With 3 million company pages and 225 million members, LinkedIn has grown over the last 10 years to become the place where professionals network and do business online. LinkedIn is truly growing beyond just a search and social media platform. The content marketing explosion has meant that influencers are sharing and engaging via content and not just looking for jobs. In previous posts, I have talked about how search and social are closely aligned, and how content is the catalyst that drives search and social activity. Today, I will present LinkedIn as a perfect example of how search and social meet content and influence.

Over the last 12 months we have witnessed a content marketing explosion and a rapid evolution in search and social media marketing techniques. This has been driven by technological and algorithmic advancement and has changed the way we produce and consume content and data.

SEO and content marketing company BrightEdge has raised $42.8 million in Series D funding led by venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners, along with investments from Intel Capital, Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures. Originally an SEO company, BrightEdge says the newly raised funds will go toward building out their content marketing solutions.

BrightEdge’s existing S3 platform is a content marketing tool that allows users to evaluate how their content influences traffic, engagement and revenue. With customized dashboards, recommendations and analysis, the platform processes data to analyze content across channels in real-time.

Investors seem to love BrightEdge's approach to search engine marketing. The company raised $42.8 million in its fourth funding round. Insight Venture Partners led the latest, joining existing investors Intel Capital, Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures. The round brings total investments to about $65 million.

Jim Yu was at the right place at the right time back in 2005.

After almost a decade in the software industry he was managing the product team at Salesforce that released the first enterprise cloud-computing platform. He was so taken with the power of the cloud, that in 2007, he left Salesforce to put cloud-based software and marketers together.

It took three years of bootstrapping to develop the SEO platform now called BrightEdge, but since 2010, growth has been enormous. So much that Yu announced today the closing of a $42.8 million round of funding led by a new and renowned investor, Insight Venture Partners.

BrightEdge said on Tuesday it has raised $42.8 million as its focus shifts from search engine optimization to content marketing.

The San Mateo company led by CEO Jim Yu said the round was led by InsightVenture Partners, with new funds from existing investors Intel Capital, Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures, too. The new round brings the total raised to more than $63 million.

BrightEdge Technologies Inc. has raised $42.8 million in response to a growing cadre of advertisers seeking a single tool to help understand the impact of their content.

Insight Venture Partners led the Series D funding, with participation from existing investors Altos Ventures , Battery Ventures , Illuminate Ventures and Intel Capital .

Yet another big data-meets-marketing startup has hauled in a hefty round of funding.

BrightEdge has raised $42.8 million in its fourth round of funding. The company provides an enterprise grade SEO platform that applies big data analytics to marketing efforts.

Founder and CEO Jim Yu said in an interview with VentureBeat that the S3 platform does three core things. It visualizes collected data in customizable dashboards with drag and drop charts. The engine indexes information from websites, search engines, mobile devices, and social media and “glues” it back together for an overall view of relevant activity.

BrightEdge, a company that offers tools for search engine optimization and content marketing, is announcing that it has raised a big $42.8 million Series D.

The round was led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Intel Capital, Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures. The company has now raised more than $63 million total.

Investment firms Insight Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures are investing in BrightEdge through the company's Series D funding round.

Founded by Jim Yu and Lemuel Park in 2007, BrightEdge provides search engine optimisation (SEO) services to organisations looking to boost the value of marketing content.

Its S3 platform uses data analytics to understand the revenue impact of earned content and has customers including Microsoft, Nike and Marriott.