I asked Rand Fiskin, CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, some questions about the tools SEOmoz pro offers. There are a lot of tools to play with and I know sometimes you can start to love one and never really get engaged with the others. I asked Rand some questions about what we may be missing.
First let me say that SEOmoz Pro offers some fantastic tools.
Thanks! We have an incredible team here in Seattle working to make them fantastic 🙂
There are many tools to choose from. Is there a tool, or tools, you feel are under-utilized?
I think the keyword difficulty tool, particularly the SERPs analysis feature is remarkable. I have no idea how SEOs live without it. For me, it’s become my go-to resource when I need to understand why a page ranks where it does and what needs to be done to improve.
Which tools do you see that are not used as effectively as they could be?
The campaign-based web app that lets you track and monitor search, social, traffic, on-page, keyword and crawl data about a site gets overlooked by many folks in the field. About 85% of our users run campaigns, but only ~50% are logging in regularly to fix errors, execute on optimization opportunities and improve their sites. Those that do, however, see tremendous upticks in rankings and traffic – that might be correlation, not causal, but I think it speaks highly to the value that can be derived from using the campaigns.
To be effective in SEO which SEOmoz tools do you feel should be used consistently?
Definitely the web app I described above, and likely Open Site Explorer, the Mozbar and Keyword Difficulty/SERPs Analysis. Those are the key tools in the suite, IMO.
There are many benefits you offer to Pro members. Do you have two favorites?
Q+A is pretty amazing, actually. I learn things in there all the time from the questions folks ask and the answers the community helps provide. There’s some exceptionally smart SEOs and marketers helping their peers succeed. Since I got out of formal consulting, Q+A is where I learn a lot of the new tricks, challenges and behavioral changes of the engines and the practice of marketing a site on the web.
My other favorite is probably the PRO webinars. We have amazingly top-notch contributors like Richard Baxter, Mike King, Tom Critchlow, Chris Bennett and many more giving away their best stuff and they’re all archived after the day-of event, so PRO members can watch them anytime. Even a lot of folks skeptical about SEOmoz have written in saying they were blown away by the content provided.
SEOmoz has a tightly-knit, yet fairly large community. Either purposely or by accident, what do you feel contributed to creating this community?
Consistency was a big part – for the first five years of Moz, I wrote on the blog 5 nights a week and we continue that trend (though, thankfully, I don’t have to do it all anymore). We also established formal guiding principles for interaction on the blog and inside the company; those have helped us maintain an incredibly positive community in a world that often featured drama and conflict. In the years that we’ve been outside that fray, I think we’ve attracted a lot of amazing people to the community and helped build something that every participant can be proud to contribute to.
Geek Q&A with Rand
Mac or PC?
Definitely PC. I’m not a cult kinda guy 🙂
iPhone or Droid?
Droid. I currently have the G2 and it’s a great phone.
Tweetdeck or HootSuite?
You’ll never believe this, but I use Twitter.com. I know. I’m in the dark ages.
Favorite Beer?
So tough to pick just one. http://www.rogue.com/beers/american-amber.php is certainly in the top few.
Star Wars or Star Trek?
Star Wars, but only by a hair. Those last 3 movies almost ruined the whole thing, while the new Star Trek film was pretty spectacular.
Thank you to Rand Fishkin
Thank you Rand for taking the time to anwser our questions & if you haven’t used the pro tools yet check out the free trial at SEOmoz.
