You pay a guy to build your deck. He does a shitty job. That's the web developer you shouldn't have hired in the first place. You then pay someone else to come and paint it. That's the SEO guy you're now paying to band-aid your busted crap and make you feel like it's all okay.
If you're bringing in SEO as a band-aid until you can hire an honest to god full time developer/designer or build up a real web department, or whatever, that's probably okay as long as you're admitting that.
If you're bringing in an SEO guy to do nothing but turd-polish, and you're calling it "optimization," something's wrong, and from experience and conversations I've had about SEO with friends, unwilling-to-admit-that-we're-polishing-a-turd seems to be an extremely popular reason to bring in SEO guys.
If you're bringing in SEO as a band-aid until you can hire an honest to god full time developer/designer or build up a real web department, or whatever, that's probably okay as long as you're admitting that.
If you're bringing in an SEO guy to do nothing but turd-polish, and you're calling it "optimization," something's wrong, and from experience and conversations I've had about SEO with friends, unwilling-to-admit-that-we're-polishing-a-turd seems to be an extremely popular reason to bring in SEO guys.