It can be frustrating sometimes to talk to companies that are considering hiring a search engine marketer. That said, it can also be frustrating talking to other search engine marketers about the way I like to do business. From the looks of things, I'm not the only one who feels this way.

There are a lot of companies out there that work by charging large amounts of money in exchange for promises of high rankings and enormous amounts of traffic. Robert and I put a lot of time an effort into helping Search Engine Guide readers understand that search marketing is about far more than your rankings. It's even about more than your traffic. It's about understanding how people search, why people buy, and how you can match those buyers up with your site.

We've also decided that we're on a mission from God to help small businesses learn enough about search engine marketing to either start taking it on themselves, or to be able to make educated decisions about who to hire to do it for them. Search engine marketing is still an emerging field. It's not like direct mail or yellow page ads. The majority of small businesses out there still don't even know that they NEED search engine marketing, let along knowing how to tackle it.

That's part of why I so rarely take on clients these days. I've found that it's far more interesting to take on consulting projects with the goal of educating a company enough in the ways of the force...ahem...I mean search engine marketing...that they can go it alone. Ultimately, I see that as a benefit to the industry.

Jill Whalen hits this point pretty well today in her latest set of SEO Ramblings.