Just last might I was reflecting to a friend that we had been unexpectedly busy recently with lots of enquiries, proposals and statements of work going out the door, many of them related to search marketing and SEO in particular. Then this morning I read Rand Fishkin’s post over at SEOmoz:

In the last 6 weeks, SEOmoz has received a higher than normal volume of requests for consulting. Alongside that, we’ve been getting calls from venture capital firms out of the blue - seven to date – asking either about investments they’re considering in the SEO sphere (and requesting insight) or literally asking whether SEOmoz would like to take more capital to grow (post about that coming soon). And it’s not just us. The jobs and contracts section of the Marketplace has been humming in November, and anecdotal conversations with other SEO firms tell me there’s quite a bit of business to be had for both in-house and external SEOs.

Read the full post: Why Companies are Investing in SEO During the Economic Downturn

One thing that really rings true for me is his point about interest in SEO being driven by paid search marketing. With the ROI on PPC being so immediate and accountable it is only natural for Marketing Managers to start asking about the other 70% of search queries which don’t result in a click on a paid listing. How good would it be for your business if you could rank top 10 for those?