Advice needed for hiring SEO experts in 2013

First off, any SEO "specialist" who tells you they can guarantee you $500 in sales, or anything in sales for that matter, is a liar and not worth hiring. The only thing SEO will do is improve your website visibility and traffic. Many other factors go into whether or not you make sales and SEO really has very little to do with it.

One thing I come across a lot in this industry are business owners selling shitty or over priced merchandise who think that hiring the right SEO will increase their sales or jump start their business. The truth is, if 20 other retailers are selling exactly the same products as you at a fraction of the price, all the SEO in the world will not help you make sales; if your merchandise is defective, if your site looks amateurish or like some start up, or if your site is not encrypted with a valid SSL, you'll always have difficulty selling your stuff.

The problem is that business owners rarely acknowledge these facts and when they hire an SEO, they expect miracles. But someone doing SEO cannot do miracles, all they can do is optimize your site and get better visibility and traffic. Whether or not your products sell is not the concern of an SEO and that is not why he's getting paid. When you hire an SEO, you're hiring him to do a job and you are paying him for the work he is doing, regardless whether or not it results in sales. If you believe anything else, you're naive...