Marketing teams are constantly on the lookout for tools to improve their marketing strategy and increase audience engagement. Content marketing and SEO tools are two such tools that assist with achieving these goals. However, despite their shared focus on digital marketing, these software categories serve distinct purposes and offer unique features.
A content marketing platform helps create, manage, and distribute content across channels to engage the target audience, build brand awareness, and drive customer engagement. SEO software, on the other hand, focuses on optimizing websites and their content to improve organic search rankings, increase visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs), and drive targeted organic traffic.
This article discusses the similarities and differences between content marketing software and SEO software so you can select the right one for your marketing needs. For each software category, we’ve also included the top five products based on verified software reviews. Read more.
What is content marketing software?
Content marketing software simplifies and automates the process of creating, managing, distributing, and tracking content assets and marketing campaigns. It helps users collaborate on brand materials to share across social media platforms, email marketing campaigns, and websites to reach new audiences, engage with leads, and nurture customers while analyzing campaign performance.
The primary goal of content marketing software is to focus on creating and marketing valuable, high-quality content that resonates with the target audience, engages users, and encourages conversions, thereby enabling better brand recognition for businesses.
Content marketing software is particularly used by in-house content creators, writers, and content marketers for content ideation and content optimization suggestions to create content that resonates with their target audience and drives engagement.
Core features of content marketing software
Given below are the core features of content marketing software:
Content management: Helps create, update, and share marketing content to ensure brand consistency in all content assets that are distributed to stakeholders.
Multichannel campaigns: Enables businesses to run multiple marketing campaigns across channels, including search engines, social media platforms, and email marketing.
Find providers that can help with your business needs by using our lists of content marketing agencies by location.
What is SEO software?
Search engine optimization (SEO) software enables users to monitor and analyze data related to the performance of their websites on search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO platforms help track and optimize organic search engine results by discovering, measuring, and managing website performance, including keyword rankings, backlink tracking, link building, and site audits.
SEO software also assists with website optimization by tracking metrics that influence search engine rankings, such as the website structure, meta tags, page load speed, mobile friendliness, URL structure, and XML sitemaps. Users can conduct backlink analysis to identify the sources of incoming links, evaluate the quality of links, and uncover opportunities for building high-quality backlinks to improve search rankings.
SEO software is typically used by SEO specialists, digital marketers, and website administrators to optimize websites and their content for search engines. They also use the software to monitor website performance, conduct SEO audits, and find and resolve issues with website metadata, structure, and code.
Core features of SEO software
Given below are the core features of SEO software:
Backlink monitoring: Records the total number of backlinks, referring domains, and referring IPs going into a domain.
Keyword rank tracking: Tracks the ranking of targeted keywords in search engines and allows users to monitor keyword performance and identify opportunities for optimization.
Searching for SEO companies to hire for your business? We've got you covered. Check out our list of companies in the following areas:
What are the differences between content marketing and SEO software?
Business focus: Content marketing software typically has a broader focus, encompassing various aspects of content strategy, creation, management, and distribution. It focuses on the end-to-end process of planning and executing content marketing campaigns. However, SEO software has a narrower scope, primarily focusing on optimizing websites and content to improve organic search rankings and increase visibility on search engines. It also helps conduct website audits to identify issues such as broken links and crawl and backlink errors that can impact search engine rankings.
Integrations: Content marketing software typically integrates with tools that help schedule, create, and publish marketing assets and collaterals, including content management systems and social media platforms. The software also integrates with CRM systems to align content marketing efforts and customer relationship management. In contrast, SEO software typically integrates with systems that help monitor, organize, and analyze data relating to website performance on search engines. These include keyword research, website analytics, data visualization, and marketing reporting tools.
Pricing: The pricing range for content marketing software is typically between $12.66 to $50 per user, per month. On the other hand, the pricing range for SEO software generally falls between $2.5 to $170 per user, per month. The variation in pricing depends on factors such as the vendor, number of users, business size, specific modules included, and level of customization required.
What are the similarities between content marketing and SEO software?
Content marketing software helps create and promote content for businesses, while SEO software specializes in website and content optimization, ensuring content such as blog posts rank well on search engines. Despite these distinctions, both software types have certain similar functionalities, including:
Campaign management: Both content marketing and SEO software solutions manage marketing campaigns. Businesses can set campaign goals, define target audience segments, and establish key performance indicators (KPIs), such as website traffic and conversion rate, to measure success. Campaign planning also involves strategizing content topics, target keywords, distribution channels, and SEO optimization tactics.
Content management: Both content marketing and SEO software tools focus on content management, including writing, editing, and optimizing content pieces such as blog posts, articles, videos, and social media updates with relevant keywords. They aim to attract relevant and targeted visitors by creating high-quality content and optimizing it for search engines.
Engage the target audience: Both software types aim to engage the target audience. Content marketing software focuses on creating engaging and relevant content to attract and retain users, while SEO software optimizes content and performs keyword optimization to attract organic search traffic from users actively looking for information related to those keywords.
Track and analyze key performance metrics: Both content marketing and SEO software platforms offer analytics and reporting features to measure content and website performance as well as track key metrics such as website traffic, click-through rates, keyword rankings, and conversions. These metrics help assess the effectiveness of a business’s marketing efforts.
A few other common features of content marketing and SEO software include keyword targeting, campaign management, and social media publishing.
Content marketing vs. SEO software: Which one is right for your business?
Choosing between content marketing software and SEO software depends on the specific needs and priorities of your business:
If your business’s primary goal is to create valuable and engaging content for your target audience, content marketing software would be the right choice.
If your business needs a tool to optimize your website and its SEO content for better ranking on search engines, an SEO tool would be more suitable.
Consider factors such as the number of content marketing and SEO specialists on your team, budget, integration requirements, and customization needs to make an informed decision that aligns with your organization's unique requirements and long-term marketing growth strategy.
Once you've decided which software to use, head to our content marketing and SEO software category pages where you can find a sortable list of products and software reviews from verified users.
If you want to narrow down your search to only the most popular and highest-rated solutions, visit Capterra Shortlist reports for the top content marketing software and SEO software tools—our reports are based on an analysis of thousands of user reviews.
How to choose between content marketing and SEO software
Below are a few important things to consider when selecting between content marketing and SEO software.
Determine your marketing strategy. If your primary focus is creating and distributing valuable content across marketing channels to engage and educate your audience, content marketing software would be the better choice. However, if your main objective is to improve search engine visibility and organic rankings and drive targeted traffic, SEO software would be more suitable.
Evaluate your budget and available resources. Content marketing software, apart from having a subscription fee, may also involve costs for content creation, distribution, and management, including additional tools and team resources. SEO software, on the other hand, may have subscription fees, particularly for more comprehensive and advanced features such as backlink analysis and historical data analysis. Assess what you can allocate in terms of budget and human resources before picking a solution.
Assess your need for technical optimization. Evaluate the technical aspects of your website. If you have concerns about technical SEO factors such as website speed, mobile friendliness, crawlability, and indexability, SEO software can help you identify and address such issues. On the contrary, content marketing software focuses more on content creation and distribution rather than technical optimization.
5 top-rated content marketing software
These products are listed in alphabetical order. (Check how we selected them.)
To present the most up-to-date information, the product information below shows the latest real-time ratings, which may differ from the ratings values at the time this report's analysis was conducted, since new reviews may have been left in the meantime.
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
5 top-rated SEO software
These products are listed in alphabetical order. (Check how we selected them.)
To present the most up-to-date information, the product information below shows the latest real-time ratings, which may differ from the ratings values at the time this report's analysis was conducted, since new reviews may have been left in the meantime.
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version