Item: Conductor
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Conductor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Conductor for monitoring different keyword groups that are relevant to several areas of the business. Conductor's reports allow us to quickly see what keyword areas we are making organic visibility gains in and how our identified competitors are doing in respect to our performance. Explorer is accessed regularly for content creation, research, and interpreting competitor strategies. We use the Deepcrawl tool for reporting, primarily for technical issues for the website. Down the line, we will probably be taking advantage of some of the marketplace requests for content creation and schema markup which will allow us to push SEO efforts forward without pulling busy staff from other departments. The Conductor plugin is also handy for quick auditing processes and our account manager is really willing to help problem solve and teach people who are not familiar with SEO about how the tools work.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Account Management - We work with Jessie Xu and she does an excellent job working with people across all skill levels to help them figure out how Conductor fits into the work they're doing. She's responsive, knowledgeable of Conductor and SEO in general, manages agendas well, and when she runs into something she doesn't have an answer for, goes and finds the answer rather than giving half an answer.
Generated Reports - A lot of the reports in Conductor (like Content Performance and Market Share) are useful right out of the gate without having to do a ton of customization, though the proper tailoring makes them really effective.
Conductor's Chrome Extension - For large organizations, having a free SEO tool that has enhanced functionality through a paid plan was easy to get approved. The tool does most of the essential functions of what 3 separate SEO tools can handle (which I also couldn't get approved for use)
Explorer - It's a pretty standard SEO research tool, but I've used other platforms that give you far too much irrelevant data during the keyword research process. Explorer tends to keep the keyword results fairly relevant to your topic.
Unlimited Users (I think) - You can add as many people (and set their admin privileges) as you want. Maybe this is just with our plan or maybe there is a limit but we haven't hit it yet. It's extremely helpful just to know people have a Conductor account and can jump into the platform when they have time or are feeling motivated to learn.

Cons

General Navigation - I tend to get lost in the tool and have a hard time locating features, so I assume they're not available. The new navigation they implemented in the last year is definitely an improvement.
Limited Customization - There seem to be certain limitations that I can't seem to figure out the purpose of not fixing - not being able to customize timeframes within the 'Reports' is frustrating and in the Search Console Analytics, It would be great if you could filter the clicks/impressions/CTR/position and add in time frames to do comparisons between different periods. Also, some of the pre-set ranges don't always work out (like using four weeks over four weeks rather than month over month).
Deepcrawl - This is not necessarily Conductor's fault as I think all automated crawling tools suffer from so many false positives and other issues, but Deepcrawl has always felt particularly off and hard to customize to generate meaningful reports.
Backlink Data - You can add a Majestic assessment of sorts to Deepcrawl, but it doesn't give enough detail to do thorough backlink audits.
Comparison Competitor Content - For certain reports, you're only able to generate comparative data between a limited number of competitors you've identified. You don't always know who your best competitors are to do research against and it would be helpful if this was more flexible. I could be completely wrong but the limit feels like an upselling tactic rather than something the company doesn't have the resources to open up.

Return on Investment

Increased the education and overall meaningfulness of SEO across the organization
Improved on-the-fly reporting
Expedited key insights into content creation
Provided baseline metrics to reflect site's organic performance improvement beyond clicks/impressions

Support Rating

Really, the support is what makes the tool for me. There are a lot of tool providers that offer similar features. I don't come across a lot in Conductor that I haven't seen before in an SEO tool, but the customer support is extremely helpful. Jessie is eager to provide support in nearly any task, gives good input, and leads tutorials for other people across the organization. It's great to be able to refer someone to an external resource for information that I know I can trust to reply quickly while giving good information.

Alternatives Considered

BrightEdge, Ahrefs, Semrush and Siteimprove

I've used BrightEdge, Ahrefs, Semrush, Siteimprove, and a few others I can't think of the name right now. We didn't move from one to the other, this was always the tool I have used with this company.

Key Insights

Do you think Conductor delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Conductor's feature set?

Yes

Did Conductor live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Conductor go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Conductor again?

Likelihood to Recommend

Useful for: Large enterprises with limited resources that need a real partner to push initiatives forward and reinforce the value of SEO practices Detailed performance monitoring for individuals who understand their business priorities and what keywords reflect this General keyword research and competitor page analysis Anyone who is looking to switch from BrightEdge because their customer retention strategies are appalling Not so useful for: Backlink analysis Monitoring/solving detailed technical issues

Conductor Feature Ratings

Using Conductor

Users and Roles

10 - Mostly marketing but anyone who expresses an interest in understanding SEO is encouraged to make an account. It’s definitely useful that there’s unlimited seats unlike other tools.

Support Headcount Required

1 - This is definitely a tool that has to have heavy engagement with an SEO expert. People are able to do some research with a limited amount of success but as so much in SEO is about interpretation, even the greatest tools need someone to provide guidance.

Business Processes Supported

Keyword research
Performance tracking
Content optimization

Innovative Uses

It’s been useful to show people unfamiliar with SEO what we’re performing for in a way that’s easier to view than using other tools.

Future Planned Uses

I’d ultimately like to use the dashboards more for reporting but I find them tedious to set up.

Likelihood to Renew

I appreciate the great customer support and unlimited seats. The company seems to have a lot of big plans and received a lot of investment this year to be able to fulfill those big plans so I’m willing to stick it out. That and moving everything would be annoying.

Other Software Used

Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Semrush, Adobe Analytics, Google Search Console

Evaluating Conductor and Competitors

Products Replaced

Not Sure

Key Differentiators

Product Features
Product Usability

I’m not familiar with why it was purchased but I’m not sure many options were explored.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I’d explore options that were much cheaper. This tool is so incredibly expensive and it’s hard to justify it to management when they’re eager to cut costs.

Conductor Support

Conductor Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Knowledgeable team Problems get solved No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	Not kept informed

Comments

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A good, comprehensive SEO tool with stellar customer support, ideal for increasing SEO buy-in across an organization.