There is this notion that seo can bring you to the top of google results. Nothing can be farther from the truth. You purchase your position in the results of a google search because it is not a "search engine" so much as an "advertising company" out to fleece you for all the cash it can.
So when you hear a web site owner talk about wanting to move up in the google rankings they are suffering from a misconception which is part and parcel of the google experience.
You pay them or you stay low in the search results.
The so-called "organic" search engine section of results pages are likewise not an objective ranking but based on just how good your business with google is.
I am lucky not to need google for any aspect of my business. I feel sorry for those who do and suffer from the delusion their lack of deep pockets propagates.
It appears that the entire seo illusion is part and parcel of a an advertising company appearing as though they are really a search engine company to disguise that predatory business model of which everyone is so envious.
It's in-keeping with that stupidity so prevalent in a world where critical thinking has been deemed unimportant in favor of pseudo intellectuality manifest by safe spaces, revisionist history devoid of fact, and political correctness by those who cannot function in that chaos called "reality".
These are the consequences of that generation of burger flippers we raised in the late 80s and early 90s reproducing and creating this generation of imbeciles bent on hyperconnectivity, telling all they think they know, and notions that everything on the planet revolves around them.
Then there are the redneck HVAC company owners who have unrequited lofty goals in search engine rankings and choose to blame their hosting provider for work beyond the scope of their agreement ...
So they pursue others thought able to provide this scratch for their eternal itch to the tune of artifically inflated yet continually unfulfilling results because now they are prey to their own petty preconceived notions of search engine viz a viz advertising company out to sell you want you want.
As google so aptly put it on their phone mail system back when I actually believed in them as a forthright honest company:
Please press "1" if you are paying more than $5000 a month or "2" if you are paying less than $5000 a month.