Is Moz seo any good? An assessment of this popular SEO tool

Moz SEO Tools

There are many SEO tools available, and Moz is one of the most popular. In this article, we will assess the tool and decide if it’s a worthy tool as you work on your search engine optimization.

What is the Moz seo tool?

Moz is the popular all-in-one SEO software suite that contains tools designed to improve search engine visibility. Moz key features include Link Explorer, Keyword Explorer and Rank Tracker.

Not only is the Moz SEO tool very useful, but the website also features a whole host of resources to help you sharpen your SEO skills, such as the SEO Learning Centre, The Beginner’s Guide To SEO, and the Help Hub, which explains how to use Moz itself.

 

Moz Allows the Examination of Parameters, Such As:

  • inbound links
  • linking domains
  • domain authority (DA)
  • page authority (PA)
  • spam score
Moz seo tools

Potential of the Tool

If you’re looking to improve your online presence and SEO is part of that strategy, an SEO platform can greatly help your efforts. There are a few to choose from, including Google Analytics, SEMRush and Ahrefs, and each comes with different benefits.

While Google Analytics is a staple for any online activity related to your website, you can take your SEO further with a specialised platform. Moz is a good choice because it is easy to use and navigate, and offers a range of features to help you track your progress and compare your website with your competitors over time, as well as plan your future SEO strategy.

Moz is particularly useful when planning and monitoring the link building process, as this tool provides the following data: inbound links (the number of backlinks), discovered and lost linking domains, link profiles. Unlike other SEO tools, Moz has a much larger (and constantly expanded) link base, which totals over 35.5 trillion. Moz also offers a free-of-charge web browser extension, MozBar.

The Moz tool allows you to quickly analyze the performance and potential of pages in the search results. It presents results on a scale from 0 to 100. It is recommended to use it for data comparison, especially in relation to parameters provided by Ahrefs, another widely popular SEO tool.

What Can You Do In Moz?

Moz Pro Campaigns: Rankings

Within your Moz Campaign, you’ll be able to see how your website is ranking for the keywords you are tracking. To set this up, you need to create a campaign by entering your website URL and connecting your Google Analytics account, and then enter the keywords you would like to target. You can also add labels to keywords, which helps you to filter your view and see how different types of keywords are performing – such as “Branded” or “Location”.

On the rankings page, there is an overview at the top of the page that shows the movement of your website in the rankings for your keywords, and how many featured snippets you appear in.

Scrolling down, your Tracked Keywords Overview gives you a closer look at individual keywords. It shows the monthly volume for each, where you’re ranking for them, whether you’ve gone up or down in the rankings, and which URL is being used to rank for that keyword.

The latter is useful so you can see whether the URL you’re ranking for is the best one for that keyword – is that really the page you’d like users to land on when using that particular search term, or should you be optimising another page to get a more appropriate URL to rank instead?

For rankings, we don’t base our entire SEO strategy around this, and we believe rankings aren’t the be-all and end-all in terms of performance. After all, what good is ranking highly if people are clicking through but not making a purchase? It’s best to keep your goals in mind and use those to determine how well your SEO is going – such as revenue or transaction goals.

However, it is still useful to see how well you are ranking for keywords so you can see where you may need to improve – especially to get into those all-important featured snippets and increase the space you take up on SERPs.

Moz Pro Campaigns: Links

Another very useful part of your Moz campaign to set up is your competitors. When you create your campaign you’ll be prompted to enter URLs and names of your competitors so that their performance can be tracked alongside yours in the Links section. The Links section of Moz shows a range of statistics for your website and your competitors so you can see where you need to improve in order to stay competitive. Here is a breakdown of the statistics and what you should take from them:

