Keep your Conductor account in great shape

As with everything else, a space will tend to get messy after a long period of time—especially when it is managed by many people. The same goes with your Conductor account. With ever-changing industry trends that affect the relevance of your keywords, groups, and pages, it shouldn't be a surprise if your account ends up overfilled, leading to old or irrelevant data mixed in with new priorities and initiatives. This can easily put your configuration in disarray, and can lead to less-than-helpful reporting.

What is an account refresh?

If you find yourself in this situation, you are encouraged to do an account refresh!

An account refresh is a process for checking and updating your current account setup to make sure it still represents your current priorities. This includes:

• Confirming that your tracked keywords are up to date by removing keywords no longer relevant  to your organization and adding new keywords for your current initiatives.
• Checking and reconfiguring keyword and page groupings for more targeted reporting.

This is something you and your team can do internally, or you can connect with your Conductor Team to ask about Account Refresh service in Conductor's Marketplace.

In case you’re unsure whether your account needs to undergo this process, we summed up three questions you should ask yourself and what to do in Conductor to determine if your account needs a refresh.

Are my keywords still up-to-date with my current priorities and does it still make sense to track all the keywords I currently track?

Being on top of the keywords you are tracking is key to having a helpful set of data to report on. When considering an account refresh, take a look at all your current tracked keywords to see if there are keywords that need to be removed or added.

An easy way to determine if you are still tracking relevant keywords is to look at your “Did Not Rank” list:

1. In Conductor, follow the path Measure > Keywords (or click here)
2. Use the date picker to show the most recent 52 weeks of data
   
3. Use the Keyword Ranks filter to show All for the first time period and Did Not Rank for the second time period.
   

Do you see a lot of Did Not Rank keywords? Most likely, these keywords—which completely dropped in ranking over this period of time—are not priorities anymore and you can considered removing them to free space for other keywords or to avoid removing focus from your current reporting priorities.

In reviewing this list, note the keyword themes and patterns you are removing as you can use this to further refine your keywords.

You should also look at gaps and possibilities for new keywords to track for your new initiatives. A quick way to see emerging trends is to use Explorer to do keyword research. For instructions, refer to the Choose the right target keywords for your page article.

Are my keyword groups still relevant to me and do they still correctly represent my tracked keywords?

After reviewing your tracked keywords, the next thing to review is your keyword groups. Assess if your current groups are still relevant to you and align with your current priorities.

1. In Conductor, follow the path Measure > Keyword Groups (or click here).
2. Review the list by considering the following:
   • Number of tracked keywords. Click the header of the "Number of Tracked Keywords" column to sort groups from lowest to highest. Then,, review which groups have the fewest of keywords in them. Ask yourself if you still want to retain these groups or remove them.
   • Keyword Group names and naming conventions. Click the header of the Keyword Group column to sort groups alphabetically. Then, review the naming conventions of your groups to see if it still represents the products, services, organizational jargon, and priorities that matter to you. This can also show you if there are any duplicates in your groups.
3. Review at the configuration types of your keyword groups and make sure you are still grouping the right keywords together. Still in Keyword Groups settings, review each keyword group by considering the following:
   • Smart keyword group rules. Review each of your keyword groups to see if their rules are still up-to-date, relevant, and pulling the correct keywords. Consider new keywords and possible new jargon that might fall under your smart keyword groups and make sure to configure rules to pull those.
   • Standard keyword groups with manually added keywords. Review each of your standard keyword groups and audit the manually added keyword for each group. Ensure that all keywords in them are relevant and are contributing to helpful, relevant reporting.

Are my page groups still relevant to me and do they still include the right pages of my site?

Like reviewing your keyword groups, the same thing should be done for your page groups.

1. Follow the path Settings > Page Groups (or click here).
2. Review the list of page groups by considering the following:
   • Number of pages. Click the header on the Number of Pages column to sort groups from lowest to highest. Then, review groups that have the fewest keywords in them. Ask yourself if it still makes sense to have a group for these pages and decide if you still want to keep or remove them.
   • Page groups names and naming conventions. Click the header on the Page Group Name column to sort page groups alphabetically. Then, review the naming conventions of your  page groups to see they still represent your site structure or the language and jargon you use on your team and on your website. Frequently, these page groups are based on subfolder names so if you had a migration or redesign where this jargon might have changed, you might need to update the names of your page groups to avoid confusion.
3. Review at the configuration types of your page groups and make sure you are still including the correct pages. Still in Page Groups settings, review each page group by considering the following:
   • For smart page groups, review each to see whether the configured rules are still up-to-date, relevant, and pulling in the expected pages. Consider whether new URL structure, subfolder or subdomain naming updates, and meta tag changes might have affected the included pages in the group.
   • For custom page groups with manually added pages, review each and audit the manually added pages for each group. Ensure that all pages in it still make sense to be grouped together and that there are no additional pages that should be included.

What's next?

If you have gone through the questions, reviewed your data, and done all your verification and you see that there is a lot that needs to be updated and changed, then yes, you need an account refresh to bring your configuration up-to-date.

Making sure that you have the most relevant data in your account is key to having valuable reports. Checking and updating all the aspects mentioned above might be daunting and tedious to do especially if you have a thousand keywords and hundreds of groups. however, doing this could also be the difference between getting reports that really matter to you or getting reports that will misguide your team.

If you want a hand sifting through these tasks, ask your Conductor team  how they can help you with an Account Refresh request from Conductor's Marketplace so your account can continue to align with your current priorities.