers are looking to buy, they just need a little bit more information. When I looked up the SERPs - none of the results target the specific queries. I can do that!

I've got myself confused about a couple of things:

1. What do the SERPs really look like?
Logged in to Google, logged out, Chrome incognito, Firefox, &pws=0
These all give different first pages! Out of Google = higher ranked Squidoo
In Google = Amazon, Askville, authority sites (for me anyway)

2. Can free hosted articles get the traffic without a backlinking campaign? Is it a viable method? Do all the high ranking Squidoo articles I'm seeing have a load of backlinks (in addition to Squidoo's high ranking)?

Reason for question 2, I have about two or three hours to work, after the kids have gone to bed. I can get kw research and articles done, but linking would be a major speed bump. This is also why I'm using free sites and not owned domains.