What to do if you're constantly bouncing around google

It's been about 2 weeks since I've started backlinking my ezine articles and have been seeing some results in the search engines, but the recent google dance is constantly moving me up and down the rankings.

For example, earlier this week, I was #1 for one of my keywords on google and I beat my main competitor who had the ranking for a while. I also noticed a jump in my article views and clicks. Didn't make a sale yet since it was one of my lower ranked keywords, but I was happy knowing what I was doing was working.

2 days later, my competitor replaces me again and knocks me down to page 5 and now I think the article has been blasted away from the rankings

Then earlier today, one of the articles I didn't even make backlinks to is now on page 2 for another of my keywords. :confused:

Another discouraging thing is that one of my competitor's articles for another keyword only had 2-3 backlinks listed on Market Samurai (I know it's not 100% accurate, but that made me hopeful) and was ranking #1 on google. I was so confident I was going to beat it and I submitted my article to ezine early in the week. In less than 3 days, my competitor's article jumped from having 2-3 backlinks to over 650!

The irony is that ezine finally posted my article for that keyword today.

I've been doing backlinks from PR1-3 sites and was seeing some decent results. Should I just start focusing on shooting for Press Release backlinks from PR4+ sites? I'm SO confident that I will make my first dollar from IM this month, but it's going to be tough if I'm barely able to stay on the top of google for less than 2 days...