SEOmoz - has anyone used it? Useful/Useless?

[jastreet1]

Hi,

Just what the title says. As a tool what can SEOmoz offer and does anyone use it?

Thanks in advance?

 

[StaceyC]

Hi there.

I use SEOMoz (as a pro user) and find most of the tool great.

- Fantastic blog (both the main SEOMoz blog and the user generated content Youmoz blog).

- Opensiteexplorer.org is part of the pro tools package and is great for getting link profiles for your competitors

There are a host of other tools too, though honestly, I really don't use them.

You can get a free trial and before paying for any site's tools. Do that and play with all the tools yourself to see what you like. Also, try Majestic SEO.

 

[RadiusBPO]

Personally I found SEOMOZ useless, but maybe I wasn't using it correctly.

What tools on their system do you like the look of the most? Maybe there are better alternatives.

 

[Chunkford]

Someone once told me, its all sizzel and no bacon.

But with any tool, its only any good if you know what to do with the information it produces. Don't be lured in with high hopes and false promises.

 

[MASSEY]

Seo = backlinks.

Saved you the membership fee there.

 

[Chunkford]

Seo = backlinks.

You know how to wind people up on a Monday morning lol

 

[MarcusMiller]

It's a useful tool for sure. It can be a bit underwhelming at first as some of the tools are a bit shoddy but the campaign manager and open site explorer are worth the entry price alone if you are serious about SEO.

It's now the only tool I use for managing my SEO campaigns but don't think of it as a silver bullet, it won't do the work for you, it will just help you manage things, spot opportunities, track ranks, keep an eye on the competition and all the other things you need to do in a serious campaign.

Ultimately, SEO is about content and promotion of that content, everything else is secondary to that. If you think of content as the engine, then SEO is the gas.

Also, there are some sites that are easy to SEO and the tools work better. Other industries are more tricky, there is no one size fits all super solution out there and everything requires time and effort.

If I have one criticism, the SEOMoz style of SEO is aimed at the big boys and it is not always practical for smaller, and real small companies so if you are looking for quick wins, this may not be the tool for you.

Hope it helps.
Marcus

 

[Alby10]

Marcus, pretty much sums it up in a nutshell.

Like any tool, it all depends on what your specific requirements are. If you have a single website and are looking at promoting that, then there are numerous free resources which may well do the same things, but if your serious about SEO it does offer an all in one solution, although a little pricey IMO.

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

As with most types of SEO software, it's only as good as the user.

 

[TheBAB]

I'd agree with that. You have to use everything to get value out of it. I would question the value of having suscription for more than a few months.

 

[Codefixer]

I've tested the free monthly trial, I didn't find it particularly good though maybe the paid version is better.

The link profiles I looked at with open site explorer didn't uncover any links that I couldn't have found elsewhere and the amount of links was limited to 1000, with the paid version it's 10,000 (I think). I'm not sure it's the great tool in the world. Must try out Majestic.

At the end of the day it doesn't build you your own unique link building strategy that's down to yourself to plan and no software program can do that for you.

 

[bigglesworth]

Agree with most the comments, depends on your needs.

If you are working agency side, it is invaluable, they have several other metrics whereas Google only use PageRank...

MozRank
Page Authority
Domain Authority
Domain Moz Trust
Domain Moz Rank

Won't mean much to the layman but if you are serious about SEO then it is a must.

 

[Deleted member 106254]

SEOMoz is useful but by no means essential and certainly not worth the price if you are a single domain user. The reports are very nice to look at and very informative but I found it takes an age to update (most stuff is crawled either monthly or weekly). Access to the extra features on open site explorer was very useful and overall it did help improve the rankings. It's no magic bullet however and you'll get the same sort of information from Ginzametrics for free.

 

[David198]

SEO Tools are for lames. SEO is not an exact science and hence tools are ineffective.

I've used SEO Tools, IBP, WebCEO, Majestic SEO (Michael Gray just can't stop blogging about it), X SEO, Y SEO... Z SEO...

All rubbish.

Tools are good for agencies who need it to create page loads of reports to show to clients to keep the business going on. Clients love seeing the charts, graphs (specially the one which always goes upwards), tables etc.

Google Analytics, GWT, AdWords, Yahoo Site Explorer are more than enough to do whatever you want to do with these tools.

Most of them use YSE to get backlink report.

Ranking report - Google has become more strict with this and you ping more you get blocked, I can do 100 keyword reports manually faster than any of these tools.

Using Google API you can easily refine and control your Analytics data.

No offense to agencies and those who love tools

I just don't like them.

 

[RadiusBPO]

Ranking report - Google has become more strict with this and you ping more you get blocked, I can do 100 keyword reports manually faster than any of these tools.

I track 1500 keyword rankings hourly using SEScout.com, how could that be done faster manually??

 

[makeusvisible]

SEO Tools are for lames. SEO is not an exact science and hence tools are ineffective.

I've used SEO Tools, IBP, WebCEO, Majestic SEO (Michael Gray just can't stop blogging about it), X SEO, Y SEO... Z SEO...

All rubbish.

