I get to talk to a lot of smart people about how to improve their site’s search marketing performance. And I read a lot of industry news and opinions on SEO, from both the SEO agency side and from the client side. Plus, there is such excellent research on trends and patterns, from MarketingSherpa, eMarketer and the like. It’s great to be in a hot industry.

One of the trends that gets contentious is one where we see traditional advertising agencies somehow acquiring search marketing “expertise” overnight. I’ve always contended that search engine MARKETING is what SEO is all about–and that PPC is just search engine ADVERTISING. Agencies should be able to do a good job at PPC, because that’s a world they understand (although writing classified ads is not the creative activity that justifies their high fees). On developing a robust strategic information architecture, writing page content that cascades into the site, drawing the search engine spiders along and establishing authority on choice keyword phrases? Not exactly the forte of a hot creative shop.

On the other hand, (more…)