John Lincoln

Complete BrightEdge Review (Is It Right For You?)

How would you like a comprehensive digital marketing toolset that handles keyword analysis, rank tracing, technical SEO, content marketing, backlink analysis, and customer experience optimization?

If so, then check out BrightEdge.

Complete BrightEdge Review BrightEdge includes a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) component that will help you maximize online visibility. The enterprise solution also offers a powerful reporting system that will enable you to quickly gauge the success of your latest marketing campaigns. Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.

Who Uses BrightEdge?

First, who uses BrightEdge? Answer: just about anyone who’s into any kind of digital marketing can benefit from the platform. SEO professionals use it to track rank and find optimization recommendations. Online marketers use it to develop highly successful websites and build brand awareness. Content marketers use it to create content that people in their target market will discover and love. Executives use it to learn about the returns they’re seeing as a result of SEO strategies. They also use BrightEdge to track the performance of their own marketing efforts against the competition. In a nutshell, if you’re trying to build an Internet-based business, you stand to benefit from the platform. There’s a caveat, though.

BrightEdge Review: Why You Might Not Want BrightEdge

Since it seems like BrightEdge is right for just about anybody interested in making a profit online, why would some people choose not to use it? The price. BrightEdge is one of those companies that doesn’t advertise its prices online. You’ll have an easier time finding where Jimmy Hoffa is buried than learning about BrightEdge prices. That means it’s expensive. So if you’re running a startup with limited cash flow, you might need to look at other solutions, preferably ones where you can learn about the price before even trying the product. On the other hand, if you’ve got some cash to throw around, BrightEdge might be just the all-in-one solution you’re looking for. Keep in mind: BrightEdge is billed as an enterprise-level toolset. So unless you’re running an enterprise, be on the lookout for other tools.

BrightEdge Review: The Products

As I’ve mentioned above, BrightEdge isn’t just a single tool, it’s a whole set of tools. Depending on the nature of your business, you’ll find some more valuable than others. In the next several sections, I’ll go over each of the tools offered by BrightEdge.
BrightEdge Review
BrightEdge Review

ContentIQ

Need a website audit? Then ContentIQ is the tool you’re looking for. According to the webpage, ContentIQ offers the most advanced and complete website audit solution for large websites. Additionally, the tool highlights trends in site errors. That’s a feature not offered by a lot of other auditors. ContentIQ will also show you how fixing those errors can increase visits to your website, conversions, and overall revenue. Finally, the tool will let you customize your audit so that it only displays the kinds of errors and warnings that you want to see.
BrightEdge Review: Content IQ
BrightEdge Review: Content IQ

Data Cube

Data Cube is your go-to tool if you’re into content marketing. For starters, it will help you discover keywords that will drive organic traffic to your website. Data Cube will also show you keywords that your site is already ranking for. Even better, the tool will show you a list of semantically related topics that are relevant to your domain. It does that with natural language processing.
BrightEdge Review: Data Cube
BrightEdge Review: Data Cube
Once you have that list of topics, you can use them to find additional content marketing opportunities. If you’ve got a huge site that ranks for more than 100,000 topics, you can use Data Cube to find the “winners.” Then, you can capitalize on those keywords with additional relevant content. By the way, Data Cube delivers all this detail to you with the aid of DataMind. That’s an AI-powered solution that identifies search trends, market shifts, and competitive threats in real time. You can think of it as an automated research component within your BrightEdge toolset.

BrightEdge Review: HyperLocal

BrightEdge even offers a tool for folks interested in Local SEO. It’s called HyperLocal. According to the web page: “Search engines have evolved. Same keyword being searched from two adjacent cities may yield different organic and paid search results. It is imperative to analyze search volume and ranking data as close as possible to your target locations to earn customers for your brick-and-mortar stores.” That’s why HyperLocal shows you search volumes and ranking info for your keywords in numerous cities and countries. In fact, the tool currently offers local search data on more than 72,000 cities all over the world. You can also use HyperLocal to analyze searches conducted in your immediate area. You’ll see how often your local listing shows up in search and a side-by-side comparison of your data against local competitors.

