Do you think Seomoz is worth the monthly fee if you're not a professional SEO ?

[whitbycottages]

I just want to ask the people who subscribe to Seomoz on a regular basis, I just paid for my first  month subscription but to be perfectly honest I'm trying to work out whether
somebody who is not rolling in cash and trying to make a living can afford to
pay the fee each month.

I'm not a professional I just have two business websites and I'm learning the subject and finding it interesting. The tools do seem very good but I just wondered how people see this service on which aspect is the most important of them.

I like to continue, I have been impressed the quality of the forum topics and discussions

I just wonder whether I can afford to justify the fee.

[MathewBrowne]

The various responses from SEOMoz staff here are a pretty good example of why I'd consider a Pro subscription worth the money. The tools are great, but what compels be to stay is the community and the immediacy of responses to common questions or pitfalls that professionals and novices alike will encounter.

[expertvillagemedia]

Hi Rand, thanks for such great platform for beginners and all level of seo professionals.
I cant deny the fact that your tools and blogs and everything here really justify the fee you are taking but the concern is about some beginner level seo guys who are just startups like you people did in your early days.
Infact, Indians for whom its a big amount to pay monthly. May be you can create a different customized package for beginners so that they can afford this money and still get connected with such a great community. Although I tried 2 debit cards to use your free subscription and enjoying  MONTHS ;).
So please think about it and please create a smaller and affordable package.

Thanks
Amit

[ShaMenz]

Hi Serge,

Well it's not impossible to get to use Pro for free!

If you spend some time helping out others here in Q&A and can earn 200 mozpoints in a month, SEOmoz will credit you with a free month in the future to say "Thank you" for your contribution to the community

It does take some time and generosity, but you do get repaid in kind.

Look forward to seeing your around in the future.

Sha

[ThinkBDW]

Worth every penny, but I would like to use it for free.

[Gordon_Hall]

Hi all,

I'm a newbie to SEOMoz, but I've spent months and months researching, looking for free SEO tools, getting as much free info as I can, and (almost) every day, I end up on youtube checking out things such as whiteboard friday, or in the Q&A forums.

In fact I can say it would have been easier if I'd just bitten the bullet and gone with SEOMoz immediately, but we have to convince ourselves don't we?

I'm covering the costs of membership, and not currently making a fortune, but to be honest, it's immaterial - the wealth of knowledge on the site is priceless.

I'll be in it for the long haul. Hope that helps someone.

[ABCPS]

I'm not a professional SEO, and perhaps because of that I really feel I am getting my subscription's worth.

Each month I'm discovering new aspects of SEOmoz.

This week it was 'On-page Optimization', and the only regret I had was that I hadn't come across this little gem three months ago!

You'll soon know if it works for you, and if it does, it's not hard to find that $99 per month (Rand, don't go putting it up now).

[LighthouseC]

I actually feel that quality tools are essential to learn SEO properly without spending masses of time gathering the information in other ways.  I was thinking that there is good scope for SEOmoz to do some sort of deal with Distilled's Learn SEO program so that you could get some sort of combined membership for people at the early stages in their SEO career.

For SEOmoz aspiring professionals get comfortable with your tools and are more likely to use them and advocate them than your competitors.  Also these are people who otherwise it may be several months before they would be thinking of taking out professional SEO tools.  If you combine this with some sort of deal on hosting (so people can test the theories that they are learning), it is easy to see that for 100-130$ a month for a few months someone would have all they need to learn SEO.  This is really cheap when you compare it with what it cost me to study counselling (my day job), or what it costs to learn most disciplines.

My skills really lie (much as I have them) in a broader internet marketing strategy rather than in the nuts and bolts of technical SEO and I hired an SEO firm to carry out my SEO but I have found the tools invaluable (even if they did not pay for themselves in the consulting work I do) as a way of both auditing their work and being able to play a key role in ensuring the SEO firm I use fits within my broader marketing strategy.

How many SEO Firms are there that charge a lot but ultimately deliver little?