Tools are good for agencies who need it to create page loads of reports to show to clients to keep the business going on. Clients love seeing the charts, graphs (specially the one which always goes upwards), tables etc.

Google Analytics, GWT, AdWords, Yahoo Site Explorer are more than enough to do whatever you want to do with these tools.

Most of them use YSE to get backlink report.

Ranking report - Google has become more strict with this and you ping more you get blocked, I can do 100 keyword reports manually faster than any of these tools.

Using Google API you can easily refine and control your Analytics data.

No offense to agencies and those who love tools

I just don't like them.

I have to disagree. If I were doing everything manually I wouldn't be acting in the best interest of my customers.

Just oen example...If I spent time every day tracking everyone's keywords in order to monitor performance, it would probably take me 60 minutes per day. Or I can use Rank Tracker and it does it for me in around 30 seconds.

Thus I can spend the time doing more pro-active things for the customer.

there are some tools that I literally wouldnt want to live without.

 

[David198]

I track 1500 keyword rankings hourly using SEScout.com, how could that be done faster manually??

Are you sure you can track ranking for 1500 keywords hourly using any software?

AFAIK Google bans any IP which generate too frequent search queries. I've even seen these softwares getting completely banned by Google.

There is a way that these software can use proxies to avoid Google finding it out but how far you can go messing up with Google.

You might track 1500 keyword using option to check rank for top 3/5 or may be 10 positions. What if you want to track up to 100 position for each keyword. If you are tracking 1500 keywords for top 100 ranking then it is simply IMPOSSIBLE to track on hourly basis. May be they cache it somewhere and show you cached version rather than live version.

What I meant by "manually faster" term was applicable to few keywords checked for top 100 option.

Like this:

Open browser - Chrome/Opera, set the option to display 100 results in Google, enter keyword and wait.

Now lunch the SEO software enter keyword select option to search for let's say 3 keyword and search for top 100 ranking.

Now hit Search in browser and Search/any other button in software and see result.

Put software in the background quickly, and browser in front. Check result in browser using CTRL+F - count it, enter next keyword and do the same, repeat with 3rd keyword.

Go back to Software and see if it is still searching or finished?

I've tried and tested it WebCEO tool and it is damn slow. I can do manual faster when compared with WebCEO. Same with other tools.

That is what I meant by manual faster.

Of course you need to get some sort of software if you are tracking 1500 or more keywords on hourly basis.

Now add to that the fact that ranking showed by software might not be correct. If it is a web application than the server's IP location determines the ranking the same for a desktop app which might be using data center to get the ranking. A ranking searched from UK might not be same as it will be in the USA. So you can't trust the software to show you 100% correct result.

Just another thought why would you track 1500 keywords ranking on hourly basis? Ranking doesn't change even on daily or weekly basis let alone on hourly basis. If you are really doing aggressive work then it might change on monthly basis. If you are in first page and doing SEO to move it to top then it becomes even slower progress.

 

[Red Mist]

I do use the tools to gather various stats for client reports (if they request them) but I prefer to "get my hands" dirty, so to speak.

Someone mentioned them being all sizzle without the bacon. I can kind of relate to that. Take the "Juicy Link Finder" tool - awesome principle, we'll go off and find all the best sites you should be getting links from - when it comes back with nasa.gov and bbc.co.uk, what are you supposed to do!!?

You can trial it, check it out and see if you like it.

- Martin

 

[RadiusBPO]

yep im 100% sure because I also get email updates if there are changes.

Why do you feel the need to seem like you know and are right about everything? Ever heard of modesty?

 

[MarcusMiller]

[/QUOTE]Someone mentioned them being all sizzle without the bacon. I can kind of relate to that. Take the "Juicy Link Finder" tool - awesome principle, we'll go off and find all the best sites you should be getting links from - when it comes back with nasa.gov and bbc.co.uk, what are you supposed to do!!?[/QUOTE]

Those tools are crap, the new version of the juicy link finder tool is just as bad. They basically just execute a bunch of advanced search queries to find relevant sites that let you add links but you just end up with a load of really shitty directories.

There are a few tools I like a lot though:

Keyword Difficulty - this gives some good metrics
On Page Keyword Optimisation - this again can give some good metrics

I am working on some quite large campaigns at the moment and having quick access to these additional metrics for keyword research is proving invaluable.

We are looking at the keywords and track the following for each variation:

- Keyword Variation
- Quality score (adwords competition)
- Exact match volume,
- keyword difficulty
- optimisation score for top 3 results
- manual review notes checking relevance of results etc

We can then, depending on the results, order by various fields like volume, difficulty, quality etc to get quick directions on the terms we are going to go after.

Of course, there is still the manual approach, but this most recent job for an assisted living company has had thousands of keywords and these tools have allowed us to get some quick and dirty metrics in place to help with the direction.

That said, most of what we have proven, has been the same as we suspected but, where there was a board, that wanted justification for choices, again, this has helped.

The thing to remember is that no matter how good the tools, they wont do the SEO for you, they are just there to make your life easier and save you some time.

I am done in this thread as I sound like a freekin seomoz sales man.