Do you need an Enterprise SEO Platform or should you hire another SEO?
January 30, 2014

Do you need an Enterprise SEO Platform or should you hire another SEO?

Ryan Sauer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction

BrightEdge served as the main SEO platform in conjunction with multiple other tools by the SEO department. The SEO Technical Specialists were the primary users of BrightEdge as it assisted them with ongoing competitive analysis, keyword rank tracking, management of SEO recommendations, and was utilized for 50% of the monthly SEO report. The platform was only used within the SEO department but with the month after month SEO success it was backed by the marketing executives. BrightEdge also assisted the SEO department with getting approval from marketing executives for SEO initiatives.
  • The Competitive Analysis features increased productivity by eliminating the manual process of performing a competitive analysis.
  • The competitor monitoring reports are not just data dumps and instead dashboard can be configured to display competitor data and visualizations.
  • Usability. One of the main strengths of BrightEdge is its usability. The platform is intuitive for any level of SEO expertise and its clean UI provides a great user experience.
  • The SEO recommendations aren't advanced or innovative but are derived from webmaster guidelines and SEO best practices. Don't get me wrong, SEO fundamentals are essential for long term success but you would expect more out of an "enterprise" SEO platform.
  • While BrightEdge does integrate with 3rd party APIs, it is limited. For example, SiteCatalyst was integrated but very few metrics were accessible and none of the reports were interactive.
  • BrightEdge only keeps historical data for active keywords and competitors. It would be very useful to be able to archive and import historical data.
  • BrightEdge is a key part of the departments SEO successes like increasing organic visibility resulting in month over month organic traffic increases up to 70%
  • BrightEdge helped simplify and automate more than 50% of the monthly SEO reports.
  • SEOmoz,Conductor Searchlight
Moz (formerly SEOmoz), Conductor Searchlight, and BrightEdge are all great SEO platforms that are similar in some aspects but are not tailored for every organization. BrightEdge and Conductor can and should be evaluated for similar organizations because both of the platforms offerings are similar. Moz provides similar feature such as rank tracking, API integration, social metrics, and competitor monitoring but it's not as in depth as the other two. I had the opportunity to use both Conductor and BrightEdge at the same time over four months and it came down to BrightEdge because it was a better fit for our department. I evaluated both products for:
  • Customer service - Advantage BrightEdge
  • Data accuracy and integrity - Tie
  • Usability - Advantage BrightEdge
  • Level of Analysis - Advantage Conductor
  • Reporting and Dashboards - Advantage BrightEdge
  • Competitor Monitoring - Advantage Conductor
  • SEO Recommendations - Tie
  • SEO Task & Project Management - Tie
Both were great products but BrightEdge prevailed as the platform because of the customer service and usability.
This rating is not dependent upon specifically BrightEdge. While the overall satisfaction with the product is very high, we want to ensure we are using the best product for our specific needs so it's part of our consideration process to test new platforms and tools before renewing.
Is it worth the investment? Since BrightEdge is a relatively large financial investment, I would ensure that the primary users of the platform have the time and ability to use all if not the majority of its features. While BrightEdge has a lot of features (that you pay for), it's important that the users of this platform have adequate time to use and experiment with all of the features.