How many provide reports that are useful enough for decision makers in a business to ensure SEO fits within the strategic objectives of an organisation?  Many SEO professionals want to be left alone to do their work even if it will not provide the business with the best ROI.  Digital marketing is a huge source of referrals for my counselling business and UK expansion is intrinsically linked with the success and the strategy used in the campaign.  Without access to SEOmoz I would be far less able to ensure that the SEO works within my business goals and judge when the business is ready to expand into new cities.

If weekly crawl reports do not show improvement, if keywords are not rising up the rankings?, if links are not being added or if they are they are from spammy sites it would take much longer to track and find this out without the SEOmoz tools.  100$ a month to ensure easy to understand data that is independent of your SEO firm that has the depth for you to use to make business decisions without massive time investment will be worth many businesses investing in even if they do not actively get involved in SEO themselves.

I know a lot of businesses judge their SEO outsourcing based on very crude indicators such as short term SERP position or Alexa rank rather than the foundations on which they are based.  I am sure the industry can only be stronger if managers and business owners have access themselves to the tools to effectively assess and participate in the strategy and execution of their digital strategy.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Marc,

Good to see you here in Q&A.

If you're still finding your way around SEOmoz, this post has a few resources that will help you figure out where things are.

Have fun with it,

Sha

[ShaMenz]

Hi Ketan,

Never too late...we're still here!

[letsnurture]

its too late to reply but better late thn never..  If I am a website owner. I would surely have specific budget for SEO , Social Media and in Online Branding..  monthly or target based but it  should be continuous effort to make  scalable business

[ShaMenz]

Hey Alan!

...and we miss your awesome answers, but it puts a smile on my face when you are able to drop in

Sha

[letsnurture]

I believe monthly fees repay itself if we can spend 15 mins a day on seomoz..  it is definitely a one of the best internet community ..  just stack overflow for programmers

[Click2Rank]

My response is whether your desire is for long-term success online or not. If you aren't or "it's just a hobby", it may honestly not be worth the value, though even if it is just a hobby, imagine being able to eventually earn enough from a hobby that you can quit your day job.

Is it a guarantee you'll get enough value from a pro membership?  No - of course not.  Yet I only wish I'd joined all those years ago back when it was "just a couple sites" that I wanted to get better results from.  Because in my case, that couple of sites effort grew into an amazing career.

So what it comes down to is how passionate you are to see success from your efforts, whatever scale they're on.  And the more passion and/or the bigger the goal, the more valuable this place can be.

Heck - if you were to add up the hourly rate some of us in the Q&A area charge for the same kinds of answers we provide here, you'd likely find you're getting thousands of dollars worth of guidance for pennies on the dollar.  (Admittedly lately I'm only answering questions here once in a while due to current workload, however there are plenty of great professionals who participate).

Throw in the ability to make use of some of best data evaluation tools in the industry (I get more value from Moz tools than from any other "similar" product) and it really can be a gold mine of value.

(posted by Alan Bleiweiss - Click2Rank's Search Director)

[NoahsDad]

I want to chime in and say that as a a normal person who wants to learn SEO in order to have content found, and ultimately help people, I find SEOmoz to be extremely useful. Without sounding over dramatic, I can even say it has been life-changing for me, and my "career."

The info you will learn from the White Board Friday's, this q&a, and the rest of the staff of SEOmoz is invaluable. There is so much junk info online about SEO, and I personally enjoy having a "home base" so to speak. SEOmoz is the place where I go to line up other info that I hear about. I can trust that the info that I read/watch here is accurate.  Time is one of our most value assets, so if you value your time, SEOmoz is a great place to come and learn (and build your business/brand/story, etc..)

And on a personal level I have to say that the people here are great. A lot of "seo junk" you find online (free or paid) just seems to be ran by shady people, hard core salesman, and just generally untrustworthy people. But you won't find that here. I could type for days about my personal experience, but I'll save you details, and just say you can trust these guys. They aren't out to get you. They don't try to sell you on stuff. They don't "over-promise." And they aren't into SEO just to make a buck. It's the way the company is led from the top down.

If you back and read some old posts by the CEO (Rand) you'll find lots of stuff about how we wants to be in business to help people. To do the right thing. To change the way people think about "SEO." And above all he cares about his customers. And I think that counts for something. A big something. I enjoy supporting organizations  I feel generally have in interest in their customers, and you will find that here.