  • Domain Authority – The definition of DA is “a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.” So while DA doesn’t affect your rankings in Google, it is an indicator of performance. Typically, it’s a good idea to aim for a DA of at least 30.
  • Spam Score – The percentage of sites with similar features that have been found to be penalised or banned by Google. This does not mean that the site is spammy. It’s best to use this as a guide to potentially spammy sites for further investigation. All being well, your website will likely have a very low spam score, but this is a useful metric when investigating other websites – especially if you’re considering them as part of your link building strategy.
  • % of total links, external + follow – The percentage of all links to the website which are external and follow, rather than internal or nofollow. As external, follow links can help with SEO, the percentage of links that meet this description would ideally be as high as possible.
  • External, Followed Links – Followed links to the site from other sites (there is no “nofollow” tag added to the link).
    • This is a very helpful metric, as this is the type of link that can greatly help with SEO. If your website has a significantly lower number of external, followed links than its competitors, you’ll need a good link strategy to address this.
  • Internal, Followed Links – Followed links within the site (there is no “nofollow” tag added to the link).
    • This metric gives us an idea of the size of each website. All other things being equal, large sites tend to perform better than small sites. If your website has a lot less of this type of link, it’s a good idea to prioritise adding more content to your website and ensure each page has a good number of links to it within your site.
  • External, NoFollowed Links – Nofollowed links to the site from other sites (there is a “nofollow” tag added to the link and it is therefore not valuable for SEO).
    • Nofollowed links are not useful in terms of gaining “link juice” to rank more highly with Google. It’s true that users can still click through these links so they do serve a purpose, but having a lot of nofollow links isn’t very helpful for SEO. In some cases, it may be worth trying to negotiate a removal of the nofollow tag.
  • Internal, NoFollowed Links – Nofollowed links to the site from within the site (there is a “nofollow” tag added to the link and it is therefore not valuable for SEO).
    • You shouldn’t have internal, nofollowed links on your website, since that indicates that you don’t trust pages on your own site. Luckily as this is under your control, you can work to change any nofollow internal links to follow.
  • Followed Linking Domains – The number of domains with at least one followed link to the site.
    • This is a very helpful metric because if this number is significantly lower than your competitors’, you will see that you need a good link strategy to address this.

Keyword Research

Type a search term into Keyword Explorer to see its monthly volume, ranking difficulty, and organic click-through rate. This page will also provide you with keyword suggestions, so you can type in your search term and gather ideas for similar keywords.

You can also explore keywords by site – type in the URL and Moz will show you the top ranking keywords for that website.

Also under Keyword Research, you can find out who your true competitors are – which websites are showing for the same search terms as you?

Link Research

Type a URL into Link Explorer to see a website’s Domain Authority, linking domains, inbound links and ranking keywords. This is useful if you would like to see information about a website without adding it to your campaign or as a competitor.

Within the Link Research section of Moz, you can also compare link profiles and view other link information, such as Discovered and Lost. This shows you the recent links a website has gained or lost, so you can see who has started linking to you and where you used to have links but no longer do (and then try to get them back if appropriate).

 

The majority of information you can see in Moz can be downloaded as a PDF or a spreadsheet so that you can present it to stakeholders or analyse it further.

These are just a few of the tools available in Moz. There is a lot to learn about the platform in order to get the most out of it, but when you work with a digital marketing agency like ProMedia66, we use tools such as Moz on your behalf. We create campaigns for the websites we work on so that we can monitor performance in SERPs, report back, and devise an SEO strategy that will help you reach your business goals, based on your unique data.

Why not grab yourself a free 30 day trial of the Moz SEO tool by heading over to www.moz.com. If you would like any help with your SEO, get in touch with Promedia66.

Get me to the top of Google

Get me to the top of Google

What does this even mean?

The question I get asked more frequently than any other, by a long stretch, is “Can you get me to the top of Google?” Sometimes it doesn’t even come as a question – more a presumed statement, as in “I need you to build me a website please and then make sure I’m at the top of Google.”

 Let’s think this through shall we?

If you want to be the top of Google, you’re gonna need ‘Googliness.’

 

First, what do people mean when they say ‘the top of Google’?

The first natural position?
Position zero?
The top 3
The first page?
The very top via Adwords?

Hey, even I’m confused now.

Often people don’t really know what they mean. More than that, they usually don’t care. They simply know by being “at the top of Google” it’s helpful to their order books.

They’re right. It is.

In fact, if presented with a few different options, such as AdWords and SEO, they tend not to mind, as long as the end goal gets them lots of traffic. However, this can often be as far as people’s understanding goes. For some people, there is a naive belief that AdWords or SEO is easy to do and cheap to implement.

So let’s take a hypothetical scenario based in my hometown of Bury. Approx 15 miles north of Manchester, it’s a town of 250,000 people.

And over 100 electricians (listed on Google)

So what would it take to get to the top of Google for one of these small businesses?

