BigDave - 10:46 pm on May 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

For a price, they guaranteed him that they would get us 25 first page listings for variations on our keywords

I think this is the key. Find out what they mean by "variations".

Are they talking about synonyms, mispellings, keyphrases? Do you get to decide on the "variations" or do they get to come up with them?

If your keyword is "tire", the variations that you might be happy ranking for would be things like:

tyre
michelin tires
truck tires

but would you be quite as happy if you rank well for:

bald tire
tire recall
tire me out
no tire basura