This is probably not the right way of looking at things. Instead of looking at these two as enemies, we might as well consider these as blood-brothers. In fact, both are used for marketing purposes, even though the former may prove more cost-effective than the latter.
However, during the earlier days, the picture was a bit different. It was a booming business for SEO to go on a voracious back-link-building mission and pay for it through black hat process. This is of course not possible now as search engines will penalize such offenders straight away.
Nevertheless, true online marketing professionals will agree that content marketing and SEO are equally prominent players in any enterprise-focused marketing strategy. If you or your team finds a void in one section or other, you just need to fill the void – it is as simple as that. Also, SEO professionals need not become fearful of losing their importance because they know it quite well that their roles will remain vital to brand marketing while ethical SEO is unthinkable sans content optimization.
Why not consider that SEO is content marketing?
Content is primarily created to support marketing objectives. If this is done appropriately, a crucial part of our execution strategies should be focused on optimization, which in turn will enhance the likelihood of the content getting discovered via search.
In view of this, it will rather be erroneous to consider SEO and content marketing as two opposite marketing tactics. It is like considering the title of an article or blog and its text as opposing to each other or any such absurd proposition.
Think it holistically
In The Mindset that Makes Online Marketing Work from MarketingLand, Copyblogger’s Brian Clark comments “The struggle many face with online marketing is a misguided impulse to put various tactics into separate boxes instead of seeing each as an aspect of one overarching strategic process. To this day, I see people referring to content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization as three different things – as if each is a tactic that can get you there alone, which is nothing but a total misconception.” “The smartest way to practice effective online marketing” adds Clark, “is to take a holistic strategy about the entire issue”.
Conclusion:
Content marketing and SEO should never be considered as opposing to each other. In fact, one greatly depends on the other in many aspects.