[fasouto]

Nice experiment! Link for the lazy: https://github.com/goferito/gapoc

I guess SEO people already know this, the question is: can you trust a SEO consultant?

[desdiv]

Only if he's the top search result for "SEO consultant".

[calinet6]

Unsurprisingly, such a person exists; though it probably differs by region and various other factors.

[knodi123]

Hire them on contingency, and then verify their results.

Use something like http://zoomrank.com/ to monitor the position of your site in the various search engines over time; establish a baseline, hire the SEO consultant, and look at your placement graphs. Did you fail to improve, or even go down? Then don't pay the snake oil salesman.

[gk1]

As a marketing consultant: No, usually you cannot. There are great ones out there, but for most people it's too difficult to screen out the quacks. Go by referrals.

[el33th4xx0r]

Nope. Can't trust SEO consultant, its also hard to trust company/product that uses SEO consultant's services. If somebody have good/reliable products or services, they don't need any phony SEO tricks.

[mgamache]

Is the best content is always #1 in Google? I wish that was the case, but it's not. Until Google can evaluate content without external 'signals' SEO will be a fact of life.