We invented the term "Managed Search Engine Marketing" back when we started in 2001.   We did this to distance ourselves from shoddy approaches and the short-term, quick fix mentality that dominated the early SEO market in the UK. 

Personally, I never wanted to "own" this term as it was important for it to become an established concept in the marketplace.  Our goal was always to establish a new category of SEO service and then do what we can to dominate this category.  Naturally, I believe that we achieve this today - especially in terms of our work ethic, approach to managing campaign, proactivity (Action Habit), the completeness of our offering, and of course our technology.  Based on our client retention rates and performance, our clients would also seem to agree.

The interesting thing is how this term has been adopted by so many and now misused or perhaps even abused.

There are two reasons for this I think - 1) keyword blindness and 2) a severe misunderstanding of the concept itself.

1. Keyword Blindness. 

There is a cycle that exists on the web that is driven by search engines and the SEOs desperate to get rankings - for rankings sake alone. 

When we started, a search for "Managed Search Engine Marketing" would bring up our site alone - after all, we completely made up this term.  For us, it is what I call an "ego key phrase" - a keyword or phrase that does not deliver any meaningful traffic, but is important for branding or "ownership".  No one really searches for this term - not even today.

But we started to search for it - just to make sure that we were still #1 for our made-up phrase.  But by doing so, we would start to get logged in the various search databases (meta, ISP logs, etc).  This meant that this phrase would then appear somewhere on a list of keywords that are searched by marketing companies (e.g. Wordtracker).  It may only have been searched less than a handful of times each month.. but it was on the list.

A few people looked at these lists of phrases and liked our new term and then stuffed it into a web page on their site. Then they started to check to see if they were ranking for it.  Now more "searches" were being performed.  Other companies then picked up on this keyword and did the same.. and then they started to check rankings for it.. and before you know it, one site for "Managed Search Engine Marketing" turned into 17,400 pages (at last check).

And so - my first point is that some companies are using the term only because they wanted to get rankings for it.  It isn't an approach - they haven't adopted the principle concept behind the "Managed" part of this phrase.  And as very few "real" people are searching for this expression, I'm guessing that at least 17,000 or so of the pages out there have been optimised around this term for no apparent gain (certainly not in terms of traffic).

2. Misunderstanding the Concept. 

As part of the cycle above, some companies have visited our site, liked the phrase and some of the concepts behind it - but have taken some of the messages without delivering the true benefit to the client.

I've looked at a number of our peers in the industry recently who are using the Managed Search Engine Marketing phrase as a way of describing their SEO service and want to point out some serious flaws:

• Everyone these days accepts that organic search is an on-going and long-term process.  But a lot of the companies I looked at seem to latch on to the "long-term" element purely as a way of gaining longer contracts from their clients.  They are doing the same work that they were doing previously - in the same way, but now offer something called "maintenance".   In 7 of the 11 sites that I reviewed, this term "maintenance" was used frequently and in the majority it involved sending a monthly report to the client and a set number of hours per month that a member of staff was made available to answer questions / resolve issues.  This is not a "managed" approach!
• We talk a lot about our technology (Apollo) at Vertical Leap.  It helps us run our business and provides intelligence and decision support for our SEO team.  We provide our clients with a "portal" into Apollo so that they can see what is happening on their campaigns 24x7.  The portal is there should they choose to use it - but Apollo was written first and foremost for our internal team so that they can run client campaigns more effectively.  We make all the decisions on behalf of our clients and they certainly don't need to interpret reports for us.  Many of the sites I reviewed talked about their "reporting tool".  But the emphasis is on providing information for the clients so that they can make decisions.   Last time I checked, about 30% of our clients use our portal.  I see this as a good thing - it means that we are managing their campaign and keeping them so informed that they don't feel the need to check on what we are doing.  And this is the point - "managed search engine marketing" should mean that the SEO company is managing the campaign and not the client with the help of the SEO.  Its not about providing better tools to the client, its about taking the responsibility and accountability for the campaign from them - to free them to run their business.  Reporting is important - especially in terms of providing transparency.  But a lot of SEO companies provide reporting tools as a way of abdicating responsibility back to the client.

A managed approach to search engine marketing is not simply about long-term commitments, fixed price budgets, reporting tools etc; these are just a few features - but they are certainly not the key benefits.  In order to claim to be in the Managed Search Engine Marketing space, the SEO company you speak with needs to shift the onus of management responsibility away from you and be completely accountable for the search marketing process and this is the original concept.