How to get your sites ranked on the search engines.
First, who should you listen to? There are three types of firms offering advice on SEO.
The first group are trying to sell a product or service that will help your ranking. For a fee they might add your site to their plethora of sites. They may tell you to install a file on your server that will perform some magic. They may go into your web pages and adjust your code in order to optimize your web ranking.
There are adjustments you can make in your code to improve your rankings. There is definitely a benefit to having other sites link to yours. There are files you could add to your site, such as a robots.txt, sitemap.html, or sitemap.xml that will help your ranking. However these firms may do more harm than good. Caveat Emptor. Check them out thoroughly before you spend any money or allow anyone access to your web site.
Web Designers and Web Hosts will generally provide more balanced advice. Usually the SEO services are only a fraction of what you would be paying for. Beware if they guarantee results as an inducement.
Finally there are the Search Engines themselves. Since they are the ones who determine your ranking, the most credible information would come from them.