Do any of the paid SE services work?
 

You know, those that promise a PR of 10 if you pay them. Or those that "optimize" you website for SE. Can a service provider get your page rank up for a fee? I get spam from a few places like Internetseer...l always consider it BS, but I do wonder sometimes.

Don't waste your money it is BS
Some of the best SE guys in the business post here and call bullshit when necessary.
Grab a cup of coffee and a note pad, you can learn everything you need to know right here

No, they don't work.

It's more or less a con.

That's not to say they might not make some improvements, but they could also hurt your site really badly, and the chances of your making your money back are very small.

You can almost certainly do better for yourself with a little study.

However, search engine work is harder than it has ever been, and less in the control of the small webmaster than it has ever been.

They are all full of shit, If they are so good why would they be doing SEO for anyone but themselves?

Thanks for the replies...I think you all confirmed what I had suspected.

If you mean improve Google ranking, yes. Some SEO consultants and firms can and do deliver. But not the ones promising #1 placements or TBPR 10.

SEO is a long, involved process. You're often not going to get alot out of paying $500/hour for consulting, because to produce results, paying for knowledge isn't enough - you also have to pay for someone to execute your SEO campaign. Execution can take months and cost you thousands of bucks, even if you paid an SEO just 20 bucks an hour.

Is it worth it? It all depends on your landing pages and the keywords you're targeting. With PPC you might pay $200/day to Google, but if you make $2000/day from that PPC campaign its worth it. On the other hand, if you pay $200/day and make only $10/day you're obviously throwing your money away.

Bottom line: If you don't have thousands of bucks to invest in SEO services, don't get started. Just paying a couple hundred bucks won't be enough.