A BrightEdger

M Posted 10 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

At BrightEdge, we pride ourselves on the amazing community of talent that makes up our team. From Engineers to Account Executives to Client Service Managers, every individual plays a huge role in making our company — and our customers — successful.

Today, we’re excited to kick-off a new blog series called “Why BrightEdge” to highlight some of our incredible team members. In this series we’ll hear from employees across our eight offices, and learn what brought them to BrightEdge, and what keeps them excited about our mission.

Without further ado, let’s find out why Senior Sales Manager Colin Kealey chose BrightEdge, what it’s like to work here — and about his (pretty impressive) hidden talent.

Office Location: 

Cleveland, Ohio

Why did you choose to join the BrightEdge team?

I joined BrightEdge straight out of college. As a senior at UC Berkeley, I knew I wanted to stay in the Bay Area and experience life at a Silicon Valley tech company, but at the end of the day, there are hundreds of tech companies out there. What set BrightEdge apart for me was its strong position in the industry, impressive list of great VC investors, opportunity for rapid, performance-based promotion and most importantly, the chance to be surrounded by competitive and high-achieving peers.

What is your title, and how did you get to where you are?

I’m a Senior Sales Manager, on the Enterprise Business Representative (EBR) team and I recently opened up our office in Cleveland, Ohio. Nearly two and a half years ago, I started out as an Enterprise Business Rep myself in June 2013 in San Mateo, California. On the verge of earning promotion to Account Executive the following year, I had the opportunity to interview for an open position as the EBR Manager in San Mateo. Shortly thereafter, in September of 2014, I moved to Chicago to manage the EBR team.

What’s your favorite thing about your job?

The people. I get to work with some of the smartest, most talented young sales professionals in the industry! And, I’ve been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work with EBRs across three of our offices. While it is incredibly fun to win every day with my team members, the most rewarding part for me is watching EBRs grow and develop. I’ve had the opportunity to witness EBRs go from making their very first phone call to getting promoted and eventually closing their first deal.

What are your interests outside of work?

I played trumpet in marching band in both high school and college, so I try to keep up with music as best I can. Aside from exploring everything that Cleveland has to offer, I enjoy traveling whenever I get a chance and when I’m not doing that, I tend to spend a decent amount of time watching The Office on Netflix.

What’s a fun fact about yourself?

I have a black cat named Noche who only understands Spanish. Although I guess that’s a fun fact about my cat.

What are you most passionate about?

It’s a three-way tie: coffee, Guinness and my Cal Golden Bears.

What do you love about your coworkers?

The energy. I love how everyone I’ve worked with at BrightEdge brings a dynamic energy, and comes in every day determined to improve the company, the team, and themselves. Some of my best memories of the past several years come from the time I’ve spent with my coworkers in and out of the office, from go-kart racing, Cubs (and Giants — but mostly Cubs) games, Halloween parties, bocce ball bars, the President’s Club in Maui, eating my first cheese curd, learning to play hockey, and having my first Great Lakes Christmas Ale.

Interested in learning how you can join the BrightEdge team? Check out our careers page for the latest opportunities.

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 10 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

Most web developers put SEO issues on the back burner while moving a website, when in reality, they should be putting SEO as a top priority. If the site is not optimized effectively, people will not be able to find the site, so all of your efforts moving the site or redesigning it will have been for nothing. There are three main components of a site move that require SEO for website redesign: before the launch, during the launch, and after the launch.

SEO for website redesign pre-launch

During the pre-launch period, SEOs should compile a list of metrics and errors to benchmark. This will help point the Web developer in the right direction as he/she is moving the site. It will also be useful to compare the before and after metrics after the site is moved. These are the five critical metrics that need to be measured before the change happens:

1. Traffic analysis: Using Google or Bing Webmaster Tools, check and see if the site has any crawl errors. Understand what needs to be done to resolve these errors, and make a list of recommendations for the Web developer to resolve during the site move.
2. Benchmark current keywords: See which keywords you are ranking for before the launch and for which landing pages. This will give an opportunity to provide content writers the ability to incorporate these and new keywords into the copy of pages as the site move takes place. Also consider setting up a tracking campaign for these keywords using the BrightEdge Data Cube to measure keyword performance before and after the launch.
3. Landing pages: Record which landing pages get the most traffic, as well as which ones rank for which keywords, and which position they hold for each keyword. Record how many each of the top landing pages internal links they have pointing at them.
4. Existing 404 errors: List out the 404 errors on your site that need to be resolved during your site move.
5. Redirection errors: Review the redirection response codes across your site to discover unnecessary 302 redirects. Create a redirection plan to ensure that Web pages are redirecting appropriately.

