In an attempt to help a few people avoid paying for unnecessary search engine optimisation, I'd like to share what I have done to achieve very good search engine rankings, for this site as well as for clients' sites.

First, just let me say that not all SEO consultants out there are scam artists -- there are many reputable firms in the business. However, anyone promising "guaranteed top results", "submission to 500 000 search engines and directories", "instant results", or "permanent top positions" is most likely a scammer. There is no way anyone can guarantee that your site is the number one result unless they actually control the search engine results, or if the top ranking is for a word or phrase that only exists on your site, of course.

What strikes me as I think through the steps I have taken to get good search engine rankings is how much SEO has in common with accessibility, usability, and high quality markup -- the principles of web standards. That actually makes it even better: by making your site more accessible and usable for humans, and by using valid, semantic markup, you also make it more attractive to search engine robots.