Regarding SEO, should I just pay for links?

I would rather spend my money on outsourcing articles.

$600 could get you 120x 500 word articles (at .01 cent per word). For a bulk $600 project, you could probably get a cheaper rate than .01 cent per word.

Use those articles to build backlinks.

-Submit to article dirctories
-Create Web 2.0 properties (squidoo, hubpages, etc...)
-Guest Blog Posts
-Turn the articles into videos (record a powerpoint presentation while reading the article out-loud and post them with TubeMogel or something)
-Turn the articles into scribd documents
-Create feeder blogs

There are so many other possibilities- all which can build links to your site using articles.

Take a look in the WSO's and the classifieds on this forum.

No video submission for you? You are missing some love juice.

Is it more important for you to rank, or are you looking more for traffic that will convert?

Regarding buying links....I'd suggest being very careful doing that becasue you could get caught up in a bad neighborhoods. If by any chance you get associated with a online neighborhood like that then their bad reputation can rub off on you. Then you can get penalized.

I'd also suggest paying close attention to what Jay284 said above.

I am looking for ranking and for quality traffic.

Besides looking for this, I am working hard on making my site convert more... I'm in the process of making a video already.

As to the articles... it sounds pretty good, but a lot of time people write crappy articles that don't do my product justice at all... or it's filled with misinformation.

Please continue with the advice thanks!

It's hard to say because I know nothing about what your
business revenue model is?

That sounds like a lot of quantity - but what's the quality?

480 press releases is a lot... but who reads 'em? A: nobody
but spiders... and are they written to appeal to people at
all?

The truth is one well-written press release on PRWeb can be
more effective than a crap press release subjected 100s
of times to marginal directories.

Anyway, SEO has it's place, but equally if not more important
than SEO is your website's ability to engage and sell. If you
get that right you don't have to go crazy with SEO in many
cases.

Stop paying anymore. Do a wordpress blog and continue to add fresh content. Directories don't work like they used to and article submission is about to change big time so don't waste money on either.

And don't pay for links. Create them yourself. Its not that hard. In fact pm me I'll do it for free.

I never pay for anything I can't see.

Dana Wilhoit has a list of good PR sites - there aren't that many
that get real readers looking at them. A lot of press releases
to the marginal directories don't even get indexed by Google,
as far as I can tell. I'm not saying mass-submitting to free
press-release directories is a complete waste of time - the only
way to know that for sure is to test a project using only mass-
submitted releases and see if you got any traffic or rankings
from it.

PRWeb and WebWire are worth submitting to.... and paying
for upgraded distribution. Don't go overboard, but do test
what spending some dollars on premium press releases can
do for you.

I often use free-press-release.com and pay for the $1 upgrade
myself. It works great. Makes a nice press release that
does well in Google and makes a live backlink. Not as
good as PRWeb or WebWire probably, but a bargain for
the price.

Writing press releases is a skill to be sure, but in general
I find it easier than writing articles... there's no editor
who is gonna throw your submission back at you for being
"too self-promotional" - because self-promotion is what
press releases are all about.

Mr Manpower,

If you want to submit a press release on PRweb, go to PRweb.com, create an account and submit a press release. A basic submission is $80. Packages that include links in the release itself start at $200.

The question is, do you want to spend your time on SEO or do you want to spend your time on your business itself? While I am capable of mowing my own lawn, I would rather pay someone to do it and spend my time doing something else.

You may be capable of learning SEO and have an aptitude for it, but can your business afford the time it will take while you focus on learning it? There isn't just "one way." Everyone has their own opinion on the best method. It will take time for you to determine the best strategy for your business.

Is there some reason that you are looking for someone else? Have you not seen results or has something else happened that you don't have confidence in the company you hired?

So you don't believe in professional services? When people hire me, they are not only paying for the service that I provide, but my knowledge and expertise. They can't afford to spend the time stumbling around trying different things, so they come to me.

THis is what happened to me when I bought links

Well,writing articles is really a piece of good advice.But I think the most important thing is your blog itself.First you should make sure your blog upadates and highly optimized.What's more,the quality of your service or product also matters.And then it's time for you to think about SEO and links.Or it's just waste of money.

There's some great packets floating around and some pretty good software to help semi-automate the process. Check the WSO's.

HTH

paid links are not there forever so the best approach could be to buy featured or guest posts about your sites on various Blogs with good PR , the featured post just cost one time and are there forever , giving you that good old link juice .

Buying links can be a slippery slope. Google is beginning to be more selective about the links they consider valid. Purchasable links from some high PR sites are getting spanked by Google. Better to build your links the old fashioned way if you care about keeping mama Google happy.

For that amount you could almost hire a full time assistant to do whatever you want.
So perhaps first hire an SEO consultant to design you a daily/weekly/monthly SEO task list and then have your assistant do the leg work.
This is not hard work it just can be time consuming and this is where the grunt, I mean assistant comes into play. Plus they could do other tasks that you hate or do not have time to do.

Manpower,

Even if you hire a firm to handle SEO for you, it is important to understand as much about the subject as you can.

This way you will know what you are paying for and what kind of results & issues you may have.