A lot of new webmasters approach targeting their keywords in the wrong way, resulting in thousands of dollars down the drain.
Ranking high in the engines requires a lot of work, dedication and being smart. Simply spending dollars in SEO efforts without strategy has proved to never help anyone.
If you have a new website with considerably less number of links, the first thing you should do is go to Google Keyword Tool and check for all the keywords that you want to compete for. Make a list of it.
Start from their, for each keyword phrase, check how much the competition is and what the number of monthly searches there are.
Chances are, you can get your new website ranked very high for long-tail keywords and for less competitive phrases. If you try to directly go for the bigger game, you will be disappointed.
For example:
Data logging – would return a large amount of searches and competition but
Data logging software – would have considerably less competition and more targeted results.
The point of this post is to tell you that it is better to start ranking high for less competitive terms and then go for terms which are heavy in competition. Do not do it the other way round. It can result in a lot of expense with no benefit (at least in the short term).