Intent Signal

SERP layouts change from time to time. That’s why Intent Signal exists. In a nutshell, Intent Signal will help you rank content so that it appears above the fold in the search results. Then, it will offer actionable advice to keep your content above the fold. Additionally, Intent Signal will suggest topics for content that will likely rank at the top of the SERPs. You can also use the tool to get actionable insights on hybrid strategies that involve both organic search and PPC. Finally, Intent Signal will send you an alert when one of your pages drops below the fold. That way, you can take action to improve its rank.
BrightEdge Review: Intent Signals
BrightEdge Review: Intent Signals

BrightEdge Review: Keyword Reporting

If you’re interested in getting quick insights about the keywords that are bringing visitors to your site, then check out the appropriately named Keyword Reporting tool. You can use it to get the “big picture” of how much traffic your best keywords are generating. You can also use Keyword Reporting to drill down into individual keywords for specific insights. The tool also offers international support. For example, it will tell you the best language to set on a web page that ranks well for a specific keyword. Keyword Reporting will display trend graphs so you can see how your search terms have performed over time. You can even customize the graphs to show trends over a period of days, weeks, or months. Finally, the tool will highlight topics that you’re not ranking for. Those are your opportunities.
BrightEdge Review: Keyword Reporting
BrightEdge Review: Keyword Reporting

Page Reporting

So what kind of content is bringing people to your site and turning them into customers? To answer that question, you should turn to the Page Reporting tool. For starters it will show you traffic, conversion and revenue data by content category or individual pages. Once you’ve identified the content that’s ringing the cash register, your task is simple: duplicate that content strategy. Over and over again. Page Reporting also offers reporting that shows whether or not page groups are meeting their targeted revenue objectives. You can use that info to optimize pages that are falling short. You can also customize the reports to show you the exact data you’re looking for.
BrightEdge Review: Page Reporting
BrightEdge Review: Page Reporting

BrightEdge Review: Opportunity Forecasting

If you’re familiar with the business concept of sensitivity analysis, you’ll appreciate the Opportunity Forecasting tool. Opportunity Forecasting will give you an estimate in terms of traffic, conversion, and revenue changes for a proposed project. Then, you can show that estimate to stakeholders as a way to convince them that they should invest in the project. You can also configure the tool to modify your forecasts with an aggressive, medium, or conservative outlook. That way, you’ll have more confidence that your projection models are accurate.

BrightEdge Review: Content Recommendations

BrightEdge also includes a Content Recommendations tool that offers suggestions to improve your website’s visibility in the search results. Let me clear here: the tool shares detailed info about what you need to do to improve rank. For example, it will tell you exactly which keyword or keywords you should add to your meta description tag to achieve a higher position in the SERPs. Content Recommendations also shares advice on H1 tags, titles, and other on-site optimization techniques. It doesn’t stop there, though. The tool will also recommend offsite changes, such as backlink strategies. You can even assign each recommendation to an appropriate subject matter expert (SME) within your team. Once that person completes the task, the tool will create a site event tag so that you can track performance.
BrightEdge Review: Content Recommendation
BrightEdge Review: Content Recommendation

Share of Voice

Want to keep tabs on your competitors? If so, then the Share of Voice tool is what you’re looking for. Use it to get a complete list of competitors for important topics. If you find that they’re outranking you in some ways, check out their content so you can improve on it. Share of Voice will also show you the most challenging competitors in the SERPs. That kind of info will help you prioritize content marketing opportunities. You can even use the tool to see who your strongest competitors are by device. Armed with that data, you can create a content strategy that will outrank your competitors on mobile search. The tool will also analyze your competitor pages. You’ll see insights about H1 tags, backlinks, titles, and keywords. Finally, Share of Voice will also enable you to locate partners online who can help you move up in search rank.

