Sorry to rock the boat, but I disagree.

In short, the people who Market to Search Engines are the ones who are naive in my opinion.

Basic SEO practice should simply be common standard coding practice, working closely with the Marketing dept., to develop appropriate & relevant content. Once central important concepts/key points are decided upon for the page, marketing has their calls-to-action, or perhaps funnel path predictions, then smart white hat SEO techniques should be utilized.

Off-page/site tactics may easily be classified as SEO/SEM/PPC/Whatever, but it really boils down to general Marketing smarts utilizing the new media, techniques, technologies, knowledge, etc.

Lumping all this together under "SEM" creates much more trouble than the other way around, from my experience.

Private Reply to Craig Kiessling (new win)