Many people have been asking me lately just what an SEO platform or SEO Software System has in terms of features versus SEO tools? And the ultimate question “why do I need this in my marketing department?”
Let’s start with SEO tools and as the word suggests, a tool is something in your marketing toolbox and you typically need a few of them in order to get a job completed. Also, you need to be a talented enough individual to figure out where to find these tools and bridge the data together in order to make sense of everything. In terms of SEO, free tools, freemium tools, and software licenses do exist, but you still need to apply some level of professional services to create reports and take action.
An SEO Platform or SEO Software System offers an Internet marketing agency or marketing manager the ability to have all SEO related data points inside one piece of software. This allows for a critical analysis and the ability to trend data points over time. It allows users to co-relate data and look at their web sites’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
SEO Platform vs. SEO Software System? The reason that we are seeing these terms interchangeably is because of cloud computing and APIs. A “system” suggests that the data residing within the database has been collected by that system alone. Where as a “platform” suggests that the software is collecting data from various other applications or data points and/or is sharing data with our applications.
At a closer look, one could argue that SEO Software System is the right choice for two reasons. Firstly, a system suggests that there is user management, workflow, task management layers surrounding SEO data and reporting. So that tasks, actions and search engine events can be reviewed along search engine position and analytics trending data to see if an action made a positive impact.
At gShift Labs, we use the terms interchangeably and we know we have the “feature list” to qualify as an SEO platform or SEO Software System. We are also pushing for a new category called Web Presence Optimization (WPO) – instead of Search Engine Optimization. We believe that SEO is web-site centric and we urge organizations to think beyond the web site and look at all aspects of their “presence” and to get those sites or accounts ranking in the search engines. For example, your blog site, Facebook page, LinkedIn company page, Twitter account, and YouTube channel and videos. WPO also accounts for the cross-linking or back-linking of content generated in these sites that point back to your business web site, thus causing all of the content get a “lift” in the search engines. Web Presence Optimization refers also to the fusion of search engine optimization, social media optimization and search analytics.
The SEO platform industry is gaining momentum and from what we see at gShift, the story is just starting. gShift is made for the Internet Marketing agency or business user with some internal capability that feels that SEO is just another marketing business process and with the help of an SEO Software System they can execute tasks over a period of time and achieve and keep top rankings for their keyword phrases. View a gShift webinar or email me for a one on one talk on how we can help your Internet Marketing agency as a technology partner. I understand as I have successfully run an Internet Marketing company/agency in the past and a Web Content Management Software company (Hot Banana Software) that was marketed as “search engine friendly” back in 2005.
gShift is an SEO Software System that if not on your radar to start using to process your search strategy – then I urge you to consider it .
Chris Adams
Co-founder gShift Labs
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