Advertising Agencies definitely have overtly aggressive methodologies to approach/pursue the new customers. Agencies present lot of commitments and genuinely deliver what they promise to their customers when it comes to traditional and time tested media marketing. But the scenario is quite unfortunate when agencies it comes to deliverable with online marketing, as they intend to forget the most popular medium - Search Engine’s Natural Results.

Advertising agencies are not very keen to take up natural (organic) search engine results seriously. Nor they seem to be inclined or demonstrate the interest to build SEO expertise under their gamut of marketing services. What could be the reason or the deterrents for advertising agencies?

Reasons for advertising agencies not offering SEO as a service to their customers whilst covering every other creative conceptualization for the websites could be inherently these:

Reason 1: SEO does not assure 15% Agency commissions.
The search engines deliver natural results on the left hand side for a related search engine query and do not in anyway promise to keep up a site in the search engine page results with any financial commitment. As a result the advertising agencies used to confirming slots and positions are trapped in a hapless situation. Coupled to this they are unable to pre-determine the cost for SEO services.

Reason 2: SEO is an organic process
An advertising agency cannot determine the time frame for SEO activities and also their inability to predict how much time it will take for results to show up on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Reason 3: No Reliable Source for SEO Consultancy. Very less SEO expertise available
It is very hard to find experienced SEO professionals with proven results. This too is a daunting challenge for agencies, to find SEO professionals having a refined blending of knowledge pertaining to SEO technology, online marketing trends and ROI metrics.

Reason 4: Search Engine doesn’t offer SEO services? :)
Tier I (One) Search Engine’s like Google, Yahoo and MSN do not offer SEO services. Search Engines do not house even a single resource that can offer SEO services, nor are they keen to develop a SEO driven business model. On assurance of anonymity, one of the search engine company India Manager agreed that they do not have any SEO professionals.

Reason 5: SEO is not event based.
It is accepted norm that SEO offers remotely miniscule chances of driving a SEO campaigns on any given event within a short duration. Nevertheless there are great possibilities to make it happen. All you need do is “Ask the SEO Expert” :)

Reason 6: SEO is an amalgamation of research, technology - Part Art and part Science.
It is very rare to find amalgamation of technology and marketing research in the advertising agencies predominant in the pursuit of creative excellence. The result being, the inability to create waves with digital marketing space, especially with SEO.

This gave opportunities to other SEO companies to directly enter the SEO business and speak to the client. But the advertising agencies that have great rapport with the clients need to align themselves to create the SEO services portfolio and outsource it to the SEO companies or SEO expert or have a strategic partnership tie-up inclusive of knowledge transfer.