A quick google search will deliver a mass of seo companies offer “1st page” of Google and making other claims.

In order to determine which company will look after your best interests, we have examined and laid out below some of the most common characteristics of poor SEO practices.
High quality, national SEO campaigns require significant investment to make gains in the market and achieve top rankings in organic positions of google’s first page (the only place where a site will achieve optimal results from clients searching online). It follows therefore that a company offering the same deal to every prospective client has not given due consideration to the complexity or otherwise of the task.
In this scenario, a company choosing such a plan may either be overpaying for services rendered (if the competition is weak and in a small market), or will be enticed by the bargain deal on offer and be throwing the advertising budget away on an SEO campaign that has no chance of delivering results.

High quality national SEO campaigns require significant investment to make gains in the market and achieve top rankings in organic positions of google’s first page (the only place where a site will achieve optimal results from clients searching online).

Many seo agencies offer “packages” or “plans” from which you may choose your level of investment. This is the first tell-tale sign that there is something wrong with this company’s understanding of business and even more critically of search engine optimization, and you should flee.
There are too many variables. Every business is different. Most vertical markets are different. Most glaring of all is that ranking in a city of 70,000 people is a completely different prospect than ranking in a large metropolitan city. To help you understand how and why these so called SEO experts offer these deals, let’s consider this further.

Black Hat, as the name implies, is the term for tactics employed to “game” the Google algorithm. Google is becoming more adept at picking up these people before they are able to rank at all however some always slip through the net (for a while). If you have heard someone say they were at the top of Page 1 and then their site dropped like a stone then the chances are that Google picked up on the SEO techniques used and penalized the website.Typically there is a cull with every new Google algorithm update.

White Hat SEO (working within Google’s guidelines)is the only way to employ strategies for success in the long term.

This is a more difficult question to answer without specialist knowledge so you may never know until it is too late. If you are reading this because you are considering a change of SEO consultant, one clue will be language that appears on your website, blogs and social media. More than half of all online marketing companies will utilize the services of a third party.
The obvious concern is a lack of understanding of the language and more importantly control over not just your internet properties, but those that link to you

The litmus test of any SEO expert. Ask for examples of their ability to rank in cities where competition is fierce – large metropolitan areas for example.

Almost all web designers think they know SEO. The truth is that they know tools available in the programs they use to build websites and will likely be aware of basic SEO principles. More often that not this basic knowledge is outdated, has little benefit and worse still sometimes actually hinders the website’s ability to rank.