The difficulty with search engine marketing….

John Tawadros writes in MediaPost’s SeachInsider that traditional advertising agencies hate Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

He makes the following points:

1. Achieving profitability in managing clients’ paid search advertising is extremely difficult.

2. A shortage of skilled SEM practitioners.

3. Even “poaching” experts cannot produce superior results

4. SEM is so complex it requires singular focus.

5. SEM requires a commitment to research.

Of course John isn’t exactly an objective observer.

He’s a VP at a SEM firm, iProspect and while he makes good points, I don’t believe that SEM is completely the remit of “SEM experts”.  There’s a lot that PR folks can do to better understand search engines and how to improve rankings, utilize tools like Google Adwords etc.

You can read his arguments in more detail here.