As discussed in a recent Skeptics with a K episode, in the obsession with becoming first in a Google search for important key words, it is easy to be duped by "experts" who claim they can improve your page ranking with so-called "Search Engine Optimization" or SEO. (Which, by the way, if it worked, would have had an SEO firm as the first non-paid result when I googled for it, but instead came up first with Wikipedia.) However, SEO is based on the premise that the web designers know something about how Google prepares its results.
In fact, Google is highly secretive about the black box of its search algorithms. As such, after a web-master gets hold of your website, even if your page ranking increases, you have no way to test whether the increase was due to the web-master or a change to Google's algorithm, or magic fairy dust. Without testable results, there is no way to determine if your money was well spent.
That's not to say that there are not best practices for designing a web page which Google can read and properly rank. Google itself publishes a webmaster guide on SEO.Chief among those best practices is generating a LOT of original and useful content -- at least part of the focus of Google's results.
One point the Mercyside Skeptics missed is that even if the webmaster of choice had an inside scoop on page ranking, you'd have to pay him extra not to redesign your competitor's site, thus negating any advantage you had. Personally, I think its best to focus on content, and less on page ranking.
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