Need to know companies or education centers that offer search engine optimization courses.

You really do not have to take a course of SEO in order to have a basic understanding of what SEO can do. Here’s an article from Google which is self-explanatory:

The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is
to first set up a website and publish its domain name
on major search directories such as Google.com,
Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?...... and
MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these
search directories to provide them with goods and
services. In a sense, these search directories are a
very large Internet Yellow Pages.

Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage
fail to contain "generic" keywords, then anyone using
such "generic" queries will not be able to discover
your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website,
in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable.

You may want to consider some simple algorithms which,
when observed and committed in designing of a website
with placement of various critical metatags that can
surely achieve a high search engine presence and
increase Internet traffic to your website. These
metatag strategies work well with published webpages
at Google and Yahoo.

Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based
website, make sure to fill-in the property entries
such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing
to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can
be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the
Internet audience and their incoming setup. For
example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages
take too long to load up and therefore analog users
will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the
Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL
lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So
before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple
question, "Who’s my end user – is he on dialup or
DSL?" And if you had to choose between these two users
for maximum marketability, then select analog users
since 80% of most resident users are still analog
Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages
is best for them.

A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text,
is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit
the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a
graphic, they are not indexable by search robots.

Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots
are unable to properly classify textual material.

Placement of Metatags:

A ranking or search order does take place with Google
and Yahoo and it begins with the "Title" metag which
should consist of no more than 65 characters separated
by commas. The "Title" should describe in generic
terms, the goods and services, followed by a location
from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state.
The placement of a domain name which is not generic
within the "Title" is not appropriate, unless your
domain name is a major recognizable brand name.

The second metatag is the "Description" which is
usually 25-30 words to form a complete sentence which
best describes one’s goods and services.

And the very last category – "Keywords" are also
somewhat limited to 15-16 words which can be plural
and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries
which could be mistaken as "spamdexed entries" which
is defined as the loading, and submission of
repetitive words into a particular metatag category.
"Spamdexing" when discovered on a webpage and reported
to Google’s spamreport.com can result in the
elimination of your website from their search
directory.

Good luck!

Is it right to select the keyword which has got high keyword effectiveness index for search engine optimization ?

It is important to know your keywords. If you have a product that you sell on your site, ask five friends what they might search for on google/yahoo to find it. Take those different keywords and optimize your page with them.
Also work on your meta tags. Here is an article on how they work: http://www.richkahmer.com/meta-tags.html

I am willing to become an online content developer. For that I should be knowing how search engine optimization is done without paying.

Can anyone discuss few technics?

As you said you want to be content developer if you upload unique content on your site/blog regular basic and only do some basic link building this is enough because content is the king and it will automatically create back link. Beside you can use these free one way method like.
Directory Submission
Article Submission
Social bookmarking
Forum Posting
Blog comment
Press Relies distribution
Reciprocal link Exchange with relevant website

Have you used an SEO company to get your website higher up the search engine rankings? Who did you use, were they any good? Have you used a firm that was useless? who were they?

There are so many so called SEO companies who are con merchants, lets take a poll on who is good and who is the worst. Name and shame and praise and congratulate, over to you….

They are almost all scams. The only form of SEO that actually works is to have real content that people really want.

I’m trying to promote my website by social bookmarking the content on my site? Which social bookmarking site should I spend my time on? And does anyone have any tips on the best practices or strategies for this type of search engine optimization?

List of best book marking sites is here >http://webisgood.blogspot.com/2009/04/best-321-social-bookmarking-sites-list.html

This list is enough to drive sufficient traffic .

Tips to improve traffic

1) remember content is king
2) Stick to quality guidelines from search engines ,refere googles webmaster guideline
3) Make unique page content,title,description etc ,don’t use same title or description for pages

& try to compare top ranking websites

I’d like to know what sort of training and materials are required to become a search Engine Optimization/ Marketing consultant.

SEO Books will be outdated very quickly. Your best source is to first have an excellent understanding of web development, html, asp, design concepts and design standards.

You need to take online courses. These can be expensive from the top online schools but worth it in the end. You need to sign up fro the best feeds, ezines, forums that are online.

You need to be familiar with Google webmaster guidelines, ppc, link building, sem and social networking.

You have to know how to market yourself as a professional. You best bet is after training find a mentor who can guide you and teach you the ropes.

Learn how to search for what you are looking for as well. If you want to do SEO and SEM, then know how to find best information online. There are many and what I feel is best you may not based on your time, budgets and so on. So do some heavy research and reading as that will help you grow as well.

What’s the best search engine optimization company? And what exactly do they offer? It seems there’s huge amount seo companies but not a lot that makes them different.

I think the real question is "Who is the best at spotting the best seo company?"

You definaltely want to stay clear of seo firms that don’t shows signs of evolving, algos never sleep. The days of keyword stuffing and automatic search engine submissions are long gone.

SEO has transformed into marketing, conversion, usability, local search, people pleasing, analysis and testing.

If "best" is too subjective of a word, then which are the three most popular search engine optimization software applications?

Try Internet Business Promoter, or The famous Web Position Gold.
I tried them before and it works for me well.

The official webmasters information places, employees of search engines, webmaster’s forum

Google Press Releases http://googlepress.blogspot.com/
Matt Cutts Blog http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ (Matt is a Google software engineer)
Digitalpoint Yahoo Forums http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6
SearchEngineWatch’s MSN Forums http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8
Information for Webmasters (Adam Lasnik, search evangelist at Google) http://docs.google.com/Doc.aspx?id=a4bb8f9kppt_0drmp5z&access=firstgov
Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld.com’s "Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone: 26 steps to 15k a day." http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

I wanna know the basic intro of search engine optimisation.
any answers? plz.

It is a way to improve the rankings of your website on a search engine – e..g if your website is shown on Google on page 25, you optimise your page with meta titles and keywords to get to page 8 (improving your ranking).

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a subset of search engine marketing, and deals with improving the number and/or quality of visitors to a web site.

Search engines display different kinds of listings on a search engine results page (SERP), including paid advertising in the form of pay per click advertisements and paid inclusion listings, as well as unpaid organic search results and keywords specific listings, such as news stories, definitions, map locations, and images. SEO is concerned with improving the number and position of a site’s listings in the organic search results.

SEO strategies vary widely, in accordance with the specific site. Broadly speaking, SEO may be geared towards increasing either, or both, the total number and quality of visitors from Search Engines. The quality of a visitor can be measured by how often a visitor using a specific keyword leads to a desired conversion action, such as making a purchase or requesting further information.

Search engine optimization is available as a stand-alone service or as a part of a larger marketing campaign. Because SEO often requires making changes to the source code of a site, it is often most effective when incorporated into the initial development and design of a site, leading to the use of the term "Search Engine Friendly" to describe designs, menus, Content management systems and shopping carts that can be optimized easily and effectively.