Be in the best established ethical SEO company with Kruse Internet Services!

If they've lasted a good long while in business I'd agree that they very well may be good in some regards but that doesn't mean SEO is actually what they're good at! They'd need good business sense but that isn't quite the same thing as providing a service. They're different skill-sets. I could point you at an individual famed for their association with optimisation and regarded by many as a leading exponent. I wouldn't call them that, and nor could I ever have done since I became aware of them many years ago. Neither could I refer you to a site that they themselves have had any hand in actually optimising. Yet they make a living, not actually from doing SEO work, apparently, but by associating themself with the industry to the point where many people would be indignant if I named them in this context.
I don't just mean their lawyers, either.
The lesson to be learned here is that not everyone who promotes themselves as being an SEO actually is one. Are you hiring an SEO firm that's going to be good at promoting you, or themselves?

No again, and I say this even though I myself am only occasionally in the top ten for that particular search term. It isn't the most sought-after term in SEO and there's not too much competition for it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I'm sure if I paid it more attention then eventually, say within a few months, I'd go top ten without too much effort (as, indeed, I am at the time of re-writing, 22/05/07).

When I get a quiet day with not too much to do then I may well make the effort. But getting it on its own wouldn't really reveal too much either way about my SEO abilities. Getting it in concert together with a whole host of other related search terms, though, so that it swelled my SEO portfolio as it were, that's a different thing. If an can demonstrate that it succeeds in gaining a whole host of minor search terms, then it illustrates that a) they've discovered them in the first place, which usually indicates their research is good, and b) they've had the SEO ability to go out and get them.

We all want our circumstances to change overnight, it's human nature, but shooting at the moon in the shape of trying for hugely competitive keywords to try and achieve that overnight improvement is almost always a colossal waste of resources. Let's not overlook the benefits of having an company onboard who can demonstrate slow and steady growth over a period of time, growth that's supportable and sustainable, and can in turn itself be built upon. A firm providing that is an SEO company you should be seeking to work in tandem with.