As an industry SEO has taken off a bit like advertising Brands in the early 90s. Brand awareness, brand sponsoring - Apparently there was no need to think quality of customers, it was just get yourself out there! Get yourself on the highest billboard and they will come!!! All sorts of entrepenaurs and businesses tried to get on board the brand selling wagon. But at the end of the day a print shop does printing well. Branding shop does branding well. It's the same today with the Internet industry, developers do development well and sri consultants do seo well.

What many developers are trying to sell as SEO is what I call Best Practices. It's actually not a product but a standard of delivery. The same way you'd expect your plumber to follow the codes of the plumbing association you'd expect your web developer to also follow the industry code. Well, you'll be amazed how many don't. For the most part, it's not because that can't it's because they run out of time.

So things like meta data, page structure etc - all the basics area standard you should demand not pay extra for.