Request a demo
author
Nag Patta
M Posted 11 years ago
t 4 min read

Big news at BrightEdge last week – we were issued our first patent by the United States Patent Office for our immensely popular SEO competitive intelligence technology BrightEdge Share of Voice. The patent is called "Operationalizing Search Engine Optimization" and grants BrightEdge the ability to use its unique method for  measuring Share of Voice in search engine rankings. You probably saw coverage of the BrightEdge patent news from our friend Laurie Sullivan at MediaPost and are wondering what BrightEdge Share of Voice is, why it matters to marketers and why we patented it. Read on to learn more!

BrightEdge Share of Voice is the market share of search

BrightEdge Share of Voice is the market share of search. It tells you how you stack up against your top competitors when it comes to occupying search real estate. BrightEdge Share of Voice is calculated using a proprietary algorithm that factors in variables such as ranking and number of keywords ranked, among others.The chart below shows the BrightEdge Share of Voice for our website www.brightedge.com against our top competitors on Google.  BrightEdge Share of Voice for www.brightedge.com

BrightEdge Share of Voice gives you the most insightful competitive intel

While the math behind BrightEdge Share of Voice is definitely innovative, it's the stunning insight into competitive performance and strategies that makes it one of the most powerful and popular tools in our customers' SEO playbook.  

  • Discover who you compete with - Most customers track a handful of known competitors. But it is common that there are other players eating into SERPs without their knowledge. BrightEdge Share of Voice ensures you don’t overlook or miss any competitors by showing you the search share for all the top competitors, including those you don’t track or are not aware of. In the chart above, the good news is that www.brightedge.com does have the maximum Share of Voice for brand terms, which is expected. However, it is obvious that our website is competing with sites such as www.yoname.com and www.bizreport.com. These were not on our radar before we ran the BrightEdge Share of Voice report and it was quite a revelation to see the entire competitive landscape.
  • Get granular and segment competition - Companies have different competitors for different products, product categories, services, brands and geographies. BrightEdge Share of Voice discovers exactly who you compete with for each of your keywords and keyword groups, which most marketers map on to specific offerings, brands and geographies. The previous chart measures the Share of Voice for our keyword group ‘Branded’ which consists of brand-related keywords such as 'brightedge', 'bright edge', 'brightedge s3', 's3', 'birhgtedge', 'Sites.Search.Social', 'Sites Search Social'.
  • Get deep insight into competition's SEO strategies - BrightEdge Share of Voice allows marketers to dig deeper into  SEO strategies of all your competitors because it collects detailed info on the pages that they are ranking for. How are their on-page optimizations? What is their backlink strategy? What other keywords are they ranking on? BrightEdge Share of Voice gives you all the answers.
  • Take real action to outrank competition - Discovering who you compete across products, geographies and brands is great. Knowing how they manage SEO is even better. Acting on this intel to win is, to quote a cliche, priceless! With BrightEdge S3, marketers can translate competitive intelligence into actions that leads to results by viewing recommendations, implementing them using powerful workflow and automatically tracking performance in real-time.

To net it all out, Share of Voice tells you who your competition is for each keyword and keyword group, calculates your search share against them and gives you unprecedented insight into their SEO strategies. Share of Voice is like the market share of search, on steroids.  

Why did we patent it?

We are fortunate to be the global leader in enterprise SEO, with over 2000 brands using  BrightEdge S3 to win at SEO. A large part of our success is due to our technology leadership and innovation. BrightEdge Share of Voice is one of the most popular and powerful innovations in the  platform. Our customers can be assured that, with our patented technology, they have the edge to win at search engine optimization. In addition, patenting BrightEdge Share of Voice educates the market on what Share of Voice in SEO really means and helps marketers see through the layers of jargon when the term 'Share of Voice' is used in this context.