SEO Companies..are they any good?

hi there,
i'm trying to find SEO company that could take care of my website, i want my website to be listed in top search engins and get high ranking. I was advised to checkout these seos
http://www.advantageconsultingservices.com
http://www.servicewrap.net
but the thing is that there are many seo companies and i really don't want to be fooled or toyed around especially with seeking-profit-only kind of companies.
Is there any advice you can support me with when i want to choose any SEO company?
do they really gurantee that any website will be top-listed in many search engines?
what do you think about those companies i mentioned above? are they any good?..thank you soo much in advance for helping me out.

im not saying any SEO company is bad
BUT if they guarentee to get you in the top 10 for a search term then 10 other people come and ask the same you will drop out of the top 10
they dont do anything you cant do yourself with a bit of research first, if you have the time.
all it takes is going through your pages and changes things like ALT tags, title tags certain words here and there

I really dont know anything about the companies you mentioned above. But one thing for sure:

do they really gurantee that any website will be top-listed in many search engines?

No one can gaurantee. All they can do is help you optimize your site, they can give you lucrative keywords after intense research and analysis and then it is left to mercy of Search Engine bots to crawl your website. Once your site is optimized for SE - it will start listing for the keywords, more exposure, that will result in higher ranks, even more exposure.

Now how do you want to go about hiring/contracting SEO expert?

Look at their credentials, some sites they have worked on, the keywords they generated for those sites and look where they list on the Search Engines.

Oh and yes, be ready to shell out $

Goodluck for your search...

-----------------------------------------
Edit after reading Tony84's message.
-----------------------------------------
I agree with Tony84. I myself was in market for looking an SEO, I did the research and figured out I can do it myself. As Tony84 mentioned all you need is some knowledge and time. I recently made changes to one of my client sites and my listing in Google went from #36 to #24. So this gave me confidence and now I am revamping the entire site and asking my client for more money and he is willing to do so. That will definitely bring the site listing up. If you want, either you can do it by yourself or give the project to me or Tony84

no i dont want the project, i probably could get it ranked higher but i just dont have the patience to do it bombaywala, i dont suppose you could give me a few pointers on my code by any chance could you?

thank you all for replying,
well also noticed that thing called "full money back guarantee", and i also noticed something which is they guarantee 60 top search engine placement, but that doesn't mean you will get on top position with the 60 search engines..right!!!...also some companies promise you that your website could be this...and your site could be that if you sign up with them!!!!
i'm really lost and you know what....maybe learning to be a fine SEO is way much better than choosing the right SEO company for your website!!!!

it also doesnt guarentee which search engine you will be top of, it probably wouldnt be 1 of the major 1s

to tony,
com on, i don't think you want a page which has a pr of 0 to have a link to your website(its still under construction by the way...do u

What pointers? I will be more then happy to help you out - Shoot me a PM.

if your website is website relaeted - hosting, design, seo etc ill exchange links

SEO become meaningless by the time ...
Save your SEO money to hire some pr7+ backlink with the title of the keywords that you want to rank - ITS THE BEST SEO WAY TO DO