/rambling

[BenRWoodard]

Not much to add except that I feel it has paid for itself every month for me as a freelance SEO.  I have started including it in my resume and have had several opportunities simply because I emphasize my membership so much.  I know that if I didn't have the membership I wouldn't be where I am now in my freelance career.

[whitbycottages]

Hi Sha

I'd noticed the opportunity to ask one question per month, but never really considered how important worthwhile could be but I definitely do now

[whitbycottages]

Hello Jennifer thank you for pointing the service out I'll try make it as soon as possible

[randfish]

Wow - that's very impressive work; congratulations! I think getting more technical depth is a great goal, but I wouldn't let it overwhelm the equally important practice of creativity in content, branding, UX, design, etc. The "softer" practices and metrics that touch on inbound marketing / SEO are a huge part of how you win authority, links, brand reputation, trust, etc. and those all lead to both better rankings and more customers.

Glad you're sticking around here, too

[whitbycottages]

Hello FranciscoI have been very impressed by the quality and willingness of people to help out I think what tends to happen is that the people who are this website are all very interested in the subject it's not just work. I know in my case it's become like a hobby/work which is nice. All the best Alan

[whitbycottages]

Hello Jennifer

Thank you for pointing this service out I will definitely try to  makethe time as soon as possible in he future

all the best Alan

[whitbycottages]

Hi Rand

I think that your whiteboard Friday videos are very informative and enthusiastically presented along with all the other experts I am becoming familiar with and I can definitely see why professional SEO marketers can find this website must have.

Also I really appreciate all the interesting answers from everybody.

If I were perfectly honest I think that even though I am an amateur SEO I probably will continue with my subscription to Seomoz because I do market my own holiday cottage, and I'm just starting a holiday letting agency. And I also market my own alarm and CCTV installation website so a big percentage of my spare time is now spent on Internet marketing. My only reservation has been that to be perfectly blunt I have managed by just applying common sense and hard work to already get pretty good results considering my SEO technical abilities are not that extensive.

My holiday cottage is appearing fairly high on Google search results, managing first page for most of the main heavy traffic short tail keywords like "Whitby Holiday Cottages" and seems to be competing against a large established letting agencies who advertise throughout the UK with a great many more cottages than I have on my website currently.
I also have a website for my main business which is for the installation of CCTV and wireless security alarm, but I found that very easy to be very prominent on local searches because  there is not much competition regarding installation companies in one particular town.I moved up a gear by trying to appear in Google search results for just the brand name of a security alarm system that is sold by some of the largest retailers in the UK and I am once again getting reasonably good results, so it looks like it is doable for a one-man band like me.

So I guess what I'm really thinking is how important is it to get a great deal more technically informed, but obviously if I do I'm assuming I should get better results that will justify the time and money spent.

I'm looking at it this way that if I had to pay for the number of organic hits I get on Google search just for my cottages website through some service like Google ad words it would probably cost it about £1000 a month which makes the time and effort well worthwhile.

I think I probably will dig deeper into the technical aspects and hopefully try to become a valued member of Seomoz.

[Boodreaux]

I think it is worth it.  I have to be a part of this cutting edge community because of all the changes we are doing to our website. I don't want to have to go back and change lots of stuff later on.    It has been great and I bug the heck out of all these professionals on here.  I like associating with all these smart folks.  Plus it is kinda fun to learn a whole new world of information. Hoping that some of there smarts rubs off on me somehow.

[salemtas]

Another perspective, if you have the time to apply the stuff you learn here yourself to your websites - think about how much that would cost you for monthly SEO from an outside company. If you want to do it yourself and you do it properly then it is definitely worth it.

[ShaMenz]

Ah, but that is the beauty of getting one question per month

When you are just starting out there can be a whole lot of very simple technical issues that could be hurting or slowing down your progress without you even knowing.

I actually used my first private question to ask about a nagging feeling I had and something weird I was seeing in Open Site Explorer results for a new client's e-commerce site.

An Associate answered my question and pointed out a fundamental flaw in the Template the client had used which was stopping it from being crawled beyond the first level!

