• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 26, 2011

BrightEdge has developed a module for its search engine optimization platform that allows company employees in one place or worldwide locations to collaborate on SEO campaigns. The goal, of course, is to rank higher in organic search listings.

The module -- Collaborative SEO -- allows employees in marketing, information technology and finance departments to coordinate SEO strategies across all divisions in a company when employees support Web content.

Features in Collaborative SEO allow companies to turn prioritized recommendations into tasks, assign set tasks to individuals in company divisions, track task progress and automatically detect when tasks get completed. The idea will move brands using SEO services into the next step of automation.

Years ago, an online marketer might have spent about 25% of her time in search engine optimization, but now BrightEdge has at least one client in the IT field that trained more than 500 people in the company on SEO skills, explains CEO Jim Yu. "Each user can focus on the area relevant to them," he said.

Yu said the module lets the business unit understand what the search funnel looks like, how many leads come in, and how the company performs competitively. The data allows general managers of business units across the company to determine the impact of SEO on revenue.

A little more than a dozen BrightEdge clients, such as Synopsys, continue to test the module. One client in the tech industry requesting anonymity said it helps to build a workflow and assign tasks to managers. Many marketing departments have been divided into organic, paid search and social media. This tool allows managers to build campaigns and assign tweets to a specific employee.

Nirvana becomes one dashboard integrating Google, Bing and Yahoo paid and organic search, as well as social media for Facebook and Twitter. Marketers would have access to a dashboard that would allow them to determine the amount of budget allocated to social, organic and paid. Google's DoubleClick v.3 in beta comes close, according to the source.

While process automation remains new to the advertising industry, others have been using this type of system for years. Google and Microsoft offer word processing platforms through cloud computing, where one user will make changes to a word processing document and pass it along to others. The platform documents changes that can be referenced at a later time.

U.S. automotive manufacturers began using similar technology more than 10 years ago to track new product designs through the company. Ford and General Motors tied their respective platforms to their intranet, where engineers could tap templates, design the product, and move along the schematic to other departments within the company.