Do any of the paid SE services work?

[Halfdeck]

Can a service provider get your page rank up for a fee?

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.