How exactly do I build up my website's SEO?

What exactly are the steps to building up my website's SEO? I know it has to be slow and gradual over a few months. Article submissions without over doing it, directory submissions without overdoing it, social network bookmarking, engaging in forums, and slow building up of one way backlinks.

Basically these are the common ones I know and well it is just so confusing as to do which one first? How gradual should it be? Anyone can advice me a proper daily schedule I should maybe follow to attain my SEO goal?

Checked out a few SEO expert sites and they quoting me prices beyond my budget. Please advice. At least if I know what I should EXACTLY even if it takes long time, it would be very comforting rather than me trying all means not even knowing if I am indirectly hurting my optimization.

At the end of the day the defining difference in better ordered ranks is "links"... but that actually starts with better content.

No one will just link to you for no reason...

MaximumTadpole did it in 16 months politely begging for links but in the end if you've got a budget you can likely shorten that time to success. What's your budget?

http://forums.seochat.com/search-engine-articles-59/how-i-became-number-1t-206837.html#post601731

http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?p=566766#post566766

Just get started. You shouldn't focus on backlink methods one at a time, but use them all. Your link profile will be more natural, if you use all the colours in the SEO palette at the same time.

"How gradual should it be"?
If your page is brand new, don't add thousands of backlinks right away and then none. You should keep building links, since link velocity is also a factor taken into account by the search engines.

If I put aside 50-100USD per mth for all these SEO work, what would be the best and wise way to spend it? My website is just 3 months old. Did one article submission to 150 sites. Not sure if that even helps at all. With my limited funds, I would like to make the most out of it. Tnks.

There is no reason you can't all of a sudden get a lot of links.

Links to your site can't hurt you! - Look what happens when you get a news article or popular social bookmarking listing.
You get a massive spike in traffic and an ensuing stream of links - there is nothing wrong with that at all!

If you are looking to put a side a monthly budget of that sort of money I would suggest getting an experienced SEO to write you up a link building spec after some initial Keyword Research. I would then out source the link building work to a cheap off shore SEO firm.

You spend your time creating content - get the link builders to get the links in and you will be rolling.

hmmm... what is your expected return for $50 or $100/month?

At most... a few sales a month in about a year or two - right!

$500/month is about as affordable as you can go... and expect return... you can do it cheaper but I wouldn't hold your breath for any success.

Also... If you can't see an improvement from writing and then submitting to 150 diffeent sites then that wasn't worth any investment.

Thats a very interesting article. I like where he says "there is no silver bullet".... The thing is people should be happy there is obsticles as once you have overcome them they are barriers to your competators. If there were not significant obsticles to gaining number one then it would not be worth much as it would be constatntly changing. In the end the harder it is to win the harder it is then to be beaten.

Its great to see people succeed.

$50-$100/month?

Just spend it on beer.

Do you consider this to be too little or would you not spend on this type of work ?

he means to say it is too little for that task which can kick your earning 100 time more then this.

You are in a competition. SEO is competitive. To win you must outperform your competitor. $50/month is like spitting on a wildfire.

Hm well that is the kind of tight budget I got. So what would be a reasonable budget a mth?

My site is an affiliate site, so thought of promoting it by spending on article and directory submissions slowly. Not really sure if submitting to social network sites works.

All the while my idea was to pump abt a $100 a mth to get a sale or two in a mth and use that profits to pump back into SEO thus increasing my budget. Problem is that I don't seem to be going anywhere near my first sale and don't know if all these submission stuff even works.

Please advice.

Unfortunately SEO isn't like that... the going rates (the MINIMUM GOING RATE) tend to be stacked like this:

1. amount to get Top 5

a. what did the top 5 sites paid to achieve their position [note: you got to displace a site that is in a position and whether they achieve that position through equaity in SEO or sweat equaity in SEO they both cost]

b. doing-it-yourself cost lots - learning sweat, trail & error sweat, and experience... uaually more time efficient [thus cost effective] is paying someone else to do "a." but just because all their sweat in learning, sweat in trail & error, and much of the sweat in experience is behind them doesn't mean you don't have to pay for it... that's how they earn profit and you know you wouldn't run a business that makes no profit... you can't expect them to either.

c. paying someone else to make you successful implies they must also be successful - which means of it cost $50,000 just to get to #1... won't them making a penny -- they tend to add their markup on top of that...

2. BUT... $50 -100 can be done - PPC... that's get you the couple of sales per month and then the profits from those returned to do more PPC, and so on until it is affordable to do SEO.

I am trying PPC too and well it has its own sets of learning and not exactly cheap either.
Though I am using PPC, I would like to work out something that is going to be effective on the long run thus looking into SEO.
I understand SEO is not an overnight thing and takes maybe 5-6 months. So was looking at maybe some package where I pay it monthly.
But guess my budget seems way too low for it.

It can take 5 or 6 months with a real professional that has many, many strategies behind them... if you're here for free advice on how to do that well 'that person isn't likely you'.

...you don't need any cash to do SEO you can rely on your business prowess and guile, cast in favors that are owed to you, or just sheer will and determination to success by putting in 16 hours days of sweat in link development.

A stay-at-home-mom that didn't finish high school, and doesn't know a thing about SEO did it... in a year - working 14 hours a day, seven days a week - begging for links and by the end of that year she earned $250,000.

It can be done with equity or with sweat equity but equity nonetheless... there are no successful get rich schemes [unless you're the scheme developer].