Matt McGee at Search Engine Land reported that U.S. newspapers are now selling SEO services. Honestly, I am not surprised for a few reasons:
(1) They are in the content business and most content businesses should know how valuable SEO is. (2) Newspapers sell ads, and many of them have sold text ads or been asked to. So they know something about SEO. (3) I would hope newspapers have in-house SEO teams they can put on client projects.
I deal every now and then with newspapers for my clients and I often have my clients forward me SEO details (both good and bad) from their newspaper contacts. So again, this does not surprise me.
Should newspapers sell SEO services? A Sphinn thread's comments seem very against it. Jill Whalen said in a joking maner, "Since they can't make any money in the publishing biz, I guess they figured they'd jump onto the SEO bandwagon. After all, anyone can do SEO, right?"
But honestly, if they know SEO, why not sell it? What do you think?
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
