SEO Beginner

What tools exactly do I need to get started in SEO

I really am confused by it all

Once I get proficient how long does it take to go from a page 20 rank to a page 1 rank...

thanks

Since you are on this forum so the best tool for you to learn seo is the search option at the left side of this forum. Its very helpful trust me. Answer to your last question is, it can be 1 day, 1 week, 1 month , 1 year based on the keyword you are choosing and there are lot of factors responsible for ranking a website.
Best of luck

you dont need tools to be involved in seo.

seo is a world in itself, tools just aid peoples efforts by allowing them to game the system.

but really, you can learn, implement, and rank your sites using SEO tactics and without ever purchasing a tool. they are for the pros. learn the basics first.

You will need fully functional brains and you will have to learn by yourself by actually looking for information and not just questioning every minor detail in forum.

Talking about the most basic SEO learning, I would say that you can get to know the main thinks in one week, but SEO is always changing, so you will always need to keep learning, if you want to be successful with it.

to get higher rank, i think you should adopt the white hat SEO techniques but it is quite slow process, if you want to get it fast then you should use the software techniques and ultimatley it will black hat seo techniques, i found such kinda software on a site like sofrob ...

Ok here is some tips from me:
1)Your first and biggest tool is your mind,you need to have positive state of mind with achivable goals targeted.And when I say goals I mean real goals,make 10$/day is not a goal it is a wish.A goal is search the BHW for good method and add a twist or apply some method with a twist and earn 50$ then outsource etc etc.
2)Time,for starters you need alot of it.I am on holidays now and I spent 4+ hours/day on BHW and I learn alot about alot of things.
3)Dont go head first.What I mean by that dont open forum and see someone say:"Scrapebox PWNS ass,its gonna rule the world" and then you buy.What I recomand doing is starting from solid 0.Go to money making section and read first 10 pages,choose 1-3 methods and do them until you get 10-20$ per day,then use the money to invest in other methods,or outsource those methods and make even more
4)Making money on internet is not only consisted of marketing.If you are interested in creating stuff,you can learn programming and create custom bots for people,they sell well.Or you can do manual link building(manual is very valued in IM and SEO) or you can even explore youtube,cpa,PPC and one of thougher fields that is paid file sharing
5)Money is the tool,remember how cavemans built tools?Well yeah my point here is take some method that is outdated and add a twist on it AKA take something unrefined and unshaped and make it into something usefull
6)Somewhere on the forum there is thread about not acting like an elephant.It basically sets a real life example of how you should not think.
7)Today one member opened a very inspiring topic called something like 500th post - no money/profit made.I recomand you go and read it.Then you will understand some things differently
8)No method is bad method.Even if it brings 1$/day for starter in 47 day you can buy scrapebox or hosting+EMD domain and start SEO big time

Read around, dude =)
BHW has ALL the information you need right in front of you!