This is great. In an ocean of depressingly terrible SEO information, advice and tools shrouded in secrecy by pompous quacks dressed in fake wizard robes SEOMoz has always stood out as completely open, ethical, high quality and useful.
I've also seen Rand talk and he's very passionate about what he does, I recommend anyone who gets the chance sees him speak. It's hard to not have his enthusiasm rub off on the audience and leave you re-motivated and full of ideas again.
There's definitely a huge market for this. Just look at how much absolute crud and misinformation there is out there. How many people are still being ripped off by SEO cowboys. I'd really like to see SEOMoz succeed and become more mainstream and well known.
I'd like to one day to hear small businesses asking about SEOMoz and other high quality companies/tools/sources of SEO information as supposed to going along with the first cold calling spammer that phones them up.
Talk about taking transparency to the next level. This post has revenue, freemium conversion data, cap table breakdown, valuation, vc negotiation detail, and how Rand and his co-founder / mom amicably decided to part ways. Amazing. Has there ever been a private company at this scale with this level of transparency? Go SEOmoz.
I'm very impressed with their openness and in describing the process. They share revenue projections, their cap table and pitch deck.
I'm also impressed with their non-standard move: They 'each sacrificed shares we owned to give back to each active employee at the company so they maintain their ownership percentage.'
They want to be a 'role model company in Seattle' and I truly hope companies follow in their footsteps in terms of openness and consideration for their employees.
If you're just looking for rank tracking, there's a few I've heard good things about (obviously, I like Moz, but I use a lot of the other features too, and am biased):
Our rank tracker also has a competition analysis tool attached--so you can get data like # of backlinks, etc. for the top 10 Google results for any given keyword.
I currently use the $100 plan on Authority Labs and their delayed reporting is incredibly frustrating. When it works it great to get detailed and exact ranking stats on keywords. When I can't get reports and keyword data is delayed 1+ days, it sucks.
- There is a version of Traffic Travis that is free (haven't used it in awhile though, and you'll see why further down the list): http://traffictravis.com
You can even export white label rank reports from it!
- Allow me one more SEO tool recommendation: although it's not a rank tracker per se, check out real time analytics service called Hit Sniffer: http://hitsniffer.com
I've been using it for almost two years now, and whatever it may not have in eye candy makes up in it's very robust reporting.
Personally, I think $99 /mnth is so overpriced it's delusional, and I suspect SEOmoz's churn rate tells a similar story.
Really great writeup. Congrats Rand and the whole team! I'm impressed the VCs were ok with Rand publishing so much data publicly. I hope more companies are this transparent with information...it really helps level the playing field for startups and entrepreneurs to have access to this kind of data.
Not really an SEOmoz fan (nor do I have an opinion on them), but the insight into their deal was very welcome and it's good to see that they've got big plans.
I have been a paying customer for 6+ months, and I don't think they are the best service. But when open site explorer has recent data, it is extremely helpful.
Now that they have their own backlink crawler their information is extremely valuable to any self respecting SEO. It's expensive, but that's probably because of lack of competition.
mercenary, if you knew Rand at all, you'd realize how dumb such an insinuation sounds.
Also, Brad Feld is no dummy. He may not have the Midas Touch, but he doesn't buy into crap, either. I suspect we'll be hearing a lot from Moz in the future.
EDITION: stupid brainrashed children say "rite dis" i rite. i say rand good guy rand good. seomooooooooooooooz i buy. 99 cents onry. i buyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
congo rats ulations rand seomoz good marqeteen jawb. sory end congrexuleeytions end have nice day.
They have built up a large social media following, possibly the best for a company of their size in a niche their size, with a lot of hard work and great content.
i rike dem to. i mean say why is cost a lot but people say 99 is cheap coz seomoz is best of da best onry. i use transrate stupid brainwash children say me write dis, did no mean. rand good guy i buy rand stufings.
I've also seen Rand talk and he's very passionate about what he does, I recommend anyone who gets the chance sees him speak. It's hard to not have his enthusiasm rub off on the audience and leave you re-motivated and full of ideas again.
There's definitely a huge market for this. Just look at how much absolute crud and misinformation there is out there. How many people are still being ripped off by SEO cowboys. I'd really like to see SEOMoz succeed and become more mainstream and well known.
I'd like to one day to hear small businesses asking about SEOMoz and other high quality companies/tools/sources of SEO information as supposed to going along with the first cold calling spammer that phones them up.