Wal-Mart Sam’s Club ConglomoCorp offers SEM Services
Seriously, are you kidding me? I just heard about this through SEObook (who heard about it from Karl Ribas) and I’m baffled and amazed and…kind of freaked out.
Wal-Mart is offering SEO services and PPC services.
Not real SEO services, I don’t think. It states on the webpage that they’ll give you some kind of profile page and submit your website to search engine directories.
I already knew they did custom or template websites, that disturbed me but I let it go because I know people that can’t count to ten that offer website services.
But PPC is like calculus with words. It’s crazy detailed and if you’re doing it right it’s as much an art as a science. Wal-Mart (Sam’s Club, whatever) taking on something so skilled freaks me out. I mean, the husband and I studied and took the test and became Google Advertising Professionals. I wonder if Wal-Mart (known for superior quality *laugh*) has put each of its workers through this process. I tried to call the Toll-Free number to find out, but it wanted me to leave a message…so for now I have a voicemail in to my friend who is a medium-level muckety-muck in the Wal-Mart machine. I will update this post as soon as I have more information from him.
It just feels wrong, somehow, that Wal-Mart (Sam’s Club, whatever) is offering this service – I mean, is there nothing they don’t have a hand in? What happened to being the best by being a specialist? Who is backing this? Who in the marketing department went “Hey! I have a GREAT idea!”
Google or Yahoo! working with Wal-Mart for PPC services just feels like Darth Vader frenching Luke Skywalker. Wrong on so many levels.
And who the hell is USING Wal-Mart’s services for PPC? That’s what I *really* want to know.
UPDATED TO ADD
I was thinking about this a little more. Wal-Mart can use its huge marketing budget to bring the idea of SEM to the masses, and then the people who buy based on price will buy SEM through Wal-Mart…but…the people who buy based on value will see that if Wally World is offering this then everyone really is doing it and it will make it more acceptable and streamlined as a serious way for a business to market itself.
This could mean more demand for SEM jobs and really skyrocket the acceptance (and as a logical outcropping of acceptance, more demand). With higher demand, you’re looking at higher paychecks for the high-value creation firms.
This bodes very well for SEM as a whole, methinks. I won’t go so far as to say “thank you” to Wal-Mart, but I will probably not bash the offering, for it will make my husband that much more successful.
It still freaks me out, even if it makes the family more money.
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