I have emailed a few SEO companies to get information on how they can help optimize my website at http://www.onestopwriteshop.com, but I am more confused than ever. I am learning how to optimize at a very slow pace, and when I ask the SEO companies what they think is needed to help improve my site, I get a list of errors, how much they will charge, and ever time, the list is different. What do I believer~ I'm so confused. One person says "oh, the site needs to be in HTML," instead of "Phip" and another will say, its your key words, and another will say give me 2500 and I will turn it all around~! How does a new business owner know which company to hire? OMG, its 5 AM in the morning and I havn't been to sleep yet, due to trying to create social bookmarks and sending out press releases and writing better content, lol. I am ready to pay a company to do the bookmarking also, however I am not even sure if what I would be paying for is "what I would get." Thanks, Litwriter21 <a href="http://www.onestopwriteshop.com" target=_blank">Online Writing Communities, Spring Fling Writing Competition April 28, 2008!</a>
SEO is simple. The "experts" like to mystify the subject so they don't become obsolete. Once you understand SEO, you'll be able to manage your own optimization. It's science, but not rocket science. I recommend SEO for Dummies, which I believe is available as a free e-book. Keywords are very important, and the most important aspect of SEO. Placing them properly on your pages and in anchor text in links pointing to your site is vital. The only worthwhile service an SEO has to offer that you may wish to purchase is link-building, but again, an uneducated consumer is throwing money down the toilet. If you want some free SEO advice, feel free to PM me with your questions. My niche is related.
Your site isn't in all that bad shape. PHP works fine - as long as each page has only one URL - and you've even made the URL's typable for humans. You do need more work on stuff like: putting title's into <h1> code and stuff like that. If you don't know how to do that, hiring someone may be worth it. But this does look like a hobby-type site, so you may be better off just reading up on SEO and doing stuff yourself.
Why don't you post a thread in the site review section and ask for seo advice. You'll get straightforward answers from people who only want to help and are happy to do so for free. I think you are doing well. I'd suggest maybe tightening up your titles. You want to use the main keywords first and not dilute them with extra words. Also make use of H1 to really highlight the topic of each page and a little intro on each page would help. Looking specifically at the writing tips page - an introduction with an H1 header - maybe Professional Writing Tips - followed by a couple of sentences using keywords that budding writers might actually be searching for... Writer's block affects us all from time to time, writer's deadline looming and no inspiration? Finding it hard to source an idea for your next short story or are you having a character development crisis? Our professional writing tips will help you overcome common writing problems and give you the insider knowledge you need to get your writing published. LOL. I'm sure you can do better than that but that descriptive paragraph at the top of the writing page gives you so many more hooks to catch your visiting fish.
Start eliminating those companies that say your site needs to be HTML and not PHP, this will also decrease the confusion in your head (even PHP codes get parsed as HTML, so THAT company has no clue what they are actually talking about, tell them bye bye). Important things that will make sense when they reply to you would be - Improving your HTML code (if there is something to be improved) - Placement of keywords in title, body, alt, url etc. - Building backlinks (directory submission (if they still do this), PR, and any other way they can do). - They should also provide you a short (as for beginning) list of keywords for which they would optimize your website (later on, check on some free tools how much queries those keywords get and if it is worth optimizing your site for those keywords). - Their monthly rate and estimated time to get your promised position in the SERPs as well as the monthly budget for building you backlinks. Hope this helps