Item: Conductor
Rating: 9
Author: Angie Benamati

Overall Satisfaction with Conductor Searchlight

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At SBD we deployed Conductor across our organization. It is being used by both the B2B2C tools and storage and B2B security and industrial businesses. We use the tool to inform content creation and before refreshing websites. To track the impact of changes we've made and justify project resources for new SEO work.

Pros and Cons

Pros

To analyze search rankings, develop medium and long term recommendations, create workflow for updates.
To help build a sustainable model for managing optimizations and reporting across a large industrial organization.
Before embarking on any SEO, it’s always a good idea to have the right foundational components in place. This includes deploying the right tools and up-skilling staff to help ensure that our SEO boosts website ranking. Condutor is integral to our ability to do this well.

Cons

Ability to integrate those look back comparative periods within Webmaster tools so you can see by topic what has grown organically in Google over time and the “buckets” of similar terms under those. Search console trend and insight reporting. Would be great if some of the insight widgets could focus on key takeaways and points of improvement. Add advanced Google Search Console trend data.
Better coverage for Global Emerging Markets and those regional engines.
Comparison time periods by quarter not just by week. Aggregate total impression share from ranking on Organic and Paid on first page for topic or keyword.
YouTube keyword recommendations and insights.

Return on Investment

Conductor keyword insights helped us to launch more successful consumer pay per click and social advertising campaigns as part of an early acquisition test which outperformed goals by 190%.
Successful gap analysis identified a content opportunity with the potential to increase organic search traffic to the refreshed SMS websites by 23%.
Provided GTS paid search opportunity analysis and budget recommendations for DeWalt, B+D and Stanley.
Provided a benchmark analysis for the Stanley Security Systems team that will be utilized in ongoing website refresh project.

Data Integration

Conductor data aligns with our other research and is a trusted resource.

Strategic Collaboration

The most important step to building a collaborative content process is to create a stellar team with an SEO strategist and ensure it functions properly. Fostering an atmosphere where ideas can be heard and supported or tweaked is essential. It's nice when the entire team has the ability to quickly glean insights into trending terms, how content is presently performing and what the competition is doing well through the Conductor platform.

Support Rating

We’ve always had a great relationship with our customer success manager but needed additional support in certain areas of the company. We began testing Conductor managed service hours as an alternative to agency resources or internal staff in 2017. We started with one BU. Managed Services is more of a general SEO resource not solely focused on getting the most out of the platform. Sort of taking insights and going a step further to wrap an action plan around it. They go deeper into understanding the website and the business. That has been great.

Alternatives Considered

Brightedge

Likelihood to Recommend

Using the right technology and content also requires another critical component: having the right talent in place to maximize the insights. Companies need to have specialized resources. If there are skill gaps, it’s best to work with an agency or a third party to help supplement these skills. Be sure these partners are certified in Conductor.

Conductor Feature Ratings

Using Conductor Searchlight

Usability

I use it from a cross domain enterprise level and would like a dashboard that gave me a bird's eye view of all domains.

Comments

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Joe Taylor
commented 7 years ago
Thank you so much for the review, Angie. Your ability to use Conductor throughout the org is an excellent example of true "team enablement" and I love seeing that you have concrete numbers to prove the value. We still see a lot of teams that are struggling to get their Paid/Social teams more aligned and using organic data to make better decisions, but clearly your team has made great progress in this arena. Thanks for the feedback on how we can improve the product. The good news is I think we are addressing a lot of your suggestions in the near-term! Details: - I'm not sure where advanced metrics from GSC is in our roadmap, but we are starting to hear some good ideas around what customers would like to see in addition to the current integration. Will forward your specific suggestions to Product. - Just this week, we added 60 new location/language/search engine combinations. We have a ton now and are constantly adding so let us know when we are missing a market that is important to you (link: https://support.conductor.com/hc/en-us/articles/214165027) - We are updating several aspects of the date pickers in Conductor. I haven't seen the release date, but it should be very soon and I think this will address your request - For YouTube, we do have an integration that provides keyword recommendations but it looks like you want something more specific. Feel free to shoot me an email on this and I will make sure Product knows. Again, thank you so much for the review. We love working with Stanley Black & Decker and will continue to work hard to provide a great experience. Joe Taylor Director of Customer Success jtaylor@conductor.com

Conductor drives marked search visibility improvment across SBD