Too good to be true?

Last week, an e-commerce site I was working with was flying high. The traffic was up, the sales were up, etc. We did some keyword research and went after some moderately competitive keyterms and were doing quite well. We re-wrote the content on the top level pages to coincide with our keyterms and it seemed to work for a while. We contacted some of the same sites our compeitors were on for links but that didnt seem to work well. As of this week, the stats have begun to drop. We are slightly worried as we were finally starting to see our efforts pay off.

I am aware that the suggestions are going to be to build links. But where? How do I get my links onto the same pages as my competitors? Are there specific methods? I have started to get into social bookmarking in hopes things turn around. Is there a specific way to use these social bookmarking sites to get your "bookmark" visible?

I am looking into Froogle, shopping.com (which seems like PPC or similar?) and some other avenues. I am unsure on how to successfully build links, especially when a lot of advice tells you to get your links on the same site as your competitors. If they are selling the same products, how is this done? What am I missing?

We have just completed a blog and hope to have it up and running next week. Can this be our solution?

Although the stats were dropping, were your SERPs also dropping? It could just be that there were less people searching for those keywords that week. NB a week is a very short time in which to make any really useful judgements.

Also bear in mind that SERPs for some keywords have been very volatile recently.

Keep plugging away at the link building. Don't worry too much if you can't get you links on the same pages as your competitor's links -- find other pages that they don't appear on (you'd need to do this anyway as you'd otherwise only ever be chasing and not overtaking them).

The blog should certainly help - more content = more opportunities for back links from a wider variety of places.

We are probably overreacting..I wouldnt put it past us. We were happy to see our efforts pay off so well and when we noticed we werent seeing the same results, we got worried. It has been my concern as of late, in maintaining the results. We are having some difficulties getting links and just want to maintain what we built up. I guess time will tell.

Links: we are going to the same sites and other sites that our competitors are not on. I guess it takes a while to get the links posted.

SERP's: I have not taken a hard look at it but will this weekend when I get some extra time. I ran an report in Web CEO and it did show some serps falling while others stayed the same or rose. Im sure unless you have solid placement, its normal for them to bounce around. I would like to see more steddier results. Back to the link building drawing board... Thanks for the advice as always.