$5,000 Budget, Should I Hire SEO Firm?

Listen, the big company's buy advertising space, and in these ads (like pictures there url is visible) google is capable of scraping it out of the image. So these company's are not buying links but ads with the links in them on very relevant websites. Mostly you get an add that is projected on every single page of that site.

I saw that a site of a friend of mine who paid around 10k for website+seo, he had a AD on a HUGE well known forum with tons of high PR pages. It wasn't a onetime investment, he had to keep paying montly for that AD.

Result? He was at the top of page 1 for a LOT of keywords that were all related to eachother but didn't look like eachother. Say your in fruit business, then he ranked for: strawberry, banana, orange, apple. His main linksource was one HUGE ass forum with 100's of PR3+ pages, I think he paid around $1500/month. So all the people yelling about anchor txt to rank for certain keywords, yeah bull, if you have the right source you don't need a single achor. How you wanna implent an anchor txt in a picture lol.

Keep in mind he had a real company selling real products of $300 up to $1500,- with a real shop and a 1500m2 showroom. So he could afford the $1500 a month and it brought him big sales. Ofc you cant compare that to all the small online IM'ers with there affiliate sites where they make $40 max on a sale from Amazon. He made easily 30-40% profit on his products.

I could've done the same, I was in a similar business, but I blew it by gambling, and now I'm desperatly trying to make a few bucks at the internet lol. Also i was pretty sick of going to the shop all the time and driving around the whole country delivering stuff. I couldnt outsource all that cause each time I made 5k profit in a week I just blew half of it on the roulette. Story of my life lol, once a gambler always a gambler.

No thats understandable but then there is also a big IF

If you are set on getting someone else to do it for you, actually 5000 will not buy much for SEO companies, that are GOOD

I would certainly do a lot of research and find a company that works for a reasonable price and has LOTs Of recommendations, (that did not come from them, of course they will show you only satisfied clients, I want to know about unsatisfied clients, people complaining)

If I can find only people giving glowing reviews, then I will say, ok hmm those guys must be good, If a lot of people are complaining they tried them not worth the money, I would be wary

If someone recommends a company, I would google "company name, scam, complaints, fraud" etc to see what comes up

I just dont want you to blow 5000 bucks and not get your moneys worth

You almost have to really understand SEO yourself in order to know who to avoid
Do NOT let companies BLAST your site with backlinks
this could backfire bigtime

I also think a lot of companies out there just point a lot of "high PR " backlinks towards your site (supposedly) and for that they call themselves SEO experts

Some companies say WE GUARANTEE YOU A GOOGLE #1 LISTING
to me if you hear a company say that? Run the other way, nobody can guarantee you a Google #1 listing. (unless you let them pick the kw)

Sounds good but I am not sure how good they would be for English markets because they probably have a network or database of dutch high PR sources but not ones in english.