SEO, like many things in life, can be really good or really bad, depending on who's doing it. Unfortunately, there are too many people claiming to be SEO professionals who don't seem to know much beyond the basics, and in many cases are nothing more than middle-men who just outsource the actual fulfillment to places like Fiverr, or "SEO teams" in India (where, in my experience, SEO skills tend to be at least 3-5 years behind the curve).