Be careful about anyone who can "guarantee" a top listing for any keyword/keyphrase you want, if the price is right, Google has the same warning. Be careful to only hire a Search Engine Optimizer who practices organic and natural techniques and follows the Google Guidelines.

It can be hard sometimes to know what is a reasonable price for x amount of work, there really are no standards set officially. Make sure that your SEO creates a proposal on what they will do and for what price. Do not hire someone that guarantees everything and gives a lot of fluff in their proposal.

You need someone who is realistic and gives it to you straight, it's a very good idea to work out projected goals, like; by the end of 3 months I would like to go from 5 sales daily to 10. However, you should definitely try and work it out so that you're not paying more for SEO in a month then you are making in return. If you're a brand new company and you're not making any money out of the gate that is obviously an exception.

Your experiences may differ, but I highly recommend going with 1 freelancer over a "team" or firm. In my experience, what I've seen is that these firms more or less take advantage of people and you won't get the personal attention you need. With these firms they might create a one size fits all mentality that isn't healthy for your business.

A freelancer that you can work directly with may spend more time talking with you to understand your business and goals and provide far better quality of work.

Horror Story:

My most recent SEO client was being charged roughly $5,000 monthly by a firm that was doing maybe 1/3 of what I'm now doing for only $1,500 monthly. My client also let me know that the level of involvement and updates I've provided is superior to the almost canned response feel they got from this firm. Now, from the work that I saw this firm was doing, they didn't necessarily do anything damaging, but the bottom line was simply; THEY DID NOT CARE about the company or what they were doing. You need an SEO with the mentality that your success is their success, someone that will treat your business like their own.

Good Luck, Be Safe

Hi Im working as SEO from ODESK i do care for my buyer. I dont ask much payment for the job. The buyer will pay me if he is satistfied with my work.

That's a good point to bring up. That's an exception where I think guarantee's are legit and can work for both parties. Again, when someone says just give me $5,000 and I'll get you to the top, don't go for that kind unethical work, you'll end up wasting a lot of time and money trying to take legal action for not having your goals met, and there is hardly anything you can do about it. Just don't fall for it.

What I think july is referring to which I agree is fair, is let's say for the 1st month of a new SEO campaign (and SEO is an ongoing process), that the Optimizer offers say $500 upfront, they'll work the whole month on your website and if reasonable change is not made by the end of the month they don't receive the other $1,000 of payment or something to that effect. The probably the best risk management scenario for both parties.

Just to note that I believe unofficially that 3 months is the standard and respected margin for change to really take shape on a website. I'd be interested to hear how other SEO's feel about that as a guideline.

Hmm intersting but i think most seo work can be a rip of i learnt this many years ago and lost cash now i dont do much seo on my sites as time i just put a few links on my top sites and let the search engins to the rest or i make sure a pick a domain thats has the main key word in it so i get to the top of google in a day or two eg- http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sourc...1e998208e8ca69

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=wor...1e998208e8ca69

http://www.bing.com/search?q=world+p...&filt=all&qs=n

http://www.bing.com/search?q=worldpi...&filt=all&qs=n

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?rd...8&fr=yfp-t-702

as you can see in the top in all search engines now i know this just on its own is not good and that where i lake time and drive to do this but one day i will
July bhadaway pm me and may be we can help each other

I don't mean to be a buzz kill, negative or to put you down, but to be informative I should tell you that your search keywords are almost completely meaningless.

The main point of SEO is to optimize for the highly sought after keywords that are commonly used and vague/non-specific to your company so that you can be discovered.

If someone searches: "world pixel mile" on Google, first of all, that means that they're already aware of your brand/website/product and you're not attracting new users/customers, just ones that already know of you. Secondly, of course your website came up first, they specifically searched your unique company name, it's the same for anyone's website; here's a few of my own examples;

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=...5897877ebb6f45

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=of...5897877ebb6f45

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=of...5897877ebb6f45

That of course is good, but it almost means nothing in finding new customers.