What about these companies you see that advertise that they guarantee to get you on first page on google? Has anyone used these?
The only people who can "Guarantee" this is Google themselves,.. anyone else is subject to Googles whims!
In reality though, its usually quite easy to get ranked for a specific keyword or phrase - but its choosing the phrases that give you the biggest exposure in Google where the real trick lies. For example - in many areas the phrase "Window Cleaner" is searched up to ten times more often that "Window Cleaning",.. so being on page 1 foe "Suffolk Window Cleaning" might actually be worse that being on page 4 for "Suffolk Window Cleaner".
You have to research which keywords relevant to your business are searched most in your area (The Google keyword planner lets you do this very accurately) and then design your site from the ground up to target those keywords.