BrightEdge Review: Site Report

Site Report enables you to determine the success of marketing channels that bring visitors to your website. First of all, the tool will show you the number of indexed pages on your site. It also offers details about the indexed pages of competitor websites. Additionally, Site Report shares search analytics, visibility trends over time, and click-through rates. You can use the tool to view traffic acquired by various means, such as PPC, direct hits, social media, or referrals. It will also highlight the channels that are giving you the best conversion rates.

BrightEdge Review: StoryBuilder

StoryBuilder is a tool that helps you answer questions that stakeholders might be asking. For example, if your boss asks: “Are we getting more visits by organic search this year than last year?” you can use StoryBuilder to answer that question. Even better: StoryBuilder will produce that answer in graphical format. So your boss can see the answer quickly. Here’s what the website says about the tool: “StoryBuilder is mission control for digital marketers. With robust and flexible visualization capabilities, StoryBuilder can help you make data-driven decisions and elevate the role of the website. Use executive dashboards to showcase the positive impact on brand equity and revenue from website optimization efforts. Build convincing business cases for additional resources.” StoryBuilder also includes templates so that you can quickly create dashboards that display relevant info.
BrightEdge Review: StoryBuilder
BrightEdge Review: StoryBuilder

How Companies Are Using BrightEdge

BrightEdge boasts some well-known clients, including Sweetwater, Tahoe South, and Adobe. Let’s look at how they’re using the platform. Sweetwater, a music gear store, had been in the ecommerce business since 1990s. As a pioneer in that space, the company had already learned from “the school of hard knocks” about how to build a successful brand online. Still, Sweetwater management knew that there was always room for improvement. So it turned to BrightEdge. That was a good move. The company used Data Cube to adapt content to online search behavior. Thanks to BrightEdge reporting, Sweetwater also found that some category pages were competing for search rank with other pages in the same category. As a result, developers incorporated rel=”next” and rel=”previous” code on the appropriate category pages. The team still uses BrightEdge to prioritize SEO strategies. Tahoe South used BrightEdge for a different purpose. The organization’s mission is to attract visitors to Lake Tahoe, not just attract visitors to a website. Still, Tahoe South knew that its website was an outstanding way to promote sightseeing and activities in the area. So it went on a mission to improve organic reach with the aid of digital marketing consultants. Those consultants used BrightEdge to identify long tail keywords that would bring in traffic. The company set out to create content optimized for those search terms. It didn’t stop there. BrightEdge reporting identified local events as one of the best ways to attract visitors to the site. In fact, visitors looking for local info had a lower bounce rate and converted more often. So Tahoe South consultants optimized event pages for search. The results speak for themselves:
  • Desktop site traffic increased 14%
  • Page views increased 32%
  • Mobile traffic increased 134%
  • Mobile Page views increased 102%
  • The mobile site saw a 345% increased in organic search traffic
Adobe used BrightEdge to capture the coveted “Rank 0” position. That’s the featured snippet spot that appears at the very top of the SERPs. To make that happen, Adobe used Data Cube to prioritize topics and search terms with the highest demand. The company also used BrightEdge reporting to monitor progress. The end result: Adobe added 5,900 additional featured snippet spots. The company also showed a 17% lift on Rank 0 topics. Overall, BrightEdge helped bring millions of additional visitors to Adobe’s website.

