1. Why you should hire a consultant?
With a consultant, you get a one-man team who if you choose well, will be a real professional and will give you individual attention, specialized treatment, someone who can see all the angles, and someone you can form a long-term relationship with.
2. Why you should hire an agency?
With an agency, you get a team assigned to your account, you’re pitched by senior staff, but the work is handled by the junior members. You get a financially stable company but your small budget will earn you little attention. They’ll have deep resources but you’ll pay for their large overhead.
3. How to write your web pages?
You need to understand the keyword phrases that your target audience enters into the search engines when they look for the subject matter on your page. You can find test the strength of keywords phrases with certain tools like this one: http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
4. How to increase your page ranking?
You have to build relevant inlinks and solid outbound links.
5. How to get good placement by the search engines?
There are typically millions of pages like yours. Don’t believe anyone who guarantees that you’ll be at the top of the search rankings. They most likely are executing a strategy that will get you in trouble with the search engines
6. How to list your site in directories?
You need to list your site in the right directories. If you do this incorrectly you can get negative marks form the search engines.