"anyone can do anything if they have the time to learn and the desire to do it." Sorry, but that argument doesn't work for SEO in my opinion. It's no big

"anyone can do anything if they have the time to learn and the desire to do it." Sorry, but that argument doesn't work for SEO in my opinion. It's no big investment of time to learn about SEO, it would take most people a couple of days tops. I've just outlined a fair chunk of it above, as you pointed out. If I can summarise what SEO people do in a paragraph, how does that justify their cost? It's not like they charge $20 a month. Hell, all the information required (these days) is provided freely by Google itself. You can literally download an app which teaches you how to market your business on the web. You say you need the desire to learn SEO. Well, I think any CEO would find a desire to flip through Google Primer and some web pages about mobile-friendliness and content-quality if I told them it would save them thousands of dollars a month. "either you've had a bad experience or you're just misinformed." While I appreciate your condescending tone, I must sadly reveal that I am not "misinformed" about SEO experts and agencies — I speak from experience after having worked alongside some of these magic consultants at a couple of companies where I was a front-end developer. I have sat in on meetings with "SEO experts" and "PPC specialists" with the exact purpose of calling them out on their bullshit, which I did on several occasions, because they were charging the company thousands/tens of thousands to do something that an intern could do, after perhaps a day or two's worth of training, and for less money. And an intern is a much better investment in the long term. Sure, there are some honest SEO guys out there, but my point is that the honest SEO guys are not worth paying to do what your business should have or should be doing already — a good website and producing marketing ammunition, respectively. SEO is something that should be an automated service by now.