At BrightEdge customer success is a key priority. This is why we have built the largest customer success team in the industry. We serve over 1000 customers, working with over 8500 brands across 4 continents.

As a product from the innovative leaders in the market, the BrightEdge S3 Platform is incredibly extensive and valuable for customers that enables them to as they transform online content into tangible business results.

To complement our award-winning platform our client services team provides hands-on support to ensure our customers are comfortable analyzing and interpreting the massive amounts of data that the BrightEdge platform processes for them.

My Role At BrightEdge – Customer Care & Partnerships

As a client services manager, I build business partnerships and provide product enablement to complete the story the data from the platform tells. As this Salesforce article highlights - “What is Good Customer Service” – one of the key factors that contribute to exceptional customer service is developing trust.

For me building trust comes from the fact that I genuinely care about my clients and always want to know what attracts and motivates them once they dive into the platform. Clients are extremely appreciative of the detail I provide into ensuring they gain the necessary platform skills. It is my job to actively listen and hear what is important to each person and company I work with.

Because customers recognize the attention I provide, they are confident in our partnership together.

I take the time to analyze and create a customized approach for each individual client, so set them up for success. As Melanie Perkins notes in “3 Keys Providing Great Customer Service,” I must give my clients a voice, so that their opinions can be heard through me. I am an advocate for their user experiences and what will benefit them in the long run. I consistently ask for their feedback, so I can better understand their needs, whether as a new or experienced user of our platform.

My success and satisfaction comes from helping my clients gain value from the platform, define and implement their plans and harvest the business results. This is why I think that BrightEdge clients renew at incredibly high rates.

Anything that is a considered progress or an achievement for my client translates into the same victory for me!

BrightEdge Customers and Business Impact

BrightEdge customers drive measurable business impact in partnership with the client services team via a number of key initiatives:

1. Ignite & On-Boarding Program - BrightEdge engagements are ‘jump-started’ with one-on-one on-boarding assistance, where customers learn about every aspect of the BrightEdge platform, identify goals, and work through a guided Ignite project.
2. Online Training & Certification  - The BrightEdge Certification Program is a user-level certification covering the core BrightEdge platform functionality.  
3. BrightEdge certification – This program validates a user’s ability to leverage the full BrightEdge platform to deliver value from search and digital marketing.
4. On-going Partnerships — All customers, partners and members of the BrightEdge community also stay up to date on the latest changes in search and content marketing as well as key BrightEdge innovations through our product training webinars, networking initiatives, and our industry-leading, must-attend, event Share15. Come learn from our customers and your industry colleagues at Share 15. Space is limited, so I would recommend registering now!

I look forward to seeing you there and supporting your organic marketing success.

Performing competitive research to review the competitive landscape is one of the important tasks when running an SEO program. Learning about competitors, their products and offerings, web positioning (optimization focus, messaging, linking, technical SEO) and measuring your progress against theirs will allow you to understand what works for you and them, and what doesn’t – and can help move your SEO forward more effectively and secure a bigger piece of the pie.

Identify

When it comes to competing in SEO, at least for the large established brands, the focus is on the non-branded space, where prospects are searching for the terms related to product features and capabilities rather that branded names (in some cases users just may not be aware that your brand is offering a solution for their needs). There are several steps that can be taken here.

First, talk with your stakeholders (i.e. people in the business unit, sales or marketing teams) to scope companies that they see as competitors. We need to understand that company does not necessarily equal website here. There are cases where one company would span multiple websites, usually with keyword-rich domain names, to compete for specific themes in which case you’ll need to do some domain research (who-is) to get to the business owner behind the domain.

It’s also a good idea to check with the paid search team to see who is bidding on the high-value keywords. Querying search engines for high-volume, non-branded terms is also an effective way to scope the landscape.

Competitor Products and Solutions

Learn about competitor products and solutions to see how they stack up against your company offering. Start by reviewing their site and noting the categories and topics. Note the title tags, meta descriptions and H1 keywords they use. Understand the set of keywords they rank on. You can use a web site scanning tool to assist with this process.

