For marketers, the promise of the web is data, and whoever owns the most (and best) data wins.
Facebook and Twitter have been moving quickly to offer advertisers tools and targeting options that leverage first-party data, and Google is now aggressively following suit with its Customer Match abilities. These have been written about quite extensively here on Search Engine Land andelsewhere. The purpose of this piece is to explore what it means for SEO.
For consumers, the promise of organic search, with Google as the preeminent example, is to offer quality, unbiased, highly relevant search results for a given query. Pretty basic on the face of it, right? But behind the scenes are myriad algorithms and even manual editorial choices that curate, organize and assemble the organic results we enjoy every second of the day.
This leads to an essential quandary for SEO (and for search engines like Google). Data-driven marketers are driving incessantly towards personalized digital experiences, achieved by truly understanding what an audience wants. Data and technology enable ever more targeting options and reporting capabilities, which result in improved return on investment.
In this ecosystem, organic search is beginning to look a bit limited, even dated. Will marketing addressability leave SEO behind?
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