The Future Of SEO

For many years unpaid search results have been a great driver for websites and online shops, a massive service industry around it has evolved. Updated algorithms and decreasing space for organic search results have led to a discussion about the relevance of SEO today.

A recent interview on the German tech news platform "Gründerszene" dealt with that topic as well. "Customer Relationship Marketing is the new SEO", Florian Heinemann, a successful entrepreneur from Berlin says there without going into the details of this statement. Furthermore, he points at the fact that Google's rank algorithms and link analysis are not completely transparent and fully in the control of the company. Therefore he argues, the risk-return relation of SEO investments are getting worse for companies in the long run.

Another aspect that might have an impact on the future relevance of SEO is the rise of content marketing. The interview touches the idea that content marketing is being seen as the cure-all in online marketing as valuable content can be leveraged in social media, SEO and other channels.

I think, SEO will remain highly relevant. What changes is the way brand are telling their stories and building their identity. More and more, valuable brand content has to enrich the life of the audience in order to build loyalty. Marketeers have to understand how to leverage the content they create for their content marketing and make it work in the context of SEO. From a business perspective Heinemann certainly wanted to emphasize that SEO just is not enough anymore to stay competitive. In todays online marketing landscape (especially in e-commerce), cost cutting measures become increasingly relevant and new marketing channels have risen. While SEO has to be a sustainable and efficiently managed tool, CRM can help to cut marketing expenditures and outperform the competition. Therefore, only the relative relevance of SEO' in the marketing mix decreases.