Conductor vs. Google Ads

Conductor has proven to be an effective tool for tracking our organic search visibility, researching trends and content topics, and beginning our optimization journey in the new AI-driven world of search. The platform is exceptional for collaboration and is easy to use. Having deeper integration of search-related AI data and tools, organic shopping, schema tracking, and suggestions would further improve an already excellent product offering.

Incentivized

Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.

Incentivized

• Keyword research (includes related terms, types of terms, high ranking pages, search volume, and more)
• Content guidance and briefs (you can use built in tools to get specific optimization steps and create content briefs within the tool)
• Competitor research (compare how competition is ranking and track organic market share)
• Support (dedicated team support, regular check-ins, built-in requests for deliverables/support items, options for requesting work with partner organizations, excellent training materials, and live chat within the platform)

Incentivized

• Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
• Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
• Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).

Incentivized

• It is a single host only, which means that if your website spans mulitple subdomains it falls down
• It isn't as easy to control as desktop crawlers, the continuous nature means you can't just give it a set of URLs to monitor.
• Some of the issues it highlights aren't always issues, and so you need an expert user

• Google's heavy dependence on AI makes many of the campaign behavior inscrutable and, often, it performs poorly as a result.
• Their responsive ads, for example, which are heavily recommended by them, often perform significantly worse than normal text ads.
• Their support, while relatively quick, becomes useless if you need any deep insight/help.

Incentivized

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.

As of today Google AdWords leads approximately 90% of paid searches globally. There is practically is no other network that can offer such a relevant and engaging audience at the price. The PPC model is also unique in that no media dollars are wasted, since PPC models ensure brand interaction versus traditional media which has heavy ad avoidance and clutter but still charges a hefty amount for ads.

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.

This is more of a subjective rating, because I think it can be increased with how much our ad spend is. The more of an ad spend, the more visibility we can get, and therefore all features can climb. With an overall larger presence the usability is that where we can get messages out quick, and that's the main thing we try to do with our campaigns.

Incentivized

Always works when I've needed it

Incentivized

Sometimes reports can take some time to load

Incentivized

It's been sort of off and on in the 2 years I've used it. The live chat has been really helpful many times, and they're quick to respond. We had different support contacts but they've all been good. I think they've recently changed the way they provide support that I believe will be more dedicated and hands-on

Incentivized

We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with

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

Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.

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

We tried Surfer SEO before Conductor. It just felt like it didn't have enough to offer in comparison to Conductor. There was a shortage on everything that you could do in the platform and it felt like the lack of in-depth tools caused us to miss out on making sure our content that we're putting out is the best it could possibly be.

Incentivized

Google Ads remains at the top advertising channel within our business for both lead volume and revenue generation, whilst maintaining a reasonable cost per lead (CPL). Both Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads have a much lower CPL, those channels don't contribute as much revenue and lead generation.

Incentivized

Many features

Incentivized

• The Live Edit feature in Content King has given me the ability to make changes on the fly without having to wait for developer time to make simple edits.
• I have been able to gain back hours of time that I previously spent on aggregating data across tools when preparing on-the-fly reports for management.
• Every morning my dashboard provides me with a new insight or answers a question I may not have even thought to ask. This has added to my workload, but it's also helped to become better at my job.

Incentivized

• Once we got the hang of it and had everything setup, it was a great monthly expense that we could count on ROI from. Either by obtaining new customers or literally staying above our competition in search rankings.
• We also started consulting on ads for customers and helping them set things up, which created a new revenue stream for us.

Incentivized