This overview is designed to give a quick tour of the BrightLocal platform. This is a great starting point if:
- You’ve just started your 14-day free trial
- You’re a new user on an existing account
- You need a refresher!
We’ll take you through each BrightLocal product and our most frequently used tools and reports. We’ll also offer some advice on how to set up and optimize your account.
If you’re short on time, you can watch a video version of this overview below.
Clients and Locations Dashboard
Upon logging into BrightLocal, you’ll be presented with the Clients and Locations dashboard.
This dashboard allows you to see every location you’ve imported in BrightLocal. If you’re an agency, you’ll also be able to group and filter locations for each of your clients.
The Clients & Locations dashboard gives you quick access to all of the reports associated with a single location. Upon clicking ‘View Dashboard’, you’ll be taken to the ‘Location Summary Dashboard’.
Learn more: Read our Clients and Locations FAQS
Location Dashboard Summary
Every location you import into BrightLocal will be given its own Location Dashboard Summary.
The Location Dashboard Summary gives a quick overview of every report currently set up for the location.
The dashboard allows you to access each report, and get quick insights on what’s working well and what needs attention. Think of this as your local marketing command center for each location.
Learn more: Read our Location Dashboard FAQS
Rank Checker
The Rank Checker provides accurate localized ranking data across:
- Google Mobile
- Google Maps
- Bing
- Yahoo
You can use the Rank Checker to check your positions for the keywords that you want to rank for, and in the geolocations where you want to be found.
We automatically populate a few keywords so you’ll be able to get a quick overview of how this location is ranking right away.
We recommend adding new keywords so you can get a better understanding of your overall search visibility.
If you’re looking for inspiration on what to track, here are some recommendations:
- Your brand name (including variations)
- Your business categories (auto repair, auto repair shop, Toyota repair shop)
- Products and services you offer (oil change, dent repair, tire alignment)
You should also add location modifiers which match how local searchers would try to find your business:
- Town / City (Tampa auto repair, oil change in Tampa Bay)
- County / State / Zipcode (dent repair in Hillsborough County, tire alignment 33631)
- Near me (oil change near me)
Finally, you could add adjective modifiers that local searchers might use:
- Best auto repair shop
- Cheap dent repair in Tampa
- Quick oil change near me
Learn more: Read our Rank Checker guide
Citation Tracker
Citation Tracker automatically tracks your business data on top directories and citation sites. Improving the quantity and accuracy of your citations is a key part of improving local SEO.
We pull in the business name, address, and phone number (NAP) from each site so you can see NAP inconsistencies, which are highlighted in red.
The report also shows the top citation sites where your location isn’t currently listed, as well as possible duplicate listings.
Learn more: Read our Citation Tracker guides
Citation Builder 
When it comes to improving citations, we have a service called Citation Builder which is managed via your BrightLocal account.
This service takes the hard work out of manually building and updating citations yourself. It’s cost-effective, accurate, and fast.
We work from a database of over 1,600 sites across 40 industries and let you handpick the most relevant sites for you or your clients.
You can use the Citation Builder dashboard to build a new campaign, submit your order, and view the completion status of previous campaigns.
Learn more: Read our Citation Builder guides
Reputation Manager
Reputation Manager works in two parts.
The first is review monitoring.
We automatically populate your dashboard with historical review data across dozens of top review websites.
You’ll see:
- How reviews have grown over time
- Which sites customers are using to leave reviews
- And, the all-important average star rating
Soon, you’ll start to see new reviews that this location receives. And if you connect Google My Business and Facebook, you’ll be able to respond to new reviews directly from the BrightLocal platform.
The second part is review generation.
Get Reviews allows you to grow review numbers on whichever review site needs a boost.
You can send review request emails directly from our platform. Simply pick one of our fully customizable templates, import your customer contact details, and hit send.
You can also generate custom review request links to use anywhere, such as on a website, in-store, and on printed marketing material.
Learn more: Read our Reputation Manager guide
Google My Business Audit
This tool allows you to view and analyze all of the Google My Business Insights data for this location.
From here you’ll be able to benchmark the Google My Business listing against the business’s competitors for different search terms, and uncover the insights that help you optimize the listing further.
Additionally, Google My Business Audit allows you to see 18 months of data — six times more than what is available in Google My Business itself.
Learn more: Read our Google My Business Audit guides
Local Search Audit
This is an automated audit of key local search ranking factors displayed in an easy-to-understand report.
You’ll be able to use this report to identify the issues that could be hurting your site’s SEO, and find out the specific areas to focus on to improve rankings.
This tool is also perfect for helping agencies win new business. You can quickly run an audit of any business and export the report to send to prospects and include in pitches.
Learn more: Read our Local Search Audit guides
Integrations
Our integrations, which can be set up in minutes, allow you to see the bigger picture in your local marketing efforts from one dashboard.
Firstly, connecting Google Analytics allows you to see all of your crucial website data including traffic by channel, mobile traffic, and conversions.
You can also connect Facebook and Twitter to get insights on how you’re performing on social media.
Agency Lead Generator
Finally, we have a tool called Agency Lead Generator. This is a widget that you can put on your website to help you generate more leads.
Your prospects will be offered the opportunity to get a free local marketing audit as they browse your website. Once they fill in their business and contact details, we automatically run the audit and send it to them via email.
We’ll send you an email alert whenever a new lead requests an audit.
And you’ll be able to see all of the lead’s information (including their audit), so you can follow up with them directly with your insights and offering.
Learn more: Watch our Agency Lead Generator overview video
Conclusion
So there you have it. A whole wealth of local marketing data at your fingertips in a single platform.
It’s worth noting that this is all for just a single location. Multi-location businesses can use BrightLocal to get granular insights on each of their locations, while agencies can get in-depth reporting for every client they manage.
We hope this overview has given you a great first taste of what’s possible in BrightLocal.