THE OPPORTUNITY

Unique Vintage (UV), which sells vintage-inspired clothing online and in a retail store, found itself in a perfect storm of opportunity. While vintage swim styles emerged as a hot trend, the company had to begin competing against new – and much larger – retailers for the most valuable real estate on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). To prepare for the swimwear sales peak, which occurs in springtime, Courtney Lear Wallace, Director of Digital Marketing & Ecommerce at UV, and her digital agency, EXCLUSIVE, launched a plan well ahead of the 2017 season to optimize key product pages and win coveted SERP real estate.

While the team maintained organic rank for crucial topics, UV’s swimwear pages experienced a 10% decrease in organic traffic compared to the same period in 2016. Changes to the Google SERP – Google 4-pack ads, specifically – pushed organic listings for high-performing keywords below the fold.

THE SOLUTION

UV and EXCLUSIVE turned to BrightEdge Intent Signal to increase site traffic and revenue during its most critical shopping season. The team took three steps:

1. Loaded UV’s top 250 Pay-Per-Click (PPC) keywords into the BrightEdge platform as a unique keyword group. These were the keywords most important to the success of the company’s new visitor acquisition campaign.
2. Analyzed this PPC keyword group using BrightEdge Intent Signal to see which keywords had organic listings above the fold and whether UV content pages rankedabove the fold for those keywords. In minutes, Intent Signal categorized the keywords into four groups: Defend, Optimize, Create, and Collaborate. Defend means that both the keyword and its corresponding UV content page have organic web listing above the fold on the SERP. Optimize means that the keyword has organic listing above the fold, and the UV content page is just below the fold, but within “striking distance”. Create means that the keyword has organic listing above the fold, but UV has no content page that ranks for this keyword within the top 100 spots on SERP. Collaborate means that the keyword does not have any organic listing above the fold.
3. Launched a PPC optimization test for each keyword across four categories: Defend, Optimize, Create, and Collaborate.

The team discovered that the Defend category experienced a 10% lower bounce rate on average. All other categories saw higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR) from PPC ads. The team also learned that Cost-Per-New-Visitor was comparable for Defend and other keyword groups.

THE RESULTS

UV and EXCLUSIVE now have the insights to maximize their PPC budget. “These are insights we would have never gained, had it not been for the knowledge received from BrightEdge,” said Mike Frekey, PPC & Amazon Specialist at EXCLUSIVE. To accelerate visitor acquisition, the team will increase PPC budget for keywords in the categories where UV content is not shown above the fold. To prioritize the acquisition of new visitors with strong site engagement, they will spend PPC ads for keywords in the Defend category.

It’s exciting to have actionable data to back up our strategy in the often-nebulous space of SEO / SEM. BrightEdge Intent Signal helps us take away the guesswork.

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THE PROBLEM

Twilio is a cloud communications platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company. Twilio allows software developers to programmatically make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages using its web service APIs. The company's services are accessed over HTTP and are billed based on usage. In 2017, Ruiz decided to work on the longtail and page speed as 2 core SEO initiatives.

THE SOLUTION

Ruiz used Data Cube gap analysis vs. competitors to identify the topics to go after and distributed them to his extensive content producers using the Tasks feature in BrightEdge. His goal is to drive the page publishing cadence up from 5 to 10 per month to 40 or 50, so he needs to identify topics on an ongoing basis.

In addition, he initiated technical projects to enhance page load speed, which helps performance across the site. "The platform isolated a lot of issues on our site so that we can get a top performing site speed." He tracked results in StoryBuilder and elevated SEO by sharing dashboards with stakeholders and executives.

See Sam describe his projects in this video.

THE RESULTS

Twilio saw an 86% increase in traffic to the pages Ruiz created for this longtail project.

BrightEdge helps us empower our product managers to find topics that work best for the different personas.

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THE OPPORTUNITY

Lou Malnati got his start in the 1940's working in Chicago's first deep dish pizzeria. He took his pizza expertise to Lincolnwood, a northern suburb of Chicago, where he and his wife Jean opened the first Lou Malnati's Pizzeria on March 17, 1971.

Lou Malnati's has 50 physical locations and a booming national ecommerce business shipping the country's leading deep dish pizza from TastesofChicago.com. During the evaluation cycle with BrightEdge, Kerri Phillips, digital marketing manager, focused strongly on the Opportunity Forecasting prediction and the Share of Voice analysis in the fiercely competitive Chicago deep-dish market.

THE SOLUTION

"Originally what sold us on the BrightEdge SEO platform was Opportunity Forecasting and Share of Voice, and they showed us what investing in SEO could do for us," Phillips says.

"We have really focused on local SEO for the restaurants to improve how we get the right restaurant to show up when customers are searching for one or arranging a delivery. The biggest local effort was the downtown Chicago campaign, where competition is fiercest. We plugged in our competitors and looked at what they were doing and where were our opportunities and started optimizing. And BrightEdge has been a key part of that."

THE RESULTS

LouMalnatis.com and TastesofChicago.com have both seen a 30% revenue increase in both the restaurants and the ecommerce business. They have beaten every goal they set.

