Had another call from a telesales guy who reckoned he could get my site on first page of google for one of my keywords.
He stated that my site was on page three of google for the particular keyword and he could get it onto the first page for £800 in a maximum of 8 weeks. He mentioned he would create another new website and then link that also and this would push my original website up on google somehow. Has anyone heard of this practice?
It’s a scam. It’s always a scam. Anyone who is guaranteeing to get you to the top of Google is a fraud. If they do manage it in the short-term, it will be through dodgy techniques that will really hurt you in the long-term.
When somebody guarantees a SEO service, know its a fraud.
“No one can guarantee a number 1 ranking on Google.” Direct quote from Matt Cutts, the public face of Google.
Ref:
YouTube - How can I explain to clients that rankings can’t be guaranteed?
If you want to see this fraud run for the hills, then tell him you want to rank number 1 on Google for the search term “Weight Loss” and will pay him £1,600 (double what he is asking) after, and only after, he gets your website to that position.
I always like to ask them which keyword they will get me ranked on the first page for, and they usually respond with some keyword that gets like 1 or 2 searches a month according to keyword search tools.
Anybody can get ranked for keywords that get no traffic since there is no competition. Tell them you want to rank on the first page for a keyphrase like ‘automobiles’ or ‘doctors’, etc. and see how quickly they move on. 
Correct. But some people who purport to sell SEO Services behave in a less than totally honest way.
yeah it’s true , Use ethical way to increase your page rank otherwise it will be a big problem in long run.
I guess the discussion is not about ethic or similar.
But these kind of offers surely won´t bring you any results but a loss of 800$.
As per my experienced, if some one is giving guarantee for first position then the person is going to cheat you because in SEO it’s very difficult to get 100% results within given time frame
According to the OP the sales guy didn’t guarantee anything and said ‘page one’ not position one.
If the OP’s ROI is good enough then £800 might be a good deal but I wouldn’t pay anything until I had the ranking and I’d make sure it wasn’t dependent on links that could be yanked at any point by the SEO company. I’d also make sure that there were no hidden costs.
Received an email explaining how they would go about doing the SEO, along with links to websites they have worked on etc.
Does anyone want to take a look at the email they sent me? See what you think?
Yes, why not - it might give us a good laugh 
No one can assurance top ranking in search engines. Its totally depend on the search engine algorithm and some other external factor like your competitor actions. But he may able to help your keywords to get top ranking. But he cannot assure.
Creating another site and link to your main site will give only one backlink. So I don’t think it can increase your ranking.
Quoted amount is ok if they work as they promise but no one can guaranty #1 ranking but first page positions claims are normal in seo industry …