Retailer HMX Group Selects BrightEdge to Raise Search Rankings

Successful SEO Strategy Increases Online Awareness for America's Leading Tailored Clothing and Sportswear Company

NEW YORK, NY – January 11, 2011 – HMX Group, America's leading tailored clothing and sportswear company, has selected BrightEdge, the enterprise-class search engine optimization platform (SEO platform) solutions, to increase online awareness for HMX Group's fine clothing brands that include Hickey Freeman, Hart Schaffner Marx, Bobby Jones, Exclusively Misook, Christopher Blue, Worn and Sansabelt.

Because HMX Group competes against many of the nation's best-known clothing companies, a vigorous SEO strategy is essential to make measurable improvements to its organic search results. HMX Group selected BrightEdge because of its ease of use and superior Customer Success program, allowing its online marketing team to make immediate enhancements to its SEO strategy.

"In our highly competitive market, we need continuous, well-defined and actionable SEO insights," said Tom Hassell, VP of Planning and E-Commerce, HMX Group. "With BrightEdge, we immediately saw opportunities to raise our search rankings. BrightEdge was the obvious choice because its easy-to-understand interface and Customer Success team gave us exactly what we needed to get up and running right out of the gate."

"We are thrilled that HMX Group is getting great results so quickly and picked BrightEdge's SEO platform," said Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge. "This selection again demonstrates our clear leadership as the best choice for companies that want to drive revenue from organic search rankings, regardless of the depth of experience with SEO or the level of competition in their market."

About HMX Group, LLC

HMX Group is America's leading tailored clothing company, with a diverse portfolio of brands, both owned and licensed, that are distributed through all domestic retail channels and internationally. HMX Group most prominent brands include Hickey Freeman, Hart Schaffner Marx, Coppley, Monarchy, Christopher Blue, Exclusively Misook, Bobby Jones, Worn, Jack Nicklaus, Sansabelt and Austin Reed. www.hmxgroup.com

BrightEdge Named to OnMedia 100 Top Private Companies

SEO platform leader recognized as top marketing and advertising technology company

SAN MATEO, California - January 24, 2011 - BrightEdge, the world's first enterprise class SEO platform that helps brands rise above increasing clutter on the Web, today announced it has been named as an OnMedia Top 100 Private Company. The highly influential OnMedia 100, which honors leading digital media companies operating in the advertising, marketing and publishing sectors, is compiled annually by AlwaysOn, the leading business media brand covering the Global Silicon Alley.

BrightEdge was recognized in the 'B2B: Technology Enabler' category for its market-leading SEO platform that empowers marketers to create measurable, predictable revenue growth from organic search. As such, BrightEdge epitomizes a powerful new trend identified by AlwaysOn Founder and Editor Tony Perkins of companies that create high-growth opportunities by helping marketers "ascertain the 'wisdom of the crowd' and better target their efforts."

"We are honored to be recognized by the editorial board of AlwaysOn and be named to the OnMedia 100," said Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge. "It's tremendously exciting to receive independent recognition of our market leadership. With more customers adopting our SEO technology every day, this is just the start of what promises to be a very big year for BrightEdge."

The OnMedia 100 winners were selected from more than a thousand U.S. and international technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists, and digital media industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team and its partners at SAP, the Blackstone Group, KPMG, Silicon Valley Bank, SNR Denton, SecondMarket, and Bridge Bank, as well as industry experts across the globe scoured the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 100 private digital media companies.

BrightEdge and the OnMedia 100 companies will be honored at AlwaysOn's fifth annual OnMedia NYC on January 31st, 2011, at The Paley Center for Media, New York. A full list of all the OnMedia 100 winners can be found on the BusinessWire website

BrightEdge First To Take SEO Global

Former Baidu Chief Architect Ming Lei Joins as Advisor to Boost Global Presence

San Mateo, Calif. -- January 27, 2011 -- BrightEdge, the world’s first enterprise class SEO platform that helps brands rise above the increasing clutter on the Web, today announced it is the first to offer a global SEO platform so companies can reach any market in any corner of the world.

The new global SEO solution made available today is groundbreaking in search marketing. Companies and brands can now leverage a single technology solution to manage their rank across search properties in multiple countries and continents.

