Likelihood to Recommend If you are a local business owner or marketing agency catering to local businesses, BrightLocal is a must have software. It has everything you need to track your local marketing efforts and to identify opportunities to make improvements, all at a very reasonable price point. You can also create nice looking reports to send to clients which are simple to create.
Read full review If you're just getting started and want something simple to get a boost on your SEO, then it is a good place to start. It takes you through the initial steps and show you where you can improve. The paid versions are still pretty cheap compared to the competitors, but some of the others have more features and functional areas. However, bear in mind that the main reason this product exists is to provide leads for NPDigital marketing agency, so you'll get a fair amount of push in that direction.
Read full review Pros When we use BrightLocal's citation building service, I know that we're getting quality citations done right. Their staff will email you with any questions and always double check the information before creating inaccurate citations. I love that BrightLocal is very quick about making changes when requested. For example, if we can't find a city on the drop-down list, you can chat them and they'll add it. Or if a report is pulling incorrectly, they'll re-run it within a reasonable timeframe. BrightLocal has a lot of different reports that are easy to send to your clients. You can even add them to a web-viewable dashboard so that your client can simply bookmark a link and view their reports when they please. Read full review Monitoring broken links - helps optimise your Google ranking Researching hashtags and keywords for website and social media to keep relevant Researching competitor keywords to get a competitive advantage Read full review Cons Up and down rankings were not always right on with the local search, but only off by one or two spots It felt like it was only used for local SEO, and I know there are more features, just never got to them. Didn't seem useful for every single client in the way Ahrefs or Spyfu did Read full review Some of the tool's features, including backlink tracking and competition analysis, were either lacking or more appropriate for the top-performing websites that already had a lot of traffic. So they should improve in this segment Read full review Usability It's really easy to use. The interface is nice and tidy, and the learning curve is low. So it's a tool that's accessible for everyone. If not, there are plenty of guides in the tool itself or on the website. You can easily make lists and export data for use or to share, connect Google Drive, and go work with a team.
Read full review Support Rating Although their customer support has always contacted me, they have not always been helpful. Many times I've had reports or information disappear with them telling me they had no record of it, even when I had reports that the information was in there. There are times when their system did have bugs and the support was able to help me there. Overall, the support staff is there but they cannot always do much and need to wait for their development team to get back to them which often takes a long time.
Read full review They have a lot of information on their website, and also training and contact options in the tool. So you can learn on the go while trying the tool. And if you are stuck, support reacts really fast--sometimes the same day, sometimes the next day due to time zones. Payment is easy and easy to cancel.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Thryv reached out to me about 3 weeks before signing up with BrightLocal. While all of their features were impressive, there were only about 3 features that I would have used.
Thryv wanted $200 per month for their service, which I found to be way overpriced for what I was wanting to use it for. I selected BrightLocal because it had the features I wanted at a lower price and then add ons. After using BrightLocal for a week and speaking with Becki, a customer service executive, I have discovered more features that I would use on BrightLocal than on
Thryv .
Read full review We use each SEO research platform for different purposes. I believe they complement each other. Ubersuggest strengths, according to my experience, are related to content ideas, comprehensive keyword research to determine competitors' backlinks, and difficulty in achieving the desired results for any given SEO campaign. The Ubersuggest topic ideas tool gives different insights and benchmarks in relation to other similar platforms that fit our marketing needs.
Read full review Return on Investment BrightLocal's ranking reports have helped us better serve our clients' SEO needs, especially local SEO. Reporting is nicely accomplished with their online client report dashboards. Negative: some of their software defects are glaringly obvious take forever to fix, creating a number of awkward moments when we talk our clients through their reports. Read full review Has helped with keeping our blog topics fresh for clients. We're able to keep track of SEO performance for clients who don't want to shell out for expensive SEO tools. The site audit function has helped us to sell website redesigns as well as SEO packages. Read full review ScreenShots