When it comes to digital marketing campaigns, SEMrush is arguably top-of-the-mind. It’s a robust tool that can be employed in any search engine optimization campaign, big or small. On the other hand, BrightEdge has made a name for itself as a tool squarely focused on SEO for the enterprise level.
Despite making headways in Internet marketing, BrightEdge has largely remained low-key. In addition, its quotation-based pricing tends to deter potential users outside of larger enterprises. Given what we know about BrightEdge, how does it compare to SEMrush?
SEMrush vs BrightEdge Comparison Chart
| Name | SEMrush | BrightEdge |
 |  | |
| Price | Check Price at SEMrush.com | Request quote at BrightEdge.com |
| Pricing Model | Monthly or Annual subscription | Quote-based |
| Integrations | Readily integrates with Google products | Supports Moz, Majestic SEO, Adobe Systems, Google Analytics |
| Ideal for | Freelancers, and Small, Medium, and Large Businesses | Large enterprises |
| Support | Live, Email, Phone, and Tickets | Email, Phone, and Tickets |
| Training | In person, live, webinars, and documentation; SEMrush Academy | Webinars |
| Campaign Management | Yes | No |
| Site Audits | Site Audit Tool, Content Audit Tool | ContentIQ, Site Support |
| Keyword Tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Reporting and Statistics | Yes, including prioritization system Daily updates | Yes, including customizable dashboards User intent tracking |
| SEO Management | Available | Available |
Price
BrightEdge’s quote-based pricing is even more expensive than an annual subscription with SEMrush.
Digital marketing campaigns take a lot of time, effort, and of course, money. In other words, if you’re going to purchase an SEO tool, you want to know how much ROI you will get. With SEMrush, pricing is more upfront. The entry-level Pro Plan starts at $83.28 per month if billed annually. On the other hand, its top-end Business Plan will set you back $333.28 per month, billed annually as well. Going for the yearly subscription will give you a 16% discount, but it’s still a tad bit expensive compared to other SEO tools.
BrightEdge’s pricing, on the other hand, is rather obscure. Information about their plans are not readily available on their website. Nonetheless, one can expect enterprise pricing for an enterprise platform. Reviewers have mentioned BrightEdge plans can be as low as $2,500 to as high as $6,000 per month. Essentially, you’re looking at a monthly expenses that cost more than an SEMrush annual subscription.
Keyword Research and Reporting
SEMrush provides real-time updates for more responsive campaigns, while BrightEdge banks on its proprietary Intent Signal tool to keep you one-step ahead of SERP changes.
Both SEMrush and BrightEdge boast of high-quality and high-impact keyword analysis tools. SEMrush, for instance, comes with a Keyword Research feature for impactful PPC and SEO campaigns. Apart from CPC, volume, and competition, you also get extended information with SEMrush, including keyword difficulty, volume trend, and value for organic and paid research. Moreover, you also benefit from daily ranking updates, perfect for marketers keen to translate reliable data into meaningful, strategic action.
With BrightEdge, multiple tools are used to create a big picture of your SERP. It’s Data Cube feature, for example, develops an initial yet comprehensive list of keywords your content ranks in. This includes insights about your competitor’s performance as well. On the other hand, robust filters refine your lists based on value, allowing you to prioritize the optimized content you need to develop. Then, there are additional tools to monitor your KPIs based on standard metrics like conversions, time-on-page, and revenue.
Overall, SEMrush has the advantage in terms of metrics. Because you get real-time information, you’re also in a better position to track changes in your SERP performance. However, BrightEdge does boast of the ability to monitor user intent called the Intent Signal tool. This feature allows users to assess the current SERP and gain insight what searchers might want to do with that specific search.
Site and Content Audit
Unlike BrightEdge, SEMrush provides easy-to-digest updates as well as a powerful Content Audit tool.
To ensure search engines find your content, SEMrush and BrightEdge both offer powerful site auditing tools that pinpoint key errors in your website. This is essential, since today’s digital marketing campaigns largely depend on a site’s SEO-health and user-friendliness.
SEMrush, for instance, offers what it calls the Site Audit tool. This feature runs a technical survey of your site’s SEO health, making appropriate recommendations based on detected issues. With SEMrush’s dashboard, you can quickly glance at these critical errors affecting your Google rankings thanks to the simple prioritization system that groups issues into errors, warnings, and notices. You’ll also get thematic reports on key areas including crawlability, broken links, and website security. Moreover, the Site Audit tool assesses internal link distribution as well as page loading speed.
On the other hand, BrightEdge calls its website audit solution ContentIQ. This carries out a range of actions that are configurable based on your business needs—from the standard audits of on-page elements to more flexible site audits based on unique rules like RegEx and XPath. ContentIQ also integrates with the platform’s StoryBuilder tool. This allows you to track trends on how error resolutions contribute to improvements in organic search.
However, SEMrush comes with real-time updates of its metrics and a powerful Content Audit tool as well. The latter can analyze up to 20,000 pages of your website, spot problematic content, and even identify articles that may need to be re-written or updated. With BrightEdge’s own Site Report, you’re mostly limited to content performance and recommendations.
Usability and Customer Support
BrightEdge has the more responsive customer support but SEMrush boasts of an extensive resource and training center .
Given the multitude of data that SEMrush provides, most users will face a learning curve in using the tool. However, dashboards are organized fairly well, so once you familiarize yourself with the features, using the software and running reports should be a breeze.
On the other hand, BrightEdge scores better in terms of usability. Non-marketers will find the analytics display easy to read and understand, allowing for more meaningful conversations eschews and minimizes overly technical terms. Although using the platform does require some initial training like in SEMrush, the overall experience is manageable. Plus, you get customizable SEO dashboards, so you gain instant, high-level summaries of KPI metrics important to your business.
BrightEdge also offers more responsive customer support. But given the price you’re shelling out for their service, it’s only reasonable to expect immediate assistance from this platform. Given that SEMrush supports more businesses both big and small, BrightEdge can afford to focus on their customer support for large enterprises.
However, SEMrush does have a more extensive resource center. With SEMrush Academy, you gain access to a number of free SEMrush and online marketing courses. Many of these classes are hosted by renowned digital marketing experts, and cover a broad range of topics—from content marketing to advanced competitive research practices.
Verdict
SEMrush is the better value-for-money tool, with BrightEdge islimited to larger enterprises who can afford its enterprise costs.
Since SEMrush and BrightEdge offer almost the same set of SEO tools, it’s hard to justify the rumored price range of the latter. While BrightEdge may have some exclusive features, it’s offset by SEMrush’s own proprietary machine learning algorithms. At the end of the day, both bring the same comprehensive suite of SEO reporting and monitoring tools critical to online marketing campaigns.
Although one can argue that BrightEdge is marketed for larger enterprises, SEMrush’s Business Plan—with an annual cost less than BrightEdge’s monthly fees—should be just as capable. Of course, if your organization can afford BrightEdge, you do get the added benefit of claiming you’re using premium software. But if you’re keen on ROI, then SEMrush is the way to go.
