How to hire services and not getting penilized?

Hello,
I am curious how to go about SEO / hiring services for a local company but am worried that who I hire will get my site red flagged?

How to avoid getting penilized?

0.
Learn a little about SEO so you are not easily fooled by false promises.

If they guarantee #1 spot in a month, you'd better stay away.

1.
You must understand the service you are buying first.

Some offer all-in-one packages, some just links or on-page audits.

2.
Secondly, ready reviews on their thread or where you're buying from. Some soft of feedback from previous customers.

3.
Google them.

4.
Test them on a secondary website.

You don't have to go for your company website directly. You can use them on a different one. Or register a brand new one if you don't have it. (beware of sandbox)

After they prove themselves make them work on the primary one and enjoy double rankings

5.
Understand that maps and organic is completely different game.

I would stick to getting "local citations" from people who advertise themselves as Local SEO and Google My Business experts and paying for writers to create high quality content for your website.

More about local citations: https://moz.com/learn/seo/local-citations

Ask them if they plan on creating backlinks for your website, and ask them to show you examples of where they will place the backlinks. If the link doesn't look high quality and natural, I would probably avoid it. If they tell you that they will write a guest post on a website related to your industry, that is probably much safer.

If you are willing to pay more money, you can shop locally and visit a business with an actual location that you can go in to. This adds a level of accountability that you are going to have a hard time finding online.