Advice For A Small Business Owner Who Wants To Offload Seo And Web Mar

Here’s the deal.

I am the co-owner of a ‘mini-geeksquad’ so to speak. I am responsible for the web marketing and technical side of the company (the day to day and accounting tasks are my partner’s responsibility). I understand and appreciate white hat seo, and the knowledge and time it takes to do well, unfortunately I do not have time to do this.

For example I understand that,

-Noone can guarantee rankings
-Link farms are bad
-Keyword stuffing is bad
-Trying to trick the search engines is bad
-Good rankings take time.

That being said,

I am trying to offload SEO Tasks to someone who is going to spend a certain amount of time on them per month. I’ve been burned before by people who promise results, even after only taking 1/3rd deposit. My question is

What would you guys recommend, I start with. I have a budget of $500 a month to start, and raised to $2000-$4000 a month once multiple websites are up and bringing in profit.

I have some ideas in mind…

-Good link building - researching non-ffa directories, trading reciprocal links with high pr similiar but non-competing websites, free high pr directories that are relevant.
-Checking daily rankings for all the websites
-Checking traffic reports using google analytics, and setting up proper goals.
-Analyzing competitors’ websites and traffic and seeing what works for them.
-Coming up with ideas and making slight on-page modifications to the website to slow grow the website and improve conversion ratio.

How much should I pay per hour, for an independent consultant, and how can I check their work. I know alot of people (including myself) , like to work on multiple projects at once , and bill the full hour for each one, but I want this person to really work the hours I pay him for.

Please give me ideas. I basically want to start small and develop a good relationship with someone, but I do require that person that prove themselves to me. I want a way to avoid quadruple subcontracting, project managers that take a cut, black-hat seo people…etc….