The company also announced that former Baidu Chief Architect Ming Lei has joined as a strategic advisor to provide guidance as BrightEdge optimizes their platform for international search engines. As one of the four founding members of Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine, Lei was responsible for developing the core technology that propelled it to the dominant search engine in China.

"Our clients asked us to extend the platform’s reach so they can drive the same ROI globally that they are seeing in the U.S.," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "At home and around the world, the Web is increasingly cluttered and complex. Our clients use BrightEdge to break through this clutter and use natural search as a major revenue driver. Bringing our platform to international search engines will give companies a means to scale and drive new business in ways simply not possible before."

World business software leader Epicor will be using BrightEdge’s technology to expand its SEO initiatives on a global platform. BrightEdge will assist Epicor in scaling internationally and increasing brand awareness and sales opportunities in new markets and countries across the globe.

"As a global ERP and SaaS software provider with operations in over 150 countries, driving ROI from our digital marketing initiatives requires us to have accurate, actionable information at our fingertips that crosses borders and language barriers," said Dawna Olsen, Director, Corporate Marketing, Epicor.  "Until now, there has been no single enterprise class solution to manage SEO around the world.  We couldn’t be more excited about BrightEdge’s international capabilities.  For the first time ever we can be totally confident that our marketers have global SEO data and recommendations that they can use to drive value and ROI."

BrightEdge drives bottom line value for some of the biggest and most recognizable brands across multiple industries, including seven of the top ten Fortune 1000 retailers, and leaders in e-commerce, technology, media and Internet, financial services, and consumer goods. Brands work with BrightEdge to increase their revenue and traffic through the optimization of hundreds of thousands of search terms and near real-time recommendations on improving rank.
 

FolioDynamix Selects BrightEdge’s SEO Platform

Leading provider of wealth management technology leverages BrightEdge to jumpstart its new website’s SEO program

SAN MATEO, Calif – January 31, 2011 – BrightEdge, announced today that FolioDynamix has selected BrightEdge’s enterprise-class search engine optimization platform (SEO platform) to grow organic traffic from search engines to its redesigned website.

FolioDynamix, a registered investment advisor and a provider of fee-based account solutions for the wealth management industry, will use BrightEdge to help the company’s web pages rank above the fold in search engines results, which will greatly increase awareness and traffic for its products and services.

FolioDynamix recently launched a new web site to promote its position as the only bundled or unbundled wealth management services provider of fee-based managed account services, and FolioDynamix wants to get the word out about this new site as quickly as possible.

"It is critical that our brand is front and center when our prospective clients search for managed account solutions," said Chris Ollendike, Senior Vice President of Business Development for FolioDynamix. “As a company that’s new to SEO, we recognize the importance of how BrightEdge’s automated recommendations help us easily understand what we need to do to move our site up the search rankings. Other vendors tried to sell us on their paid link services, which surprised us since that practice can get our site penalized by search engines. BrightEdge was the obvious choice as an invaluable, trusted platform.”

"FolioDynamix’s success shows that BrightEdge can bring immediate competitive advantage to SEO programs of any size or sophistication," said Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge. “This is another clear example of our uncontested leadership in the enterprise SEO market."

For more information on BrightEdge's SEO Platform, please visit www.brightedge.com/contact-form. 

Valentine's Day Report Says "Flowers" Get The Love Over Other Searches

Searches on Key Valentine's Gifts Surge 50 Percent in February; "Roses" is Most Expensive Keyword, Soaring More than 150 times Right Before Valentine's Day

SAN MATEO, Calif – February 10, 2011 – When it comes to finding that special gift for that special Valentine, searchers are still most often looking for the tried and true bouquet of flowers, and marketers that paid five cents per click on February 1 will pay almost $8 two weeks later to rank highly on "roses," the most valuable cost-per-click (CPC) keyword for the Valentine's Day holiday.

These are just two of the findings in a report today from Performics, put together in association with BrightEdge, focusing on search marketing strategies for Valentine's Day.

Performics and BrightEdge analyzed the top 83 terms related to Valentine's Day last year and found that the majority of activity surrounded the top 10 terms, such as "roses," "orchids" or "Vermont teddy bear." These top ten terms made up almost 80 percent of all searches, and "flowers" and "Valentine's Day" combined to account for nearly half of all searches.  The rise in search volume primarily took off at the beginning in February, as terms like "Flower Delivery" increased nearly 125 percent month-over-month.

