I'd like to challenge what I belive to be a common misconception. That is - that SEO is advertising and not marketing. Let me explain: You see a beautiful woman. You go over to her and say “I’m brilliant in bed. Do you fancy spending the night with me?†That’s advertising. You see another beautiful woman, and send your friend over to her. He says “My friend is brilliant in bed. Do you fancy spending the night with him?†That’s marketing. Then a third woman approaches you. She says “I hear you’re brilliant in bed. Do you fancy spending the night with me?â€. That’s PR. SEO is all about putting the website infront of the consumer, and therefore is advertising? Discuss.
Heh.. "DISCUSS. NOW!". OK.. "I’m brilliant in bed. Do you fancy spending the night with me?" - I'd call that advertising if you really are brilliant in bed, and marketing if you're not. Same for the second example. Advertising is making your target audience aware of your services/product, marketing is pitching and persuading the audience to buy. Marketing involves changing the angle of the pitch to suit the market, whereas advertising is more about raising general awareness. PR stands for "public relations" correct? In which case, the third example isn't PR because PR is creating a good relationship with customers. The third example is the word of mouth effect, since the woman has heard about you from someone else. Respond.
The third definitely isn't PR. I don't really consider the first to be advertising either. I wouldn't consider anything via word of mouth from one person to another to be advertising, b/c you're not going to reach a large enough audience to really classify it as such. I'd call all three of these things marketing - "guerrilla marketing" to be more exact.