BrightEdge Opportunity Forecasting has been dead on. We have beat every goal we set for two years running.

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THE PROBLEM

Voice search makes up 20% of queries now and is predicted by Comscore to exceed 50% of queries around 2020. The impact on the search landscape will be profound because many voice-controlled devices are both screenless and SERPless – the search results cannot be displayed. Only a single result will be delivered audibly, making it a winner-take-all proposition. BrightEdge recommends combining Quick Answer, long tail, and FAQ content campaigns to address voice search.

THE SOLUTION

“Voice search has had a big impact on our overall content strategy. So we’re taking a close look in BrightEdge at striking-distance keywords, understanding that we really need to be in the top position, and there really is only one result when it comes to voice search,” says Spallarossa, Director of SEO for L’Oréal.

“We use the BrightEdge striking distance report to take action on some of the pages that we feel we have the opportunity to really push up in the SERPs. And that’s become the cornerstone of our content strategy.

We approach voice-targeted content by answering the 5 Ws: the who, what, where, when, and why and also take into consideration the how. We find especially in the beauty industry that people are hungry for how-to videos, that people want to know what is the best product, how do you create this certain look, and so we are working very closely with our content strategy teams to make sure that we are taking a more voice-search approach to content creation.”

>THE RESULTS

“We’re implementing the recommendations that we see within BrightEdge, and we really are seeing growth.”

The way BrightEdge gives us that data and shows us how we’re positioned is the cornerstone of the whole strategy around natural language search.

THE PROBLEM

Verifi is a financial and ecommerce software solution for companies to help alleviate credit card chargebacks. While this is a profitable financial business, the variety and breadth of high-volume keywords are somewhat slim. When Know Agency started managing the account, the chosen keywords were too broad and did not provide any value to the client. Phelps also discovered that the majority of pages on the site had thin, underdeveloped content.

THE SOLUTION

CEO Jane Phelps and Know started by using Data Cube to analyze competitors and discover which keywords would be more targeted to Verifi's customer base. Using the longtail keyword feature, they identified hundreds of attractive keywords to go after and then defined a content augmentation program.

Once they were confident about the new keyword plan, they mapped some of the keywords to existing pages in Keyword Reporting, created new content pages, and tracked all of them in groups in Page Reporting. They also utilized the new BrightEdge Ignite analysis to uncover other keywords that were missed but were an opportunity for optimization.

Finally, they worked with Verifi to present topics in a knowledge base format, similar to what their competitors were doing, to further provide quick answers for potential new customers.

THE RESULTS

The Data Cube score, a measure of search footprint and potential, increased from 413 to 3,130. Keywords almost doubled as well from 689 to 1,298. Organic search traffic increased 37% in less than 1 year.

Competitive analysis using BrightEdge is a valuable resource for high-volume search terms to target for optimization.

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THE PROBLEM

Organic search is a zero-sum game where some brands in the industry will take the preferred position at another brand's expense. Content marketers and SEOs must keep producing content that users are looking for and answering their intent with relevant highly functional content.

THE SOLUTION

As head of SEO at BrightEdge, Newton used the standard playbook of discover, benchmark, create, optimize, and measure content. The first step he took was to form SEO Team, which is made up of the SEO team plus people who like to create content from Customer Success, Sales, and Product Management. They meet once a week to plan and track progress.

Starting with a site audit and Recommendations, they reviewed the site for technical issues and set up a regular cadence plan to address them, especially page load time. Next they used Data Cube to do gap analysis to find new content topics to develop. Then they created keyword groups for tracking and page groups. Some of the topics were addressed in the 85 blog posts in 2017. They developed a longtail strategy and created 95 new pages on FAQs and popular content and SEO topics. Using Universal Reporting to optimize for Quick Answers, they secured additional results. In StoryBuilder they marked the Events described here, built tracking dashboards, and set up email reports for team members and executives.

They redesigned the blog and increased the function of the suggestion carousel. Operationally, they migrated the site over to HTTPS. And they dramatically increased the number of images per page. Lastly, they mapped 3 gated assets to every SEO landing page, which is an internal linking and basic content and lead generation strategy.

THE RESULTS

The results are just what any SEO would want to see: 218% growth in Page 1-ranked keywords, 142% increase in organic traffic, 130% in organic leads, and 156% increase in organic revenue.

The basics of SEO are basics for all of us in every industry. If you have the right platform, do the fundamentals, and take a long-term view you will see organic progress, success, and ROI.

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THE PROBLEM

With rehabilitation facilities across the country, Advanced Recovery Systems (ARS) provides thorough and comprehensive treatment programs for addiction, substance abuse, eating disorders, and mental health issues. They were already spending significant marketing budget to use paid channels with modest results. Their organic performance was below their expectations, so they engaged the LaneTerralever agency and BrightEdge to help them succeed.

THE SOLUTION

The team made it a priority to identify keywords that demonstrated high intent and robust search volume to inform content creation that aligned with ARS’ services using the BrightEdge keyword research capabilities. Using primarily the competitor analysis in Data Cube and Opportunity Forecasting, they were able to recognize content opportunities and prioritize content production.

