
Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz - kirillzubovsky
http://moz.com/blog/goodbye-seomoz-hello-moz
======
nlh
I'm not an active user or part of the SEOmoz/moz community, so perhaps my
perspective is off (or perhaps it's better) but...

I think this is a bad move. Like it or not, I know what SEOmoz is immediately.
I've known what it was for years. It's a brand.

Moz makes me think of Mozilla, immediately. That's just how the brain works.
It doesn't make say "Oh that must be SEOmoz just expanding their reach!"

Love it or not, we all know what MtGox is. It's a Bitcoin exchange. Even
though the name is based on Magic the Gathering, that doesn't matter. If they
became Gox, that would be meaningless despite their best intentions.

As always, I'm happy to be corrected by someone who knows more about this
stuff than I do, but me thinks this is a bad idea.

~~~
ZanderEarth32
I can't manipulate the way you process the terms "Moz" and it's association.
The "Moz" = "Mozilla" comparison is easy to make so I hope time and continuing
branding efforts by Moz will hopefully change that.

This transition from solely focusing on SEO to a more holistic marketing tool
is not new. They've been moving in this direction for at least the past year.
I think this is a good time for them to make the break from being pigeonholed
as an SEO company to something bigger, something more inclusive. SEO is no
longer a narrow niche type of marketing, at least not to the people who
perform SEO daily or on a professional level.

It's a combination of content creation, site optimization, outreach and
relationship building, branding and more. Not all these components are always
associated with "SEO", which often times has a negative connotation attached
to it. Moz is hoping to capture a larger part of the inbound marketing market
than SEOmoz ever could.

~~~
masklinn
> The "Moz" = "Mozilla" comparison is easy to make so I hope time and
> continuing branding efforts by Moz will hopefully change that.

Hopefully not.

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VengefulCynic
"For many folks outside of our community, the acronym SEO has (unfair)
associations with spam or manipulation."

I'm not sure that the association is unfair. There are a lot of honest people
out there plying the trade and doing good work in the SEO space, but the same
could be said for email marketing. For every good guy, there's enough spammers
out there that even now, guys like patio11 have to spend a decent amount of
time spelling out the difference between legitimate email marketing and
spamming. SEO strikes me the same way: lots of people doing good work and
being drowned out by the negative press of snake oil salesmen, con men and
link sellers.

It's unfair to the people doing the good work... but I don't think it's unfair
that people free associate "email marketer" with "spammer" and "SEO Guy" with
"Hucksters, Liars and Criminals". Too many run-ins with the Black Hat SEO
crowd have made me wary and I'd be shocked if I was the only one.

~~~
znowi
Exactly! To each few good "SEO" guys there's a plethora of scammers.

I think it's a great move for them and will help to win a more skeptical
crowd. Although, I still don't trust them with or without "SEO" :)

~~~
hiddenfeatures
Any reasons behind this?

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itsprofitbaron
I'm glad they've finally moved to Moz.com (I predicted they would do this when
Rand started blogging on Moz.com) because apart from when it was an SEO blog,
SEOMoz has never really been just about SEO - they're more of a marketing
suite (and I'm assuming the new Moz.com is step 1 in becoming this)

The post itself mentions some of their services (and acquisitions such as
FollowerWonk) which shows the company are not really just an SEO software
company although, the bigger point around it goes back to them being beyond
SEO as the content they have always focused on themselves alongside the tools
they have provided were/are more than just your standard SEO tools.

Personally, I think it’s a smart move for them and the new branding allows
them to tackle a much bigger market too!

~~~
kirillzubovsky
Good point about your prediction, especially since in one of their blog posts
(aka, how to move to a new domain), this is exactly how they recommend doing
it for the fastest SEO-juice transition.

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mbesto
_We believe that in the next decade, the effort and dollars put toward web
marketing will become more sophisticated, and growth in channels like SEO,
social media marketing, content creation, etc. will dwarf the growth rates of
those in more traditional, interruption-based endeavors._

And then once everyone gets on this bandwagon and the market gets saturated,
we'll switch back over to interruption marketing.

I'm a firm believer in the power of inbound marketing, but for all of those
things painted in blue[1] there's always a campaign in red to drive my
attention to it. True inbound marketing is way too risky at scale.

The next decade and the next century is going to be the ultimate battle for
people's attention.

[1] - [http://d2v4zi8pl64nxt.cloudfront.net/goodbye-seomoz-hello-
mo...](http://d2v4zi8pl64nxt.cloudfront.net/goodbye-seomoz-hello-
moz/51a60a41addd71.82695302.gif)

~~~
bmac27
"True inbound marketing is way too risky at scale."

In what way is it risky? I can see it being too much work for some
people/companies who do mediocre work to begin with. But I can't see what
risks are inherent in establishing yourself (or your company) as a thought
leader in your field.

~~~
robryan
There is a risk in that the money spent on becoming a thought leader could
have been better spent on ads, in terms of ROI.

~~~
dshah
I'm a bit biased (friend of Rand, founder of HubSpot), but I think the exact
opposite is true.

Long-term, I think inbound marketing is way less risky for one simple reason:
We're living in an age of increasing choice and increasing transparency. As
buysers/consumers, we're naturally going to lean increasingly towards
companies that deliver a better product/experience -- not towards those that
happen to place more frequent ads. Those that build their brand by delighting
customers (all the way through the process from marketing to sales to service)
will find that their investments create greater returns.

But, as I said, I'm biased (but that doesn't necessarily make me wrong).

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iuguy
I've subscribed to SEOMoz for just over a month as part of looking at how we
should be working on SEO specifically at Mandalorian[1], and also to evaluate
how other similar companies use SEO. After a couple of days with the tools I
realised that this actually gave us a whole load of much more useful
information to help with general marketing exercises.

I might have joined for the SEO, but am most definitely staying for the
marketing. I wish Rand and team the greatest success with Moz.

[1] - <http://www.mandalorian.com/>

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_k
Their prices are too expensive for SMBs. I also wish they would give us a tool
like Google analytics. The combination would probably make it better. Next :
the CRM market.

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orangethirty
How is it possible that a marketing business get the site name wrong? Moz ==
Mozilla. Its a big branding issue that could land them in trouble with the
Mozilla legal department.

~~~
ignostic
Legally, Moz =/= Mozilla.

Moz (SEOmoz) has the following trademark:
[http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:tp...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:tp5z4j.2.3)

You can search the site for yourself. Aside from tires (for which there is no
"likelihood of confusion") there are no other Moz trademarks. If Mozilla
wanted to brand themselves as something other than their company name, they
should have picked up the Trademark and used it in official commerce.

I seriously doubt Mozilla has a problem with it anyway. I really don't think
it's that confusing.

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shuri
I called it may 3rd :).
<https://twitter.com/shuri_org/status/330487333449244673>

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iopq
I love your Firefox browser.

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ra
Wow, they still use feedburner?

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lowmagnet
Why is some weird combination of fruit fucker and bender on the top of their
page?