In the period leading up to Valentine's Day from February 1 to February 12, the average CPC for the top ten terms increased 32x. The most dramatically bid-up keywords were often directly related to terms that showed consumer intent to purchase, such as "delivery" or "cheap." In addition, branded keyword prices also increased, as leaders like FTD Flowers ensured that consumers looking for their brand did not get redirected to competitor sites.

"For some industries, Valentine’s Day is a holiday that can make or break a fiscal year," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "By using a combination of SEO and PPC, you can dominate the search pages for critical holiday keywords and, at the same time, maximize search efficiency. Brands can form long- and short-term search strategies that will give them a unique leg up on the competition even in a very competitive and cluttered market."

More information on the BrightEdge SEO platform can be found at http://www.brightedge.com.

BrightEdge Debuts BrandSafe Link Audit Program

Free, Confidential Evaluation Can be Done Quickly To Protect Brands From Embarrassing SEO Tactics; BrightEdge Also Reaches 500 Brand Client Milestone

SAN MATEO, Calif – February 16, 2011 – BrightEdge, the world’s first enterprise class SEO platform that helps brands rise above the increasing clutter on the Web, today announced it will offer to global brands a new, free analysis product that can expose disreputable SEO techniques to CMOs before they end up in the headlines.

BrightEdge also announced that it has set an industry milestone by becoming the first platform to manage SEO for more than 500 leading brands.

"We’ve just seen another global brand get embarrassed in the national media because of SEO techniques and tactics that the company might not have been aware of," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "Today we can offer every CEO and CMO peace of mind because our BrandSafe Link Audit is going to alert our clients to 'black hat' tactics before they get exposed by the media."

The BrandSafe Link Audit Program can identify "black hat" tactics that artificially improve a site’s ranking against important search terms.

BrightEdge has been adopted by marketers who want to transform their SEO into an ROI-driven marketing channel. Seven of the top ten retailers already take advantage of BrightEdge’s unique capabilities to improve rank on thousands of key search terms. Other brands that have recently deployed the BrightEdge platform include Staples, Hickey Freeman, The Knot, Hart Schaffner Marx, Bobby Jones, Coppley, Motorcycle.com, AutoGuide.com, Exclusively Misook, and Christopher Blue.

"This 500 brands landmark represents another major first for BrightEdge. We were the first to make SEO as simple as PPC, the first to integrate web analytics and the first to take SEO global," said Yu. "With over 500 brands using our technology, it’s clear that BrightEdge is the first choice for marketers who want a technology solution for driving ROI from SEO."

For more information, please visit www.brightedge.com/seo-brandsafe-link-audit.

BrightEdge First To Make SEO "Social"

BrightEdge Now Allows Marketers to Optimize Social Channels for SEO

SAN MATEO, Calif – March 7, 2011 – BrightEdge, the world’s first enterprise class SEO platform that helps brands rise above the increasing clutter on the Web, today announced that the BrightEdge solution now identifies and predicts the impact of social media on SEO.

BrightEdge is integrating social media signals into the powerful BrightEdge SEO platform, giving marketers valuable insights that allow them to optimize their social media activity for SEO Return on Investment. As part of this offering, BrightEdge will analyze the content of tweets and Facebook “likes” to pinpoint the exact areas in social media that will boost SEO, and offer actionable recommendations to increase activity in these places.

"The million dollar question is how to tie everything 'social' to ROI," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "With these capabilities, brands can derive additional measurable ROI from their social media activities and make sure that their message breaks through the massive amount of social content that is created every day."

Search engines are increasingly focusing on integrating social content into search results. BrightEdge will offer unique reporting for brands to identify the competitive social media strategies that impact organic search rankings. Social media results will be officially integrated into the BrightEdge dashboards and insights, and BrightEdge will call out specific terms, keywords and activities that search engines are using as a signal for authority.

The social media insights from BrightEdge are integrated into the BrandSafe Link Audit Program, which can identify "black hat" SEO tactics that artificially improve a site’s ranking against important search terms. All BrightEdge customers can optimize social media activity with confidence that the techniques used are above board and 100% "white hat."

