Very important, Google the site. Google with keywords and with words that sound like the title of the company. This shows you how good the SEO on their site is. That should tell you most of what they know.

The questions you have asked require a very in-depth answer. I am going to try nevertheless. First of all, check the reputation of the SEO company in question. You can do this by asking for examples of past work. You can also talk to past clients of the SEO company to judge the quality of work they do.

Once you have decided the SEO company you are using, the SEO package you are going for, you can discuss what you want to achieve through search engine optimization. This makes your goals very clear to the company, and it can work accordingly for your search engine optimization.

As for the progress the SEO company is achieving, any professional SEO company will provide you with weekly and monthly reports of SEO activity, through which you can track the progress of your website. White Hat, ethical SEO takes time to take effect, so I cannot pinpoint how much time your SEO company will take to show results. But rest assured that the results will be long lasting.

Hope this helps.

Mark

http://web-marketing.analytixsolutions.com/search-engine-optimization-marketing.asp

Any company that could promise you first page results on a term as broad as "furniture", is selling you down the river. It just isn't possible on today's Internet. Have you thought about doing some of this yourself? As the answers above attest, it isn't something that will happen overnight, and it includes so many other variables. One of the best websites I have found on self-promotion is http://selfpromotion.com/. SEO isn't always the answer to increasing website traffic. I have a new report on my site that could give you some more things to look at: http://www.precisonmarketingstrategies.com. Good luck in your endeavors.

Deborah Schultz

A couple of things you should know before jumping in with an SEO company:

1. Google's engineers are constantly working against mediocre SEO companies. Google is constantly trying to make their results accurate, relevant and helpful to searchers. Some SEO companies try to beef up your appearance on the web with links that aren't exactly time-tested and helpful.

2. Improved Search Engine results will come for free when you increase your appearance on the web. Create a Facebook page and get some fans or get other respectable sites to review your furniture. When search engine 'spiders' crawl the 'web', they collect and connect links to your site. If the links they collect are abundant and they are from respectable sites, your site is a more helpful and reliable search result for them. Up you go.

3. Search engine submission is easy. Every major engine has a link somewhere for you to submit your site and description to them. This ensures that if there are no links to your site, it will still look for it.

4. Adding the necessary keywords and meta-tags to your site is easy for anyone with basic HTML knowledge. Whoever built your site should be able to do this for you in an hour or less.

This is a great article on SEO: http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2010/february/204594.html

I personally believe a simple quality design and good marketing is the best approach. Use free resources available to you such as Facebook, Twitter and other social networking. Look at groups or sites that advertise your industry, some for free.