 

What do people mean 'top of Google?'

AdWords to get to the top of Google

It’s currently Friday night and I’ve just checked, and interestingly there are no adverts for an electrician in Bury on Google. Not one.

Which would make quite easy pickings for the business which decides to be the first. Yes, there’s a cost, but with no competition, that cost is reduced, and of course, with no competition, that means more work. It’s a win/win scenario.

However, the problem with AdWords is that whilst you can most certainly be top of the Google pile, you have to pay for that privilege, over and over again. In fact, the paying never stops. As soon as it does, the adverts stop.

Now that can be fine if the adverts are working well for you. If you’re spending £200 per week but getting £1000 of work in (labour mind, not just income), then that’s a 5x return on your investment. But those are theoretical, and the reality is it takes time to make adverts like that work. Lots of testing, lots of variations, and you can burn through a lot of money until you hit the right formula. Especially when starting out from scratch with no prior knowledge behind you.

So let’s say our electrician didn’t want to keep forking out for advertising, day in, day out.

SEO to get to the top of Google

This, of course, is the Holy Grail. Top of Google and not having to pay for a single click. How great is that! There’s just the small problem of getting you there.

How easy is it to do and how much does it cost?

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, it cost £500 and took a couple of weeks.

That would be we great investment. You would get more visits to your website, which means more customers resulting in more money. Within, maybe a couple of months, you’ve recouped your investment, and are now reaping the rewards of an improved business. Bravo!

The problem is if it was that easy for you, it’s will be that easy for your competitor, and he’s got £600. Oh well, 2nd on Google is good enough.
Until of course, one of the other 100+ electricians decides to do the same and before you can say ‘Terminal block junction box‘, you’re now in the Google graveyard of page 2 and kindly out of pocket. Bummer!

That is of course based on all other things being equal – the same quality SEO is done on your site as your competitor, Google not dropping you like a stone for some dodgy moonlighting SEO practices, and no major changes in the way Google calculate the rankings.

You're now in the Google graveyard

It’s not as easy as it first seems

The reality is that you won’t be the first business in your field to try to get to the top of Google. You’re climbing over the digital bodies to get to the top and it can be a struggle for the reasons given and more. Getting to the top isn’t an instant process.

And it’s not a cheap one either.

 

So how’s a poor electrician gonna make a living around here?

 

Hiring a good SEO consultant who has the experience, knows the path needed to follow, knows the shortcuts and has the tools for the job is one way to get there.

Ignore the hundred of e-mails you get daily from India and choose a consultant you can talk to, reach out and drink coffee with. And trust.

Know that you’re in this for the long haul.

SEO takes time, and some industries take longer than others, but you will get there.

However, if you don’t want to pay a monthly fee whilst waiting for your website to climb the Google ladder, there is another option.

Do it yourself. Yes, I’m serious.

The majority of SEO consultants learn their craft on the job, which means you can too. Sure, it’s extra time, extra energy, but as I see it, you’ve got three choices.

  1. Do nothing… and that’s exactly what you’ll get in return.

  2. Pay for AdWords/ SEO. If done right, it will dramatically improve your business, but it will cost you. If it’s Pay Per Click Advertising, it’s small amounts but you never stop paying. If it’s SEO, depending on your industry, location, competition etc, it could take a few months or a couple of years but in the meantime, you’ll be paying a consultant their monthly fees whilst they do the work.

  3. Do it yourself. Take a few hours a week and learn the basics, and slowly build your business with a solid foundation.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and a slow and steady approach will gain huge dividends over time. Spend a couple of hours a week investing the time to build your business.
Work on your business, not in it, and you’ll be surprised, not only how easy things are, but actually, how interesting the process is. Trust me!
There’s nothing as satisfying as seeing your business climbing Google week by week, and then the orders slowly begin to come in (except a Chunky Chicken).

Conclusion

Ultimately, you have a choice, but whatever choice you make, you can be more realistic moving forward. There are many options in front of you, but sadly none of them are cheap and it’s not necessarily quick…

Unless you’re an electrician in Bury who’s looking to do Google AdWords.

Go jump on that whilst there’s no competition.

Go on… get to it!

Hi, I’m Gordon, and I’m here to answer any questions you may have on making your digital marketing more effective.

Gordon Hall

Director, PRO Media 66

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