SEO, Google and backlinks - discussion and ideas for a beginner

So, having posted in the introduction section, it has been suggested that I start a new post with some specific questions I have.

First some background for those who may not have read that thread:
http://experienced-people.net/forums...eral-questions

I am pretty much a complete beginner at website development and improvement and, apart from a few blogs, have not done this in the past. Before I pay out any money (well apart from the peanuts it took to register a domain name) I thought I would have a bit of practice in SEO with the aim of getting a site on the front page of google in a certain niche.

So, I started a free account on Weebly and put together a website on a really narrow niche that I find entertaining. I then registered a domain name on Go Daddy which was a dot com with the two words I am targetting as keywords, hyphonated (quite pleased with that, but given the lack of competition not totally unexpected).

Since then I have been making sure I include my keywords in the body of text (does highlighting them in bold really help??) and have linked a few times from my facebook account, tweeted with a link and attempted to swap a few links with some peer sites. After a week my website is sitting not so pretty on page 22 of Google (worse than the same time yesterday) so I have come for some advice.

What else should I be doing to get my website up the rankings, or indeed should I even be trying to do this? I have had some very useful replies so far on the other thread so maybe they can be expanded on?

Crabfoot suggested I try to employ triangular links instead of simple swaps. In order to do this would I need my sites to be the fat end of the triangle (as it were) or how would I approach other webmasters to ascertain whether they have a couple of sites that could act in this way? Or were you suggesting that my sites make up the whole triangle? As I am just starting out, both of my sites would be pretty new so not particularly high value when it comes to linking (if I understand the concept correctly) but I could certainly make another site as an overview of the subject which could link well. Can Google tell if the sites backlinking are owned by the same person?

Kay suggested that chasing links is not a great plan (or words to those effect!) as inherantly any site that would be interested in doing this would themselves be just starting out or low value. On the subject of the value of links, what about sites like Facebook or Myspace - are links on those sites considered useful (would be good as I can set them up easily myself)

Clinton went a step further and said to forget about ranking on Google althogether. If so, what should I be concentrating on instead? Surely Google is essential to capture "window shoppers" as it were?

So guys, what do you think? I am determined to make a success of this and so far feel like a slightly damp sponge - I have tried to absorb all the information I have come accross but some if just drips out again :-/

[[Great questions. Have you got any answers? - Clinton]]