Guys, I used to work for a very big firm that has global presence doing SEO/PPC. Let me tell you, they know jack shit. The only person that knew anything was my former director, all the underlings, from managers to employees know very little about what to do to improve rankings.
I worked in a team dedicated to one of the largest computer brand in the industry. When you search the keyword, 'computer' they are there already because of their brand. Here's what my team did for their client. Are you ready? On page SEO recommendations and reporting. That is it! I was actually the one doing all the on page SEO recommendations on an excel spreadsheet and then sending it to over the client. As a team, we have weekly meetings talking about what is going on with our client's rankings. They spend the majority of the time inputting data into an excel spreadsheet and present it to their client. Their proprietary tool that tracks rankings doesn't even work right. So they had interns manually look at where each url was ranking for particular keywords.
I got to know the whole team, and none of them were aware of any internet marketing forums. When I asked them about link building, all they knew was directory submissions. I was in shock! When I got hired I was all excited to learn how the real pros do it for fortune 100 companies and what do you know, they are full of shit. And their client is the biggest sucker I've ever seen. Paying about 400k a year for 0 linkbuilding work. Doesn't that make you wanna vomit?