BrightEdge vs. Conductor vs. gShift (discontinued)

BrightEdge is great for large companies and large SEO teams since it's pricey but worth it if you have a large team or organization using it. For small businesses, I would use a different tool like Semrush because of the price and the variety of tools it offers.

Incentivized

Conductor is a great tool to use when we're planning and optimizing content around specific trends. It also helps us track our on-going performance as well, which is great to help us improve. Conductor is less ideal for content that has a quick turnaround time or pieces where SEO isn't a priority, also if you're looking to manage content publishing directly. It's more useful when it comes to strategy and optimization for in-depth pieces.

Incentivized

gShift's pace of development is pretty amazing and they are very responsive to enhancement requests and other feedback on their solutions. gShift is well-suited for an agency environment where multiple clients need the basics in keyword rankings and website analytics and PPC reporting integration. gShift is less suited for a large organizations with multiple properties or web presences that are all integrated but require silos for reporting purposes or any type of parent-child reporting relationship that necessitates reporting at the property level as well as summarized reporting for all properties.

Incentivized

• Instant - Keyword research tool is by far our team's favorite item on the platform
• DataCube - We are able to uncover competitive gaps and hone in on specific sets of pages using filters containing our business product assortment attribute.
• Professional services have been attentive when asking for changes

• When I need to quickly determine what Google features our keywords are ranking for: Featured Snippets, Carousels, Rich Snippets, Sitelinks, PAA boxes, etc.
• The ability to create highly customizable dashboards that provide a one-page view of insights for the specific web properties you are tracking.
• A content guidance tool that is unmatched by any other product available in the market.

Incentivized

• Bringing most of your applications to one platform.
• Managing Gmail Accounts.
• Bringing all your communication channels to one spot.
• Easy setup and account integration.

Incentivized

• The storybuilder feature isn't anything outstanding. I feel like I can get the same type of data and format from Google Data Studio.
• I feel like the Hyperlocal feature is still very junior compared to other features. It provides you good insights, but you have to set all the data fields before you can get a picture as well as it doesn't really give you an idea of how you can improve.
• The mobile SEO solution is a good concept, but it needs some tweaks to be better, especially when building out a mobile story builder. Some of the data isn't simple to read and the mobile keywords functions don't also account for voice searches.

Incentivized

• Backlink tracking/reporting (would like to see backlinks more easily and maybe backlink opportunities if possible)
• Custom content briefs (right now I move the brief from the platform version into our own in-house Word doc template because it is more detailed. Would love to be able to customize the brief that is set up within Conductor so that we can do it all in one place.)

Incentivized

• Minor bugs and defects are an ongoing issue - for example, PDF export capability for custom dashboards seems to be down frequently. While these type of defects are always resolved in 1-2 weeks, the fact that some of them keep reoccurring is an ongoing frustration.
• Custom Dashboard functionality is limited to pre-set defaults as far as what data points or "beacons" as gShift calls them, that you could pull.

Incentivized

I would renew, as I don't feel there is a product out there that would have the impact on our SEO efforts as effectively as BrightEdge. It provides the information I need and integrates with other tools like Google Webmaster Tools, to truly have the depth of information that makes their suggestions for SEO changes so valued.

Conductor enables high-value SEO activity. There are a lot of moving parts in SEO and I'm always open to products that fit our requirements, but Conductor has built a stronger argument for its value after we subscribed than it had when we subscribed -- that's rare.

Because it depends on the feature, it's either easier or not to use. Some of them, not being particularly friendly, I no longer use, and I focus on the ones where insights are easy to understand and data seems well-elaborated.

Incentivized

I check features like the InsightStream every Monday to monitor any major losses or gains in performance. These are easily digested and save me tons of time searching for these insights manually. If there's anything "worth calling home about" I can easily add insights into a workspace and create a report to communicate these results. It's super easy to use Conductor with a team and across departments.

Always works when I've needed it

Incentivized

Sometimes reports can take some time to load

Incentivized

This is a area where the BrightEdge team really shines. Their commitment to training and product support is unmatched not only for SEO platforms, but life in general. I often find myself wishing my internet provide and similar would go to BrightEdge for training on support and attitude. I would rank them an 11 if I could.

The Conductor support team is excellent, especially our Customer Success manager. Our monthly calls to review our wins, losses, and key takeaways for the next steps are incredibly helpful, and Conductor's platform provides not only an organic search tool for our company but also a learning resource via our Customer Success calls.

Incentivized

Our in house SEO manager trained everyone. It was easy to learn and he was well versed with the product. Any questions we had he was able to answer or reach out to support to find the answer

Incentivized

For the most part it was seamless. The load time of clients was a little long, but otherwise was quite easy.

I definitely recommend their professional services for getting started. It got our account 90% of the way to where we needed to be in order to gain value from it. In fact, I'd suggest that with few exceptions (such as, you have a staff that is already familiar with the platform and doesn't need any help), the quick start services over the first 30-90 days should be a standard part of onboarding with any new client. It definitely got us to the point of gaining ROI from the solution and, in turn, will make it easier to justify renewal and continued investment in it.

Incentivized

While relatively expensive, Brightedge really does offer the best quality product but just as importantly (if not more so) the level of client/agency support. We have biweekly training with the entire team to continually stay up to date on Brightedge's offerings and strategies. They also offer the ability to do ad hoc reporting using some of their tools that can help us win new business and recommend Brightedge to additional clients, expanding our business as well.

We didn't use another product previously, we used an agency that did everything for us, so bringing Organic SEO in-house was why we went with Conductor. I have used other products in other roles and at other companies and each has its strengths. Conductor is good for large enterprises

Incentivized

They are very different tools can't compare them.

Incentivized

Many features

Incentivized

• We have only started with BE a few months ago and so I don't have any hard numbers from an ROI perspective, but i can say that what we spent on BE is a fraction of what we were spending with agencies and we are actually getting results by doing this ourselves. From that perspective we have seen a cost savings.
• With focused SEO campaigns and projects we have been able to move the needle on our SEO rankings for specific products and services. This is going to have a great impact for us in 2019 as we have some specific product goals and campaigns for 2019 that we have been working to build up over the last couple months of 2018.

Incentivized

• Conductor helped us aim at low hanging fruits for quick wins, which increased our traffic
• With Conductor's tool, it was easy to look at general keywords where we were already ranking, but not good enough, and then focus around what we could do to increase our positioning
• All this extra traffic, gave us more leads, therefore more sales!

• We have been able to identify other keyword ranking opportunities and increase our on-site conversion rate.
• gShift has helped us prioritize content and discover content that is over-performing, and better optimize that content and use it for remarketing purposes.

Incentivized