We visit many SEO and web marketing forums on a daily basis and the occasional debate about the SEO industry and ethics. After participating in a number of these debates, it became clear that the main problem is that no two SEO companies are alike and no single methodology. You can easily hire the best local seo company online.
It is very difficult to make a statement about the industry as a whole because it is questionable what "SEO" actually is. Confused by the fact that most SEO companies keep their campaign methods and strategies secret and we have a situation where every company is completely different and produces very different results.
Fact 1: There is no one-size-fits-all SEO methodology. SEO is defined by Wikipedia as the process of increasing traffic from the SERP to a site. Of course, the real question of how they do this is a debate.
Fact 2: The effectiveness of an SEO campaign depends on the website structure, website content, keywords, the methodology used and the popularity of the website.
A website cannot simply be classified as a random keyword. SEO isn't voodoo either. It's logic, problem solving, and web marketing put together. If your site doesn't provide a value to users, it's likely that it won't rank.
Fact 3: Some "SEO" optimize search engines, others manipulate search engines. Of course, everything is marketed as SEO. Unethical optimizations yield results by all means and always in the short term (usually ending in the blocked domain name). Ethical optimization opens the website to search engines and offers long-term benefits.
Fact 4: Most of the SEO companies are paid to find out if your site is ranking or not. Unfortunately, this is what is happening in the industry. Most of the SEO companies implement A, B and C and move on to the next client. Hopefully the site will rank. If not, they will have more customers.