Need help with SEO

[Tom Evans]

Hi, my name is Tom and I'm a contractor/real estate investor in central Ohio. I purchased a website and had it designed two years ago. For the past two years we have been busy fixing up and renting single family homes. We reduced our presence in the phone book and now the search engines are not finding us. I have read about keywords, links, and blogs and have been working on these things for about two months. I don't mind paying for SEO, but all the companies that I have considered using don't seem to be using SEO for themselves. I "google" companies advertising SEO, and all of them within 60 miles don't come up until the 3rd or 4th page. So my theory is, if they are not helping themselves, I can't expect them to help me. This might be a little outside the normal real estate question, but any advice would be greatly appreciated.