I think this is a common view, and I share it: I really don't like SEO. The thing is, SEO does provide real value, but it provides value because the system is broken: your website should reach the top of search results based on merit, not based on some arcane black magic.
I think it's somewhat akin to lobbyists: I don't blame them for making money off and taking advantage off the political system, and they certainly provide something of value to their customers, but I dislike the fact that they can exist at all. But that's not the lobbyist's fault, it's the system. In this respect, I applaud Google for keeping people on their toes and making SEO less relevant. That's their job after all.
I understand where you're coming from, but that's crap. Just because there is always someone willing to do ethically questionable things that fall within the letter of the law, doesn't mean that those types of people shouldn't be treated with disdain by the rest of us.
I disagree. Let me quote Cutts: "I’ve said it before, but SEO is in many ways about change. The best SEOs recognize, adapt, and even flourish when changes happen."
There's a saying that goes something like "A computer will only do what you tell it to do". That said, merit is important, but you have to show Google merit with code. That's by on page content and structure and appropriate tags, etc or by off-page, with links. That's it. There's no other way. There's no black magic. Cutts speaks to SEOs but he calls he channel GoogleWebmasterHelp . That's the clue to website owners, but many times the owner is not a webmaster. So they can hire an SEO that knows a bit about ranking websites, or they can hire a web programmer. Not all web programmers have ideas on what to do. They likely will want to make a new site for the customer that is not even necessarily any better than the existing, as far as Google cares.
That got a bit preachy but it's not as black and white as you make it out to be. There's a niche for SEOs that involves improving existing websites that a web programmer might not be suited for, might not want to do, or might be too expensive for.
I think it's somewhat akin to lobbyists: I don't blame them for making money off and taking advantage off the political system, and they certainly provide something of value to their customers, but I dislike the fact that they can exist at all. But that's not the lobbyist's fault, it's the system. In this respect, I applaud Google for keeping people on their toes and making SEO less relevant. That's their job after all.