Kristen O’Toole, Editorial Director: We started out in 1981, specifically focusing on the SAT, and prepping students for that, and we now offer online courses, in-person courses, and private tutoring in 500 locations in 12 countries for 15 different test types.

Pia Aliperti, Editor and Content Strategist: Our primary audience are college-bound students. So these are high school students about to embark on the college admissions process. It’s scary, they don’t know what they’re doing, there’s a lot of anxiety, and they’re really looking for answers. They’re looking for someone they can trust.

Kristen O’Toole, Editorial Director: Conductor really helps us understand the needs of our audience. Searchlight data gives us a window into our customers’ online behavior without having to do a focus group or run a survey. But it does really inform us about our customer intent, and how we can best meet that.

Pia Aliperti, Editor and Content Strategy: It makes a lot of sense to use data to back up what we instinctually think that our students want to know about. I think the data brings us closer to our students; it brings us closer to the actual intent behind their searches, and it brings us closer to the topics that they really care about. The SAT changed; internally we thought of the redesigned SAT as just that, the redesigned SAT. But we found through keyword research through Conductor that students were calling it the New SAT. We wanted to make sure that we were using the language that the students were using. We use SEO at really every stage of the writing process, from coming up with topics to then producing that content, and going back and improving that content later to make sure that we’re still in line with what our customers need.

Kristen O’Toole, Editorial Director: I know that due to the work that we have done with Searchlight, we have almost doubled our answer boxes on search results page, and dramatically increased the number of pages that we have ranking in the tops 3 slots for terms that are relevant to our business.

Pia Aliperti, Editor and Content Strategy: Those numbers are exciting because it shows us that our content is reaching our students, our audience. It shows us that our strategy is working, our strategy to find the topics that students are looking for and meeting those needs — that is working, that we are ranking for those searches.