How to get into SEO consulting? 
brk: At 17, I'd suggest you probably just bypass this altogether.SEO is not magic or difficult, it is what HTML was in the 90's.I remember when a person who did little more than a webpage layout could charge $3,000+ for what was basically a set of static page templates because most people thought that HTML was a "language" akin to C++ or something.  Now you can get a web page template for free, or $50 at the most.When you get right down to it, SEO is just basic layout best-practices and having fresh, relevant content on your page.  You can carry on all you want about "backlinks" and "pagerank" and "referrer text", but at the end of the day you can fit 98% of all SEO rules on the back of business card.In the next few years, SEO is going to be thought of as highly as "HTML writing": it will be assumed that any 14 year old can do it for free (and this will be mostly true).Most of the more savvy web-marketing types I've spoken with over the last couple of years don't see a future in SEO as a "career".At your age, you need to be looking toward the next thing, not the last thing.  If you really want to play with SEO in the meantime though, start with seobook.com.