Conductor vs. Yoast

Conductor has proven to be an effective tool for tracking our organic search visibility, researching trends and content topics, and beginning our optimization journey in the new AI-driven world of search. The platform is exceptional for collaboration and is easy to use. Having deeper integration of search-related AI data and tools, organic shopping, schema tracking, and suggestions would further improve an already excellent product offering.

Incentivized

For quick WordPress installations and configurations, Yoast is fast to set up and helps guide you through the common configuration options. It tries to be helpful whether you are coming at things from a technical or non-technical background. The emphasis on white hat SEO topics like improved content, keywords, descriptions, and titles is really appreciated by someone like me who doesn't utilize gray and black hat SEO tactics.

If you are an SEO expert, and you want finite control of each individual aspect of your site, Yoast, like most plugins, engines, tools, etc, hides a lot from you or gives you limited options. It really is meant for someone who wants to apply a general strategy to a whole site. That being said, you can manage Yoast per page on a WordPress site, but even then, I know some SEO experts prefer other tools that are meant for very specific purposes.

Overall, Yoast is the best plugin for SEO in WordPress when applied as a whole.

Incentivized

• Keyword research (includes related terms, types of terms, high ranking pages, search volume, and more)
• Content guidance and briefs (you can use built in tools to get specific optimization steps and create content briefs within the tool)
• Competitor research (compare how competition is ranking and track organic market share)
• Support (dedicated team support, regular check-ins, built-in requests for deliverables/support items, options for requesting work with partner organizations, excellent training materials, and live chat within the platform)

Incentivized

• Readability - makes it easy for you to assess the reading level of your piece to ensure it is correct for your intended audience.
• SEO tips - red/orange/green traffic light system to provide tips on what aspects need improving to be SEO-focussed.
• Redirect tool - easy, automated detection and setup.

Incentivized

• I would like to see a feature to manage the backlink disavow list through search console. If Conductor is able to add this, we may be able to drop one of our other tools and save some money in that area.
• Conductor has a lot of features and can be a bit overwhelming. It is a strength and a weakness, as it takes time to learn all that is available.
• Another feature I would like to see is more integration with GA, we leverage creating annotations in GA and it would be great to have those pulled into the Conductor dashboard automatically.

Incentivized

• Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin is really good at copy and link scanning and optimizing, however, I have not been able to find any assistance on image optimization on our pages and posts. That would be a good update!
• Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin is good at ranking pages and posts individually. I would like to see an overall dashboard of your entire website/blog's SEO health according to the software.
• N/A

Incentivized

Conductor enables high-value SEO activity. There are a lot of moving parts in SEO and I'm always open to products that fit our requirements, but Conductor has built a stronger argument for its value after we subscribed than it had when we subscribed -- that's rare.

I see no reason to discontinue using Yoast as it has been very beneficial for my website and my business.

Incentivized

I check features like the InsightStream every Monday to monitor any major losses or gains in performance. These are easily digested and save me tons of time searching for these insights manually. If there's anything "worth calling home about" I can easily add insights into a workspace and create a report to communicate these results. It's super easy to use Conductor with a team and across departments.

It's super easy to use. Really, it requires little-to-know tutorials or walkthroughs at all — it explains everything you need to know in the description and tooltips built straight into the tool. I've never had to google a how-to or tutorial to use Yoast — it just works, and it works well

Incentivized

Always works when I've needed it

Incentivized

Sometimes reports can take some time to load

Incentivized

It's been sort of off and on in the 2 years I've used it. The live chat has been really helpful many times, and they're quick to respond. We had different support contacts but they've all been good. I think they've recently changed the way they provide support that I believe will be more dedicated and hands-on

Incentivized

I gave it a 4 just because it is helpful if you are just getting started with SEO, it guides you and shows you what you need to do in order for your website to be up and running properly. As a seasoned SEO analyst I wouldn't recommend it just because I can do things better my way.

Incentivized

Our in house SEO manager trained everyone. It was easy to learn and he was well versed with the product. Any questions we had he was able to answer or reach out to support to find the answer

Incentivized

I definitely recommend their professional services for getting started. It got our account 90% of the way to where we needed to be in order to gain value from it. In fact, I'd suggest that with few exceptions (such as, you have a staff that is already familiar with the platform and doesn't need any help), the quick start services over the first 30-90 days should be a standard part of onboarding with any new client. It definitely got us to the point of gaining ROI from the solution and, in turn, will make it easier to justify renewal and continued investment in it.

Incentivized

We tried Surfer SEO before Conductor. It just felt like it didn't have enough to offer in comparison to Conductor. There was a shortage on everything that you could do in the platform and it felt like the lack of in-depth tools caused us to miss out on making sure our content that we're putting out is the best it could possibly be.

Incentivized

Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins was a little easier to understand and offered a real-time guided plugin that helped me write throughout my drafting process. Semrush was much more helpful as a reporting tool, not so much in content creation. Both tools are useful in different ways, it is just a matter of knowing each one's strengths and weaknesses.

Incentivized

Many features

Incentivized

• The Live Edit feature in Content King has given me the ability to make changes on the fly without having to wait for developer time to make simple edits.
• I have been able to gain back hours of time that I previously spent on aggregating data across tools when preparing on-the-fly reports for management.
• Every morning my dashboard provides me with a new insight or answers a question I may not have even thought to ask. This has added to my workload, but it's also helped to become better at my job.

Incentivized

• Findability: I love few things more than hearing, "I just found you on Google!" and knowing that they found us on Google because our SEO is on point.
• Using the Yoast SEO Plugin over time has taught me to create better, more optimized content from the start, rather than having to edit that content after I realize it's not very SEO friendly. This saves a lot of time and lets me put my energy into other things.
• The plugin has helped us make our sometimes-dense content more readable and sharable, which absolutely improves stakeholder engagement.

Incentivized