If you want to watch hundreds of millions of dollars of investment fight a vicious live battle in .14 seconds, Google “seo software.”
One result that doesn’t appear immediately, but perhaps should, is gShift Labs, a “web presence analytics company” that will tell brands what their SEO agencies are actually doing with their thousands of dollars.
“You can’t do SEO without content marketing, and in fact SEO is the outcome of great optimized content marketing,” CEO Krista LaRiviere told me today. “We help companies prove the impact, engagement, and ROI of content across their web presence … so how did this blog or press release impact my organic search and discoverability.”
That’s useful, speaking as someone who used to spend $15,000-$20,000 each month on SEO services, and switched SEO agencies at least three times after not being able to find trackable, provable metrics of success.
“Brands are demanding that,” LaRiviere says.
GShift also works with web marketing agencies to help them track their SEO impacts. Agencies can choose to share or not share the results with the brands they’re working for, but sharing the results help agencies prove their impact to their customers, making them more credible.
The result, from a brand’s perspective, is that they can bring in multiple SEO agencies to address individual tactical components of their SEO needs, LaRiviere says, while having one solution that provides a holistic perspective on results.
“And if they see fit, they can bring in digital marketing firms, other search firms, PR agencies,” LaRiviere told me. “Everybody can have access to the data to make great decisions.”
The company is located in an unlikely corner of Canada: Barrie, Ontario, which is somewhat north of nowhere.
“We’re the ecosystem of the software world in Barrie,” LaRivier jokes.
From that off-the-map source, gShift has grown to over 300 agency clients in 20 countries, each of which are using its services to show their clients what their money is achieving. And now, having grown to 16 employees, gShift is also just now raising a series A round of institutional capital.
The startup already has money from the MARS accelerator program, as well as an investment from GrowthWorks, which is looking to participate in its next round as well.
Via: VentureBeat
Image Credit: roomzworld