Online Presence and SEO

Review the way competitors optimize their pages and topics and focus to find specific keywords that use that you do not. In some cases competitive information can provide valuable feedback beyond SEO.

For example this research can expose features in competitor products with significant interest and query volume in search that you can bring as a suggestion to the product development teams.

The BrightEdge Data Cube is a robust tool that allows you discover keywords and content based on a url, keyword, rank, or content type. This is an easy way to get a comprehensive view of the full set of competitor keywords.

Examine linking profiles, both in terms of the cross-linking within the competitor sites and also back linking patterns, to better understand what they are doing well. In some cases this research helps identify shady linking profiles.

Technical SEO is one of the key factors, and understanding the ways your competitors address it can help improve your program.

Learn about the social tactics of your competition (blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, G+, etc.) and implement pieces that make sense for your projects.

Track and Measure

Measuring trends against competitors is a good idea to keep track of how your SEO program is performing against theirs for a set of non-branded keywords, and you can see how big your piece of the pie is. Literally – if you’re looking at the “Share of Voice” competitive research report in the BrightEdge platform.

This competitive research report gives you a sense of where you are at a given point of time.

The BrightEdge Competitive Research Report provides a snapshot view of the performance of your keywords in terms of rankings, for example, your site’s presence on page 1-3 and beyond.

Competitive Research Trend Report provides a historic view of your performance against competition.

Adapt

Like anything else in the SEO world, the competitive landscape is not set in stone which is why competitive research holds such high value. Competitors change their SEO programs, for example, they can migrate sites, acquire other companies to add offerings, change content, linking or technical aspects. Their sites can incur penalties. New competitors can enter and leave the space. Since things are not set in stone, re-visiting competitor research every 6 months can be very useful.

It’s always good to assess others to learn what else you can do on the site. On the other hand, if you learn about something that doesn’t work for your competitors, you certainly don’t want to repeat these mistakes.

Competitive research reports are also a great way to present progress of the SEO program to your stakeholders and show the status of your SEO program vs the competitors.

The New Year is the perfect time to look at the 2015 SEO trends to determine what's helping or hurting your brand. Most of the 2015 SEO trends are continuations from last year where it was important to create quality content, be active on social media and focus on your mobile user.

The line between SEO and other integrated marketing efforts continue to blur. If you don't keep the predictions below in mind and act on them, these 2015 SEO trends might be how your competitors steal your thunder:

• Content reigns
• Websites must be mobile-search friendly
• SEO will integrate further with social media
• Earned links increase in value
• Links won't have to be links

1. Content reigns

There's a balance to be found when it comes to creating, optimizing and distributing content. You want it to be easy to digest, especially for mobile readers. However, your website's content should be unique and not so shallow or mundane that it can easily be found from other sources. Many sites aim for articles between 500 and 700 words, but you shouldn't be afraid to increase word count if you're the expert on a subject.

While Google may cherry pick some of your content if it is useful -- and formatted correctly -- you want the users to ultimately visit and read from your links. Those impressions and potential sales, comments or subscriptions that your brand relies on won't come if you don't offer something unique to the reader.

Furthermore, content doesn't come just in the form of text. For example, video and audio content can be optimized for the search engine -- and you should already be using alt text with the images on your website and in your blog posts.

A combination of informative, entertaining or engaging written, visual and even audio content will draw in visitors and keep them coming back for more as long as you use the proper markup, so Google knows where to add your link in the SERPs.

2. Websites must be mobile-search friendly

By now, few companies that are serious about their online presence are languishing in the days of Web 1.0 with a website that's not mobile-friendly. However, you might be in for some bad news if you've not stayed up with that trend. In 2015 websites don't have to be just mobile- friendly -- they have to be mobile-search-friendly.

So what does mobile-search-friendly mean?

Users must be able to find your site through the local queries they would make on a mobile device. At the same time, also evolve your ability to appear relevant to the semantic or thematic queries that are more likely on mobile.

Understand these queries by tracking your most active mobile landing pages. Conversely, as people become more proficient on mobile typing input, you may also have opportunities to capture traffic with strong intent, which means and long-tail keywords will be more useful to your SEO efforts than short keywords. For example, people might input queries about how to do something on a mobile device or fix a problem.

