With brands relying heavily on SEO and content marketing tools (and a host of other related marketing technologies) to push their products forward, the question today is whether these tools can stand the test of time–will they be around 5 years from now?  Many functions will probably remain the same, such as keyword and topic rank tracking, competitor rank tracking etc. What will likely change is the name – instead of SEO platforms, content marketing platforms and social media dashboards — we’ll be moving toward strategic (or focused) marketing tools.

Integrated Marketing Tools

While there are separate, stand-alone tools from niche companies, there are also integrated marketing tools from large brands like Adobe that work across many areas of your business, such as Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketing Cloud, and Adobe Muse. These tools provide an integrated solution for many marketing requirements of brands and businesses; making marketing management easier. This evolution or innovation prompted by Adobe in its integrated tools is a proof that the SEO and content marketing industry is constantly evolving.
While brands realize the power of SEO for their marketing efforts, it’s often still an afterthought as a number of marketing professionals do not have an idea as to how to make SEO work for their brand or how to go about implementing and managing it. With a growing knowledge of marketing insights, including search, and the concept of relevant content, marketers may be gaining better perspective into the importance of SEO.
Unfortunately, for many SMEs and SMBs, platforms from large vendors such as Adobe are too expensive and may be too complex for their team size. Instead, they may rely on free tools such as Google Analytics and a cobbling together of other one-off solutions. This gap between expensive, encumbering tools and free single solutions is where market growth is really happening. Companies like GinzaMetrics, Searchmetrics, SeoClarity and more are growing and gaining traction from businesses who want strategy without the fluff.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

Market insights brought about by Analytics and other related SEO tools also spawned invitations for acquisitions and partnerships. Take for instance the case of  Klout and Lithium.  This acquisition has the potential to yield great results for both companies, Klout with a new purpose and Lithium with the potential for tons of data into a segment not yet mature – that of the audience influencer.
The social media analytics and traditional marketing automation markets have seen a lot of symbiosis over the past few years, with multiple social companies being acquired for their data and technology. The natural popularity and “quick wins” of social are attractive to large organizations – as companies of all sizes scramble to join the consumer conversation.

Moving Beyond Bare Bones Search and Content

SEO hasn’t seen this kind of rush – which I think is a mistake. The data and insights gained by search platforms is a goldmine for content marketing and marketing automation platforms – a way to power even stronger recommendations and analytics for users. While larger companies may be focused on the sexiness of Twitter and Pinterest, at GinzaMetrics we’re keeping our eye on the prize. The prize of helping users develop real intelligence about what drives traffic to their content, how to improve it, and how to beat the competition and take market share.
This means we’ve built our platform to conduct daily crawls, incorporate social media signals, integrate marketing campaign workflows, and more. With a growing user base and more search and content companies popping up weekly – there’s an opportunity to serve a market that is hungry for insights and can’t pay a fortune to get them.
We’re excited to see what happens as marketers move beyond bare bones SEO, social and content into real intelligence that make marketing strategic.