To remedy the challenge of stale site content in the eyes of Google, they immediately set a publishing cadence of three content pieces a week in the blog and bi-weekly core content publishing throughout the site as well as releasing one premium content piece, such as a short video, interactive quiz, whitepaper or guide per month. These pieces spoke the language of drug users seeking recovery, empathized with their supportive loved ones, and were distributed via syndication, manual outreach, native advertising, social media support, and influencer marketing.

THE RESULTS

The results were truly impressive: 441% increase in SEO visits, 188% increase in total organic listings, 87% increase in revenue, and a 51% decrease in average cost per admission.

The BrightEdge platform allowed us to see the opportunities and orient the content strategy in a way that generated quick, dramatic, high-impact business results.

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THE PROBLEM

Adobe works to cover as much organic search real estate as possible and does not want competitors or distribution partners to appear above it on search engine results pages. Quick Answers display at the top of the page and are part of the Google Knowledge Graph that presents factual how-to information on topics with high query volume. The Quick Answer boxes deliver incremental traffic that Adobe wants to capture.

THE SOLUTION

Kirill Kronrod, Senior Global SEO Manager at Adobe, has figured out what conditions increase the chances of securing the Quick Answer Box. Kronrod uses BrightEdge Data Cube to prioritize the most in-demand topics and phrases and BrightEdge Content Strategies and Universal Results report to track his progress in securing this valuable real estate.

THE RESULTS

Kronrod’s results are truly impressive with more than 5,900 Quick Answer boxes secured. Adobe has also shown a 17% incremental lift on topics on which it has secured the Quick Answer box. The results contribute millions of additional visitors to Adobe.com. Kronrod reports that within the subset of 2,000 How-To phrases, 60% produced Quick Answers, contributing to 84% share of voice with Quick Answer boxes for the main site and 98% including supporting sites. See Kirill's Share video.

Understand what really speaks to your customer, what value you can provide to your customers, optimize correctly, and measure the impact.

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BACKGROUND

Stanley consolidated two separate web properties of the Stanley brand into one site. This process was designed to mitigate traffic disruption and improve traffic and increase results from organic search. The migration was managed by Digital River Marketing Services with the organic search strategy, execution, and tracking supported by the BrightEdge seo platform.

THE PROBLEM

A large focus of the migration was on limiting any negative impact to the organic channel: reductions in organic traffic, organic revenue, total keyword presence in the Search Engine Results Pages, or total pages indexed by the Search Engines. There was an understanding that removing a product category from the site would most likely lead to a decrease in all categories, but that through careful planning this decrease could be minimized.

THE RESULTS

Multiple data points were used to track the progression of the Stanley site over time to ensure goals and expectations were met. All of this was achieved through the detailed process of mapping, planning, auditing, and information sharing at regular intervals over the months prior to launch, and now exists as an outline for how a typical migration and redesign can benefit from a focus on the organic channel during such a time. In September, roughly 50% of all keywords for the ShopStanley commerce site were crossovers from the Stanley Merchandising site. Out of all of the keywords unique to ShopStanley, less than 25 ranked on the first page. This meant that the additional keywords the new Stanley store ranked for on the first page of Google were new terms and not just previously ranking terms from the ShopStanley site.

Those first-page term increases totaled a 77% lift in just the 1st month, and by the end of December, a 156% total keyword increase was achieved versus October.

Not only did the ranking keywords increase, but the percentage of keywords at #1 and the percentage of keywords on the first page were doing well by December. Nearly 40% of all the keywords Stanley ranked for were on the first page and over 7.5% of the total number of keywords Stanley ranked for were in the #1 position. From a traffic and business-results perspective, the impact was almost immediate. The site migration occurred in September.

Daily revenue numbers from the organic channel in the middle of January at nearly twice the levels they were prior to the store launch. The organic channel began to see traffic at nearly 200% what it was on the same domain prior to the changes. The effective site migration helped add more than 600 keywords to Page One.

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THE PROBLEM

Cabela’s is a national physical and online retailer of hunting, fishing, and camping gear. Jesse Farley, SEO manager for Cabela's, wants to develop and deploy content that guides customers through their journey to purchase and the use experience they sought. With a large catalog of products, Cabela’s needs to prioritize where to put the content marketing focus to maximize results.

THE SOLUTION

Farely describes a concept he calls “digital curb appeal” that engages his prospects. His content objective is attachment to the products and the brand. “You have to think about where they are in their buy cycle. Content takes a long time to do. You have to build it over time. I have been working on this for two years and I am nowhere near where I need to be.” BrightEdge enables him to demonstrate the effectiveness of content marketing and has allowed the SEO department to get budget that they’ve never really had before.

THE RESULTS

At the end of the day, “data never lies” and business is about increasing revenue, but it starts with good content getting distribution and engagement.

Positioning is key. Content must have curb appeal. It must have something they can look at and say, ‘I want to do that. I want to be part of that.’
- Jesse Farley, Online Marketing Strategist, Cabela's

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