Shining the Light on Conductor
October 05, 2015
Shining the Light on Conductor
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Conductor Searchlight
Conductor is a linchpin of our SEO services, giving us page-level and keyword-level data that provides smart, tangible insight into our ongoing content marketing strategies that we provide for our clients. Beyond that, the data and insights given about the search landscape in general go a long way to form other services in other departments - not just technical SEO or ongoing SEO strategy. Specifically, PR, social messaging, research and insights, and new business pitches are all supported by data and insight gleaned from Conductor. Additionally, their customer support team has been beyond helpful in providing ad-hoc reports, supplementing both our internal and external deliverables, and providing collateral for new business pitches or client-facing presentations. Finally, the Conductor Content Opportunity reports are one of the first boxes that we check off when launching new services such as research projects or competitive reviews. Ultimately, while its keyword tracking and content insights are the core of the product (and how we utilize it), the additional data and insight makes it a valuable tool for our entire company - not just our digital analysts and marketing managers.
- Keyword tracking is Conductor's bread and butter. Additionally, searches can now be segmented by geo-markets, giving you greater insight into your actual ranking - particularly for those longer-tail, hyper-local keywords.
- The reporting functionality is excellent. Once you take the time to build a template that meets your monthly (or whatever time-period) reporting needs, it's easy to pull a great looking, client-friendly report.
- Conductor recently made a lot of new updates that provides insight into SERPs - specifically what type of media is appearing for any given query. This is key to a content marketing strategy, for pinning down the real value of keywords, and for identifying areas of opportunity.
- Sometimes the search functionality of Conductor isn't as user-friendly. BrightEdge (a Conductor competitor), for example, has a much more user-friendly interface.
- There is no way to copy reporting templates across accounts/clients. This seems dumb.
- Conductor has done two primary things for our business that have made a significant impact on the ROI for the tool: 1.Increased efficiency in terms of the data collected (both level of data, as well as limiting the number of sources for the data), and increased the efficiency for reporting. 2. Provided additional insight and data-points for services beyond SEO management. Broadly speaking, this means that the tool can be utilized effectively, and has value across multiple departments.
Conductor is somewhere between MOZ and BrightEdge. MOZ is very good for entry-level, holistic SEO management and reporting, but is lacking the deeper functionality and toolkit needed for enterprise-level accounts, and scalable reporting and analysis. BrightEdge, meanwhile, does provide all of the tools and data sets (IE, functionality & use-cases) that Conductor provides, with some additional data and insights, but sits at a price-point that is significantly above the investment needed for Conductor. Ultimate, it's a judgment call. I worked with Conductor with previous agencies, and when it came time to select a partner for Delucchi Plus, I fell back on my experience. However, the ongoing support and insight that we are able to glean from Conductor has been invaluable to defining our products and optimizing our workflow.