Mobile-search friendly also means that Google and other search engines have to be able to read your mobile site easily. If, for some reason, you're still using Frames, JavaScript or Flash that would prevent this, you're missing out on traffic because you are making it harder for Google to read it. Mobile users can't view that content either. And make sure to test and optimize your mobile page load speeds on mobile devices.

However, it could be even worse than that if Google starts to actively penalize sites that aren't optimized for users on mobile search and browsing from their phones or tablets. If you've managed to struggle along this far, 2015 might be the year when your efforts fall flat if Google formally introduces or increases weight of mobile optimization in the algorithm for rank on all devices.

Choosing the right approach to mobile is a key factor in corresponding success.

Last year BrightEdge released a report that observes, “over one in four mobile sites are misconfigured, leading to a massive loss of potential traffic. Marketers and publishers must consider their approaches to mobile design carefully and to think about how users interact with their content.”

Download the full report

Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge also shares key mobile tips for 2015 SEO trends in Mobile Commerce magazines outlook report.

3. SEO will integrate further with social media

While the interplay between SEO and social media is nothing new, SEO experts can no longer pretend that social media management and search engine optimization are two separate things.

Departments are merging and people who used to focus on one aspect will have to expand their knowledge and skills to be able to do it all. The companies and people able to do both will certainly benefit.

What about Google+, Authorship and Google's own attempts at melding social media with search engine optimization? Some people have already called Authorship a failed experiment, and while it won't hurt you to continue claiming the high-quality content you've contributed to the Internet, expect to see a renewed push toward social cues on established social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook.

With these 2015 SEO trends, "Likes," retweets and other cues have long contributed to content floating toward the top of the SERPs. It's important to remember that this is correlation and not causation, however. If a link is frequently shared on social media, especially long after it was created, the content creators have done something right well beyond a click-bait title. It may be humorous, informative or controversial, but there's a valid content reason why people are sharing it.

4. Earned links increase in value 

A penny earned might be a penny saved, but a link earned won't see the Google hounds sent on you. Create content that other people want to share again and again. This is the content that will go viral on Facebook, and Google will take those cues into consideration.

Don't forget about collaborating with other content creators and influencers, either. Build long-lasting relationships with influencers. While brands will certainly get a boost when it comes to SEO, they also get the power of outspoken bloggers who will stand by a brand they love.

Ambassadorship with a single influential personality can instantly expose thousands of their fans to your brand. A continued relationship with those content creators is far more valuable than purchasing a single sidebar link or guest post on a blog, too. A positive experience with this 2015 SEO trend means your brand may get name-dropped even when you're not asking for it, and long-term organic exposure is worth as much as ever.

If earned links increase in value, will un-earned links decrease in value? Not quite. Google has already made it clear that links that aren't earned, specifically those that are purchased, have no value. If you're caught using such tactics, you can be penalized, which could be the most career-limiting move for an SEO.

5. Links won't have to be links

Thus far much of search engine optimization has had to do with links, literally anchors between websites. You're not alone if you've focused your attention on creating content that will go viral, getting links from relevant sources, adding your own links to directories and other link-getting activities.

However, Google might just turn the links world on its head with this 2015 SEO trend if the search engine isn't just looking for direct links -- HTML anchors. Implied links aren't actual links at all. In fact, Google knows that people have abused links for the purpose of search engine optimization, so the search engine has turned its attention to implied links. This includes mentions of brands and even no-followed links, which website owners are carefully using to avoid possibly penalties from Google.

It makes sense for Google to start tracking implied links, such as brand mentions. After all, people who are naturally talking about the brands they know and love might not think or take the time to add an anchor in their posts or articles at all. This will certainly help brands who haven't focused heavily on SEO in the past, which means you could benefit if you've been treating consumers and partners well all along.

As Google has cracked down on black-hat SEO tactics over the past two years, SEO experts have been forced to skip the shortcuts and roll up their sleeves to see real results in search engine rankings.

If you've put in the elbow grease, your content optimization efforts should serve as a great foundation for visibility and traffic with these 2015 SEO trends and the coming changes.