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Do those other free tools allow you to save campaigns, have automatic weekly custom PDF reports sent to your email, and pull social data all in one place? Probably not, that right there is worth more than $99 to me

Correct but keep in mind that seo does effect longtail words you arent going after as well.

I would think that where you start depends on what you have done. It would be hard for anybody to do anything more then point you to the beginners guide That said... As far as getting links, that really is one of the last aspects and atleast for me, a never ending process. What you want before you start worring about who is linking and from what domain is make sure you site is built correctly. Title Tags, Descriptions, appropriate use of keywords, favorable unique content, correct internal linking, appropriate alt tags, use of H1 - H4 html attributes.. all this in no particular order. To begin with I would start by taking each page, and evaluating it for that pages top keyword with the on page analysis tool. There it will make suggestions on what you can improve. Once you're comfortable with your content and SEO pass. Then start submitting to search engines, and work on building your link structure.