SEO for website redesign during launch

During the launch of the site, there will be a lot of going back and forth between the SEO and Web developer, so it’s important that all of the data and recommendations made by the SEO are clear and understandable. Follow up regularly with the web developer to ensure all requested changes are completed correctly. The following are four aspects that SEOs should monitor:

1. Organic traffic levels: Keep an eye on traffic and see what happens during the initial site move.
2. Custom 404 page: Make sure the custom 404 page is working after the site launch.
3. Check on the 301 redirects: Make sure that the 301 redirects are working as they should. Also, make sure that 302 redirects that need to be changed to 301s are being completed.
4. Monitor site errors as the move occurs: Use Google or Bing Webmaster Tools to do this. Just make sure you follow through with the developer to ensure that all of the things with the pre-launch are actually done.

SEO for website redesign post-launch

After the site move, you’re going to want to do a complete SEO site audit to see which pieces have fallen through the cracks. The SEO will then need to guide the Web developer through the remaining tasks, even when developers think that everything is complete now that the site has been moved. Conduct a final website audit that will contain the following metrics:

• Redirects
• 404 errors
• Duplicate data (h1 tags, titles, meta descriptions, etc.)
• Internal linking
• Image alt description

Be sure to create a follow-up report for the developer with the remaining issues and how to resolve them. Continue to monitor keywords and traffic as the site adjusts to the move, and the to the changes the developers continue to make. Too many SEOs and especially Web developers neglect SEO-centric steps during a site move. SEOs need to be the instigators to make sure these SEO metrics are a priority during this initiative. After all, if the SEO authority is lost during a site move, the move was not worth it.  

Shaun Oaklee

M Posted 10 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

BrightEdge: The complete solution for Content Mapping

Content mapping is the process of mapping keyword queries to landing pages to the interior content for those pages and delivering the right content at the right time to advance the customer journey.

BrightEdge content mapping provides deep analytical insight at each of these content mapping stages that enables the most accurate and effective decision making.

In the 5 key content mapping steps described below, BrightEdge delivers significant technology and capability to capture and convert on traffic opportunities.

• Explore relevant topical categories to identify keywords
• Mapping out focused pages with high relevance and topical value

1) Explore relevant topical categories, identify keywords Use the BrightEdge Data Cube to understand your current coverage of:

• High-volume keywords
• Striking-distance keywords
• Long-tail keywords
• Competitor keywords and
• Run gap analysis to identify most attractive opportunities

The BrightEdge Data Cube is the first and only platform resource that puts billions of keywords, urls and rank at the users’ fingertips.

2) Content mapping out focused pages with high relevance and topical value Use BrightEdge Page Reporting to understand page rank and map keyword rank and organic traffic to understand the traffic provided by keywords. BrightEdge allows you to map each keyword to a preferred landing page on your site. Through its web-wide crawl of SERPs for nearly all keywords in all regions, only BrightEdge can re-map multiple keywords and calculate the traffic those keyword contribute based on their rank position to specific pages to restore the visibility lost by not provided and secure search.

3) Create focused content to populate those pages Develop text, images, videos, local information. Map the position of the universal rank of the content assets with BrightEdge Blended Rank.

4) Optimize the pages Check the page load time, the navigability, meta tags, internal links anchor text and more. Content mapping for your on-page performance with Site Audit and Recommendations to make sure all your bases are covered.

5) Promote the pages Content mapping your social distribution success with BrightEdge Recommendations Social Signals, which allows you to map your social strength against those competing pages in the top 10 positions. Develop and track your backlinks with BrightEdge Backlinks reports. And because BrightEdge is integrated with all the major analytics packages, you can understand traffic, leads, conversion and revenue all in an integrated view.

Content mapping from keyword to pages to the conversion tells the marketer the whole story of the prospect’s journey to customer and helps maximize organic traffic success.