What I've Learned So Far

For the past few weeks, I've spent day and night doing SEO research here and I'm ready to lurk no more--I'm determined to become an SEO expert. Here's what I've learned thus far:

1. Keyword Research. I use the Google Keyword Tool, Google search without quotes, Google search with quotes, &start=990, intitle, inurl, intitle + inurl, Traffic Travis for age and PR checks, SEOQuake for quick PR checks, Google Trends, and SEO SpyGlass for anchor text + links of my #1 competitor. I very much understand how to conduct keyword research and gauge the competitiveness of a keyword.

2. On-page SEO. Title tags, description tags, other meta tags, keyword placement, keyword density, internal linking, etc. I definitely have a good understanding of On-page SEO.

It's a great feeling knowing that I've developed a great understanding of the two first most important things regarding SEO.

3. Off-page SEO. From what I've learned Off-page SEO falls into the following categories:

-Article Marketing (important)
-Directory Submissions (not very important, submit to the big ones for sure)
-Blog Posts (important)
-Blog Commenting (important)
-Social Bookmarks (somewhat important)
-Press Releases (somewhat important)
-Authority Links (important)
-RSS Feeds (somewhat important)
-Forum Posts (not very important other than for potential traffic, not for SEO)
-Forum Links (somewhat important)
-Web 2.0 Properties (important)

I'm also understanding the Google Algorithm better regarding quality over quantity, the huge importance of link velocity, etc.

My question to you guys is that I'm at a little bit of a turning point right know in my growth in this SEO knowledge, I'm overwhelmed with the amount of Off-page information. There seems to be a lot of confusion on what to focus on and what to not focus on, which tools to get, which tools not to get.

My goal is to rank in the #1-3 position in Google for a relatively easy keyword phrase for a half a year old domain or so. Should I work on writing and submitting articles? I haven't done that yet, but I'm not sure if I should if I should be writing my own articles or spinning them (I would prefer to write my own), but I'm also not sure how to go about submitting them because there's no way I'm going to sign up for hundreds of different article sites manually. I need some manual article submission software or service or something. Any ideas?

I'm also contemplating purchasing ScrapeBox to find relevant, high PR blogs to manually comment on at say a rate of 20 or so each and every week for months. How effective would it be having a 100+ relevant, high PR manual blog comments?

What direction should I be heading to make my new website get in that top #1-3 position quickly and end up staying there for the long term?

Any and all advice would be so much appreciated. Thank you in advance for the great and help responses I'm sure I'll receive. I really just need some expert guidance from those who have been there and done that, to help get through the overwhelming amount of knowledge and resources and tools.

Good you just got all the theory correct.
Now next part is practical experience. You will never know what really works unless you actually do it.

i suggest buy scrapebox, AMR, TBS. they are a must.
TBS spins and AMR submits your spinned articles to thousands of directories manually. You might need a VPS if your connection is slow.
If low on money you can use Spinnerchief instead of tbs. It is free.
Always use unique content on your site. You can use spinned content on article directories.
After you make some money you can go ahead and by BMD for bookmarking.

Create a site, Apply your knowledge and tools and see what works..

-Forum Profiles (Very important, dumbass Google digs them)

That's a very good baseline to start off with.

But what you need to do is go out and do these things. The best way you'll learn is to create sites and get them ranking. Create you're own system and live and breathe it.

Then as the algo changes, tweak your system to continue to get the best possible results.