BrightEdge Review: Pros and Cons

Finally, let’s look at the pros and cons of choosing BrightEdge as your SEO toolset. First, let’s start with the pros:
  • A comprehensive solution – Almost everything you could want in your SEO toolset is available with BrightEdge. And if there’s something you do want that isn’t there, it’s likely that BrightEdge will add it in the future. Even better, all those tools are produced by the same vendor so they’re designed to integrate with one another.
  • Automated warnings – Anomaly detection will let you know when your rank slips below the fold. That means you don’t have to manually track rank for hundreds or thousands of keywords.
  • State of the art – As mentioned in the first “pro,” BrightEdge keeps its software up to date. You don’t have to worry about using “old” code or getting stuck with software that’s designed for a legacy version of the Google algorithm.
  • Collaboration support – BrightEdge recognizes that people often work in teams. That’s why the platform supports collaboration.
  • Mobile support – You can use BrightEdge on a mobile platform. Keep in mind, though, it’s the kind of tool that’s best experienced on a desktop with a large monitor. That’s especially the case if you’re looking at graphs.
  • Forecasting – Not too many tools give you the ability to see how much additional revenue you’ll take in by making specific SEO changes. BrightEdge lets you do that and offers flexibility in the process.
  • Inspiration – If you’re content marketers are struggling to come up with new ideas for blog posts, BrightEdge can almost certainly identify plenty of opportunities.
  • Dedicated support – BrightEdge will put you in touch with a dedicated success specialist who will hold your hand and walk you through the process of getting up to speed. Once you’re running strong, that specialist will reach out to you on a periodic basis to find out how you’re doing.
  • Training resources – BrightEdge offers plenty of instructional videos to help you become a power user. Don’t expect that to happen overnight, though.
And now, the cons:
  • Complexity – Because BrightEdge is an all-in-one solution, there’s a lot to learn. You’ll spend quite a bit of time mastering all the different features of the platform. If you think about it, though, that’s a good problem to have.
  • Cost – BrightEdge is an expensive toolset.
  • Sluggishness – Some users have complained that it takes a search term a long time to show up when it’s assigned to a preferred landing page.
  • Data caps – You’re limited in terms of the number of keywords you can track. If you’d like to track more, you’ll have to fork over some extra cash. Eventually, the process of “scaling up” might get cost prohibitive.
  • Constant contact – Some users have complained that their account rep contacts them a little too often. Again, though, that could be a good problem to have.
  • User hostility – You can consume a lot of time building out keyword lists for your entire site. Additionally, it’s not easy to change keyword groups across charts within the dashboard. You also can’t track multiple domains as a single marketing channel.
  • Lack of content filtering – You can’t filter out website subdomains that don’t apply to your team. That could be a problem if you’re running a huge site.
  • Support required – Certain edits require you to contact the support team. For example, if you want to add a new domain to the system, you’ll need to reach out to BrightEdge.

Wrapping Up This BrightEdge Review

The final verdict is: YES. If you can afford it, you should definitely consider BrightEdge as your all-encompassing SEO platform of choice. Before you do that, though, request a demo from one of the sales reps. That way, you can see if BrightEdge is right for your business.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Welcome To John Lincoln Marketing

Welcome to John Lincoln’s personal website. On this website, we offer courses by John Lincoln, review software, publish articles and videos. You can also learn about John Lincoln’s books, films, book him to speak and contact him. John is directly associated with many of the businesses mentioned on this website and freely discloses this information. 

About the Author

John Lincoln is CEO of Ignite Visibility, one of the top digital marketing agencies in the nation. Ignite Visibility is a 4x  Inc. 5,000 company. Ignite Visibility offers a unique digital marketing program tied directly to ROI with a focus on using SEO, social media, paid media, CRO, email, Amazon and PR to achieve results. Outside of Ignite Visibility, Lincoln is a frequent speaker and author of the books “Digital Influencer” and “The Forecaster Method.” Lincoln is consistently named one of the top digital marketers in the industry and was the recipient of the coveted Search Engine Land “Search Marketer of The Year” award. Lincoln has taught digital marketing and Web Analytics at the University of California San Diego since 2010, has been named as one of San Diego’s most admired CEO’s and a top business leader under 40. Lincoln has also made “SEO: The Movie” and “Social Media Marketing: The Movie.” His business mission is to help others through digital marketing.

Contact John Lincoln

Want to get in touch with John Lincoln? Click Here To Reach Out.

Related Posts