I personally feel that shorter posts on forums are more productive. Long entries aren't read as much as the shorter posts. Time of users is very limited.
This will vary based on type of website, extra features, amount of work to create your site, the expertise of the graphic designer and many other factors. You'll just need to compare rates.
We would agree--PPC can be difficult and expensive if you aren't used to navigating PPC programs. Online bidding can be tricky, so consider hiring an expert to handle this method of site promotion for you.
Reverse SEO is simply the process of pushing down negative, or erroneous, reviews and sites that come up when your site is searched. Reverse SEO will make more positive information surfaces. This is used frequently for reputation management.
Normally, you should plan to devote between 1 -2 hours each day in SEO work for your site. It would be hard to devote 8 -10 hours to your own site and still get your work done. 1 -2 hours should be enough for your own site.
There's no set number of keywords to have within your website. When you are first starting out, you'll want to focus on only a few keywords and establish 'link equity' to those. This will help your rankings more quickly.
Only develop your links to your site naturally. That is the best method of getting your site ranked. You want to build them daily and naturally for the best results.