Ask them to name some industry leaders

If they don’t mention Matt Cutts, Aaron Wall, or Rand Fishkin it’s an obvious sign they are likely bogus.

Ask for verifiable examples of their work.

Request specific web sites that they can prove to own, either via a whois lookup or have them modify the page in some specific way to prove it is theirs when possible. Make sure that the term they are ranking for is actually fairly competitive and they were the ones responsible for achieving that rank. It’s understandable that they’d need to keep their client’s identities under wraps in most cases, but they should be able to provide you with something if not their own web site.

Get some statistics on their web site

Check the Google PageRank, the Alexa Rank, and the Compete Rank of the supposed SEO Expert’s web site. A good way to do this is using the FireFox plugin-in SearchStatus. They’re likely not much of an expert if they don’t have a Google PageRank or an Alexa Rank or a Compete Rank. I mean if they can’t optimize their own site, what’s to say they could optimize yours?

Google the supposed SEO Expert’s name

If they don’t have a very common name and they’re not in the top 10 results, it’s an obvious sign they either don’t really know their stuff, or they’re not serious about being an SEO expert.

Ask them if they can guarantee you a #1 spot in the search results for a competitive phrase

If they say yes they’re a phony. Obviously it is easy to be #1 for “the most ridiculously specific and completely worthless longtail keyword in the universe” – hell my blog is probably #1 for that now and it’s just in the body text of my blog post. You get the point.

Ask them how important keyword density is

If they try to tell you of a spurious magical ratio it’s time to consult a real expert/firm.

Ask them how important search engine submissions are

If they try to tell you you actually need to submit your site to search engines you’ve caught them in a lie. That or they just have no idea what they’re talking about.

See if they have gone to Google Webmaster Help to get answers on how to do basic SEO

Cuil results for my name "andy forsberg"

Cuil is Cool

• Cuil’s interface is cool & sexy.
• My blog is ranked #2 for my own name, rather than #6 in Google.
• Ad Free (so far).
• More thorough description of each web site w/ screenshots, rather than just first 155 characters like in Google and most other search engines.
• Supposedly searches 3x as many pages on the web as Google. Interestingly enough Cuil shows 9,149 results for my own name and Google shows 173,000. Cuil may only show more relevant results however.
• The text renders like any web page when you view it in Safari and/or Chrome, but does so even while you’re in FireFox and that is a beautiful thing.
• Switching between results pages is far faster than the popular search engines.
• Tabbed search results for popular search terms like my last name only “forsberg” = sweeet. Between me, the popular race car driver, and the guy from Brown, we still haven’t made the list unfortunately =(
• Timelines for popular people like “peter forsberg”
• Relevant category searches

Wolfram Alpha is Intuitive

• Launches sometime this month
• Hoping it doesn’t become subscription-based and will remain free
• A whole new species of search, even makes Google look immature
• Searching for “uncle’s uncle’s brother’s son” results in this:

Results of a search for “uncle’s uncle’s brother’s son”

• Searching for “bob” results in this:

• ReadWriteWeb did a full story on it, check out more about Wolfram|Alpha here.