A good, comprehensive SEO tool with stellar customer support, ideal for increasing SEO buy-in across an organization.
Updated July 03, 2022
A good, comprehensive SEO tool with stellar customer support, ideal for increasing SEO buy-in across an organization.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Conductor
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
I don't think we're taking full advantage of this. We don't use Google Analytics, but I'm sure Conductor would be really helpful if we did. The Google Search Console integration is standard, nothing fancy, but it can provide an easier way to pull data at times. I know they have some sort of new feature that lets you make page edits with minimal effort. I don't think we can incorporate this into how we work but through the demos, it seems impressive.
We don't have enough people using Conductor right now, but our Account Manager, Jessie, has been increasingly useful in helping everyone get on the same page when it comes to creating content that satisfies user intent. I'm confident we'll be using some of the Custom Action features down the road.
Explorer is really useful for pulling insights. The "Related Keywords" is essential for ensuring we're using the right language and touching on the things that people are searching for and it's nice that some of the People Also Ask results are included in Explorer. It's also great to search competitor pages individually or look at an entire subfolder or domain to find out what is ranking.
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.
Do you think Conductor delivers good value for the price?
No
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?
No
Conductor Feature Ratings
Using Conductor
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.
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.
- Keyword research
- Performance tracking
- Content optimization
- 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.
- I’d ultimately like to use the dashboards more for reporting but I find them tedious to set up.
Evaluating Conductor and Competitors
Not Sure
- Product Features
- Product Usability
I’m not familiar with why it was purchased but I’m not sure many options were explored.
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
| 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 |
We haven’t - I don’t think premium support is available.
Yes - I’ve reported a number of bugs or errors and the team is very responsive.
Virtually any time I bring up an issue it gets explored and we discuss it in later meetings. I appreciate the support over at Conductor.