BrightEdge Says Companies Risk Damage Due To Illegitimate Links

More than 1,000 Companies Asked for BrightEdge’s Free Brandsafe Link Audit And Hundreds Discovered Improper "Black Hat" Linking by Consultants, Agencies and Even Employees

SAN MATEO, Calif – March 10, 2011 – BrightEdge, the world’s first enterprise class SEO platform that helps brands rise above the increasing clutter on the Web, today released an analysis of the results of the BrandSafe Link Audits it conducted privately by request for more than 1,000 leading brands. The analysis indicates that improper “black hat” SEO tactics are much more widespread than most are aware. They could pose serious financial and reputational risk to hundreds of companies that are most likely unaware of the illegitimate SEO activities that are driving rankings for their brands.

More than 1,000 companies from around the world registered for BrightEdge’s free BrandSafe Link Audit last month. The company launched BrandSafe in the wake of a media whirlwind created by a media outlet’s investigative report on an illegitimate backlinks scheme in use by a major retailer for more than two years. When Google was alerted, the search engine took actions against the retailer that caused it to plummet in search results and lose a huge percentage of its organic traffic, even though the retailer claimed it had been unaware that it was benefiting from the scheme.

"Illegitimate backlinks pose serious risks to the finances and reputations of thousands of companies," said BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu. "If search engines detect these unscrupulous activities, thousands of companies risk losing their high search rankings for terms that drive critical revenue. Company executives need to take a hard, fast look at their SEO practices or run the risk of learning the hard way."

Apparently the damage that backlinks can have on a company is still unnoticed among senior management. BrightEdge said that only about 20 percent of officials requesting the audits reported they were VP level or above.

The vertical industries at highest risk were online services, including real estate sites and photo sharing services. Nearly one-third of these domains had backlinks that put them at risk of corrective action by search engines.

blekko, BrightEdge Team To Bring Brands Into Battle Against Spam

Partnership Between Search and SEO Platform Help Brands Fight Against Increasing Noise on the Web through Transparency and Openness

SAN MATEO, Calif – March 23, 2011 – Search pioneer blekko said today it has partnered with enterprise SEO platform leader BrightEdge to deliver new tools to the world’s leading brands in the fight against spam in search results.

BrightEdge will leverage blekko's open and transparent search index in its enterprise platform so that brands can quickly access up-to-date web data to drive results on the web. In particular, blekko will make available real-time link graph information, enabling enterprises to verify that their own links are legitimate as well as whether sites ranking ahead of them are using black hat or unethical standards to game search engine rank.

"Next to consumers, the biggest losers in the current state of search are legitimate brands that are being outranked by spam," said Rich Skrenta, CEO of blekko. "But too often legitimate companies encounter the unknown when trying to figure out how to get their information in front of consumers who are searching for it. This is a continued step in our efforts to bring transparency to the SEO process."

The BrightEdge-blekko offering will augment SEO reports, dashboards, analysis, and recommendations with real-time on-page, off-page, internal linking, and other key information from the blekko search engine. Brands will be able to see for the first time how spam creators are manipulating paid links and using black hat strategies to draft on brand searches, and then take action to protect the web from such tactics.

"This unprecedented partnership enables everyone from the CMO to the SEO manager to have confidence that the SEO being practiced around their brand delivers results in a responsible manner," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "Through this partnership, any brand on the web can instantly monitor its own and any competitor’s SEO practices on an almost real-time basis."

Current search incumbents give very little guidance to legitimate brands on how they can outrank spam. Companies are forced to operate in the unknown to rise above spam on the web related to their brand and products.

blekko has already enlisted human curators in its efforts to battle spam. This partnership with BrightEdge is its first effort to bring all companies the tools it needs to join the battle against search spam. blekko will continue to make its SEO data free to its users on the blekko website.

Financial terms of the partnership are not being disclosed.

About blekko

blekko was founded in 2007 to pursue innovation in search. The company has raised $24 million since its founding in 2007 from US Venture Partners and CMEA Capital, as well as leading angel investors including Ron Conway, Mike Maples, Jeff Clavier, and Marc Andreessen. blekko has 25 employees, including former Google and Yahoo! Search engineers.