ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Branders.com Grows Its Revenues Via SEO

"There are a lot of search marketing tools out there, and they're not all the same,” said McLaughlin. "BrightEdge's SEO platform gives us the ability to manage large keyword volumes at scale. It gives us the opportunity to see what our competitors are doing and what works for them. BrightEdge gives us precise visibility into the value of SEO opportunities along with actionable intelligence into the most effective strategies to attack these opportunities."

SEO as a Competitive Advantage
Branders.com also sees other strategic benefits from the BrightEdge platform: It recently acquired Promopeddler.com, the No. 4 player in its industry, with BrightEdge's platform playing a critical role in the evaluation. "BrightEdge gave us a better estimate of what potential acquisition candidates would be worth to us based on the analysis of the value of their now known organic search traffic," explained McLaughlin.

Branders.com's strong position in the natural search rankings can be attributed in large part to its new SEO platform. This is a key competitive advantage given how difficult it is to move up in search rankings. However, in the long term McLaughlin believes such capabilities will become a competitive necessity, not just in his industry but for all e-commerce companies.