I need some serious comprehensive sources on SEO, books, tutorials, anything..

I can't keep posting questions on this forum because this will take me 10 years to learn SEO and everyone is doing their own thing anyway so all I'm asking is WHAT have you read, watched, or heard in the past that has really helped you with seo & backlinking.

I've already read one book, I've been on BH forums (because they at least post specific techniques like sorting page rank and using SEO quake to find high ranking blogs) but even with all this help, I'm not finding ANY sites ranking higher than mine, that I feel are worthy to even put links on.

My site is only ranked 3 for basement waterproofing (not position 3 talking about PR). But I see a lot of competitors with page rank 3 who are on first page of google. So I tried doing some on page optimization, and nothing is changing.

I was going to begin using the free blog commenter to get some backlinks established (we have 13 which is terrible) but I'm afraid to link to PR: n/a sites, I feel like I'm going to wind up lowering my page rank in the long run.

People are saying get listed in DMOZ, in directories, social media (which we have but does not show as a backlink - I have links on twitter, facebook and youtube but for some odd reason none of them show) I JUST NEED TO LEARN A LOT ABOUT SEO.

I'm willing to read non stop and test, but I need some type of comprehensive, trustable source on this.

Thanks guys! Any help you can give me I'd REALLY appreciate. - Red

Affordable basement waterproofing & water removal for entire NJ area- (my site btw)