Newbie questions on SEO

I'm new to the area of SEO and online marketing. I have a website and I would like to use SEO to promote it.

My questions is: Is it worth the $ to hire someone (e.g. elance.com, guru.com, getafreelancer.com) to do some SEO work on the website? Some of the freelancers on the site charges up to thousands of dollars so it's not exactly cheap.

What have been your experience with this?

Personally I would not pay an SEO company to promote a site.

Although it appears to be a 'black art', SEO it isn't really. Some basics to get you going are:

Build a code compliant site
Include copy that contains concise, keyword rich text.
Ensure the HTML TITLE of the document contains relevant keywords
Promote (add to) the URL in relevant search directories
Build backlinks by providing an interesting site that relevant websites want to link to or contact webmasters of similar sites and ask/suggest exchanging links
Get a sitemap
Take part in Forums and use a link in your sig
Be patient - instant results are like Phantoms - you hear about them but never actually see 'um.

Research and understand the importance of relevant, non-keyword stuffed copy

Give it a go

Great advise. What are you thoughts on Ad campaigns to promote your site.. ie: adwords, yahoo publisher and msn adcenter? I'm always curious if the traffic is worth the click amount, but I would guess this is dependent on your site.

Also, I would also recommend gathering useful data for your SEO. I just recently signed up with Google Analytics, and found that to be really useful tool for finding out what search terms are used and what search engines are bringing visitors to my site. It's a pretty awesome tool for free.. but I'm just scratching the surface.

hanji

As you say, a lot would depend on your site content and the type of keywords you are bidding for. Very popular keywords may be expensive on a cost per click referal basis.

You could, of course, get an adsense account to place targetted adds on your site and use the revenue generated from their performance to pay for an Ad campaign.

As for Analytics, I love it, especially the keyword/referral/city details for geo-targetted SEO and the xml reports.

I add sites to my analytics account and produce a monthly summary for clients based on the data provided.

Advertising is the single most effective way. google Adwords works, but you need to monitor how much you spend every single day because it is easy to blow the budget.

Also monitor using Google Analytics so you can see what the people coming to your site then do.

thanks the great advice, one confusion I have is:

Typically what is the strategy to convince sites that are hosting similiar content to backlink to you? I would think that the other sites that are hosting similiar content (e.g. selling tires) they are more like competitors and the least thing they want to do is promote your site, and if their sites are already pretty well known then they don't really need your site to link to theirs anyway. Is my assumption correct or there's something I'm missing here?

Also, can you explain what do you mean by "keyword stuffed copy"? this is a new term for me.

thanks again!

Does anyone have any ideas on the effectiveness of using some of the community link sites for backling?

I mean like:
Mag.nolia
Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit

I'm curious if submitting your site to these will help. I understand that content is major when dealing with sites like this.

Anyway.. curious

hanji

@dude4453169

Take a look at this glossary of SEO terms - I've linked to 'K' but you may be interested in looking at other terms.

As regard to linking with other sites then yes, lots of firms won't want to link because as you rightly say they are competition.

A lot depends on your location; if you live in a large country then someone selling tyres in, say Aberdeen, is going to face little trade loss by having a link to a website that predominantly trades in Cornewall - unless of course they are web-based only.

Don't forget to try 'general automotive sites' too, such as sprayers, battery suppliers, chrome platers, body repair shops etc. Geographic concerns don't apply then.

Would recommend "SEO for Dummies". It's helped to demystify the whole thing for me.
Advice from the book is starting to pay off with my site - Yahoo and MSN hits improving. Still nowhere on Google though....