Welcome to the madness!
Record cleaning is almost a religion onto it's self. You will learn fast, that records are the cheapest part of this hobby.
Keeping the needle clean is the most important thing. Nothing sounds worse then a dirty needle. Also it's very easy to destroy a needle cleaning it. Done it twice already myself. Generally, you get a brush, pull the brush towards you from the back of the turntable. Or you can get a little ultrasonic needle cleaner, or the sticky goo cleaners. Picked up a ultrasonic myself, it works wonderfull! Just needs a bit of distilled water. Use the same source as my ultrasonic record cleaner.
On to records. Usually, first you dry brush all the surface stuff off. Then do a wet clean, or dump into a ultrasonic/vacuum cleaner. For used records, they get dry brushed, then a manual wet wash, then go into the ultrasonic. After that get put into nice new clean rice paper sleeves.
Chemicals for me I use all Groovewasher stuff. I trust it, not overly expensive. In my ultrasonic cleaner, I use like 6 drops of US cleaner per gallon of distilled water.
Usually clean records in batches, it takes over my kitchen with brush, wet clean, UC clean, re-sleeve. Usually do around 6-8 records per hour.
On my setup, there are no pops, hisses, static, very dark background. When they do start to make any noise, they get cleaned again in the US.