SEO Agency Services Utilization & Review of Conductor
November 08, 2017
SEO Agency Services Utilization & Review of Conductor
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Conductor Searchlight
Conductor is our main enterprise SEO tool we use when providing SEO consulting and content marketing services to our clients. My department uses it for reporting and pulling insights that help drive recommendations. We also use other paid SEO tools like Moz, ScreamingFrog, SEMrush, and some local SEO tools (here's a full list http://www.blendseo.com/favorite-seo-tools-consulting-agency/). But these others are used more in-between and as needed for specific tasks. Conductor is our main tool in which we setup each SEO retainer client for gathering data, creating & delivering reporting and digging for insights.
- Reporting is the biggest area where Conductor really stands out. One of the reasons I chose this tool over others is that reporting comes with templates designed for people at various business roles. From an SEO agency perspective, I get a more productive relationship with my clients if more areas of their business understand how SEO aligns with their goals. Conductor also pulls data from sources that are troublesome for our Business Intelligence department, which creates channel integrated reports for our clients.
- Data and insights are very important for providing SEO services. I have a huge variety of SEO tools and browser plugins at hand. But Conductor is valuable in that it provides connections between keywords, typical SEO KPIs and content performance. Other SEO enterprise tools like Searchmetrics and BrightEdge (and maybe Moz if you want to include it here) also provide meaningful insights and recommendations. But Conductor is easily competitive and holds its own here. I'm really excited about enabling Google Search Console integration, since up until now we have been pulling this data into spreadsheets with a free API that is only supported by a single unpaid person.
- Conductor's content mapping is a really cool way to conceptualize content marketing. I love how it gives a visual representation of the customer journey and enables you to apply KPIs to each - giving you a clear idea of the business value of content and how well it performs across each stage of the journey and segment of customers.
- Customer support is done really well by Conductor. This is a big area of difference I noticed right away during the evaluation stage between Conductor and my previous enterprise SEO tool. The Conductor team has jumped in and created reports for me numerous times. They don't hound me when it is time to renew the contract. Chat help is really helpful in solving problems.
- Creating content maps and assigning pages to each segment is difficult. I would like to see more options in ways to associate a page with a segment. For example, allow a custom field to search for something in the code. This way, we could create a custom tag or even pull a visual element off the page that determines which segment the page belongs.
- When looking at rankings, I'd like to be able to quickly see historic trends for a keyword. Currently, it's a little cumbersome to get this -- takes multiple clicks and waiting for the page to load each time.
- I don't get much out of Conductor's backlink reporting. When I need this, I go straight to Majestic. Whether its to dig into backlinks or basic overview reporting, I go straight to Majestic and export data.
- Biggest ROI for the SEO department is reporting efficiency. We used to create all reports by pulling multiple sources into Excel. Now, most of what I need is pulled into Conductor and provided in a really good, live report the client can explore.
The data is good, though not perfect. I feel like BrightEdge does a great job collecting first party data and giving you access via the Datacube, while Conductor provides a mix of first party and partner data. However, I gladly trade what may be my impression of data quality for the other benefits I get from working with Conductor.
In some cases, like search volume, I would rather have old data than no data. Google has created a challenge for all tools that pull keyword search volume by providing less specific volumes. Different tools address this differently. Conductor provides NA for a few keywords where they are not confident on the number they can give. I need to make conclusions based on the data available. As long as the data is relatively close, the conclusions still hold their value. But if my search volume says NA, I can make no conclusion at all. So I simply go to another source that always gives me data. Though I will say that I like Conductor's solution is better than Moz, which provides a range for search volumes. I can't do simple calculations on a range.
In some cases, like search volume, I would rather have old data than no data. Google has created a challenge for all tools that pull keyword search volume by providing less specific volumes. Different tools address this differently. Conductor provides NA for a few keywords where they are not confident on the number they can give. I need to make conclusions based on the data available. As long as the data is relatively close, the conclusions still hold their value. But if my search volume says NA, I can make no conclusion at all. So I simply go to another source that always gives me data. Though I will say that I like Conductor's solution is better than Moz, which provides a range for search volumes. I can't do simple calculations on a range.
Conductor content mapping is very inspirational. But realistically, it is hard to implement. I'm still struggling to get this off the ground. But I'm still inspired and hopeful to get it working smoothly. Hopefully I will update this review soon.
Conductor data and insights are on par with other similarly priced enterprise SEO tools. It blows away less expensive tools like Moz or Advanced Web Rankings. However, I still get a lot of value out of the variety of Moz tools and continue to use them alongside Conductor. They are great in terms of working with me on a custom package that fits my budget.