The beauty of search engine marketing as an advertising venue is that so many small businesses were quick to the draw and have spent considerable time pulling customers away from the corporate giants that they could not otherwise compete with. Times are changing however, and Google and Yahoo! are helping lead the those giants into the battlefield.

The New York Post has an article today about how both Google and Yahoo! have begun holding training seminars with some of the larger traditional advertising firms like Carat and Foote Cone & Belding in order to help them better understand search engine marketing. The search giants are working to build relationships with these firms so that the firms will encourage their clients to dive into paid search advertising. Google even offers around-the-clock support and quarterly training updates for AdWords campaigns.

While this move may strike a large blow toward the small businesses ability to compete cost-effectively with the larger companies in the paid search arena, the good news is that these sessions seem to be focusing entirely on paid search solutions. Not surprising since Google doesn't exactly make money when a company gains strong organic listings.

That means that small businesses that continue (or begin) to embrace organic search engine marketing may be able to once again beat their larger competitors to the field.