I was recently contacted by a user on this site to assist me with my SEO for my site. Little did I know he really wanted to own half my company. Not! I am wondering, are there reputable companies that can help me be the top 5 on google for a couple keyword and generally what kinda of costs are associated to this? Any ideas?
Depends on the consultant. YOu can pay several thousand dollars for an initial report. Personally if you have the time (or have staff with the time) they wont tell you anything you wont learn for free. try out www.seomoz.org www.seobook.com for starters As a note, I wouldnt trust any consultants who "guarantee" top rankings. This just isnt something they can guarantee without knowing the algorithms
It's really best to start of doing it yourself rather then pay someone hundreds or thousands of dollars poke around the forums here a bit submit to like a billion directory's (by hand) and just keep reading writing and learning and you'll watch your site explode!
My only advice to you is for you to make sure that the company is legitimate. There are many people out there who claims that they are SEO experts, but in turn you get people that want to take your company over. This even actually goes the same for website design and hosting. Some designers can lock you out of your own site. Anyway, be cautious and just learn about the company first. We do SEO and we have been in business since 2000. So there are some legitimate people out there. By the way, I suggest you do business with people in the same country. In case for any legal suits, its easier to track and file (I am being realistic here). I hope this helps.
if you want to rank good , you need to find some backlinks for your site. you can also check http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=413544 . it's a seo guide