"No one has solved automated SEO because SEO is a software problem that non-technical marketers are trying to solve."
Great pitch, but untrue. Most SEOs I've met at serious companies are almost always very technical people.
And this isn't a recent development, back in 2007 there was an SEO contest held to grab the keyword for "Greatest living american".
An SEO named Brandon Wirtz took the win(1) and the guy would fit any description as a very technical person previously having been the compressionist and technical lead for Microsoft's Merlin Lab.
SEO is, at its core, a technical puzzle with constantly changing parameters, and as a result attracts a lot of very talented technical people from diverse backgrounds to solve.
(1) http://www.adweek.com/lostremote/the-second-greatest-living-...