In those comments however, people were more looking at the SEO companies being bought out by big media agencies, which in my experience is never good. An agency that buys an SEO company to provide what it doesn’t understand is never going to manage that asset correctly.

I think partnerships are the far more successful model, and as you so rightly identify, need to incorporate a large amount of support and training to the agency on what SEO is, what it can do, and how it can work effectively as an integral part of the marketing mix.