That question paid for itself many times over.

Just pick one of those things that has been nagging at you and ask...you could be totally surprised

Sha

[ezpnet-ss]

Sha, the thing is I think, is that most of us can't narrow it down to 1 question.

I mean, really that's been my biggest holdup. There are so many basic things I still have to put in place that getting around to figure out and phrase that 1 question & submit it is pretty darn tough.

[ShaMenz]

Hey Rand,

Bad news for someone...I'm cooking up a doozy at the moment!

[Francisco_Meza]

There are many people like me who help newbies like you. I enjoy helping out answering questions in my spare time. Once in a while, I have to ask questions too.

[randfish]

Personally, I think the community as a whole is even smarter than those folks individually But glad you like that feature so much Sha!

[ShaMenz]

Hi again Alan,

I would pretty much have to agree with all that's above. It really must come down to ROI and for someone who is just running a single site, then the decision you're faced with is how much up-front investment you are prepared to make and whether you are prepared to sustain that investment in the long term.

While all of that is obvious, I thought I would share the one thing included in the SEOmoz Pro subscription that I think is potentially the most valuable and perhaps the most under-utilized by Pro members...

1 Free Private Question per Month!!

Yes, I made it bold and underlined it because this is the one feature that could provide you with the professional input that changes your business completely. The pity of it is that many members completely forget about their private question. Maybe this is because they don't realize it actually means you can ask a question and have it answered by a member of the SEOmoz Staff or Associate.

Yes, that means you could actually have the help of someone as awesome as Dr Pete,  John Doherty, Jen Sable-Lopez, Keri Morgret, Casey Henry, Michael King, Gianluca Fiorelli, Dan Shure, Cyrus Shepard and many more...

Even Rand Fishkin?

Yes. Even Rand answers private questions. The fact is, your question will be assigned to a person on the SEOmoz team who has the skills and experience to best help you.

Obviously, your private question needs to fit within the subject categories available here in Q&A and you should be careful not to waste it on something you could as easily get answered here in regular Q&A. With that in mind, I would consider the potential value of such a benefit to your business and think carefully before giving it up.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[ezpnet-ss]

Wow kerplow, that seems a bit excessive, even if your $1000k US per month is a typo and you meant 100k... or even 1k. I mean, if you are paying $100/m for the account here, and you manage to increase your revenues by even $101/m, then perhaps it's "worth it".

Of course you need to factor in the labour you put into your site to extract that extra revenue, but I think my point is clear.

[ezpnet-ss]

I'm in the same boat. I've been a member for eons. I consider it a learning expense really.

[randfish]

I hear you. I love the Keyword Difficulty tool for the analysis of this, but actually providing recommendations would be, IMO, dangerous. It's too simplistic to say that any machine-programmed logic could apply to each unique situation effectively, hence we focus on the analytics and diagnosis through software and leave the recommendations (at least in the complex areas) to professional marketers who can properly consider all the paths.

[sansonj]

I am like Alan, DIY SEO guy. I am not a pro, but I want to master the SEO stuff and who knows maybe one of these days leave my career as realtor to be an SEO pro like you all. It would be nice to get the program for us that does not offer the reports, etc. I feel you are leaving money on the table, but that is for you to worry about. I am going to stick around. I just want to learn how to use it to max myself out. One thing I am missing here - I was hoping there would be something to help me compete against my competition via analyzing my key phrases, DA + PA + etc and recommend I tweak my text this way and that way off of all of the data to position my self better.

[jennita]

Hi Alan! I'd also like to add that we'd love for you to attend one of our weekly Help webinars to help you get the most out of SEOmoz.

Jen

[randfish]

Hi Alan - first off, welcome to the community at Moz! Great to have you.

We actually think a lot about this question in a broad way at the company. Right now, our focus is primarily on producing software that's ideal for professional marketers in consulting, agency, in-house or self-directed roles. Those who don't spend much/most of their time thinking about and working on content marketing, SEO, social media, analytics, etc. probably won't find SEOmoz to be an ideal fit.

In terms of justifying the fee - it really comes down to ROI. If you find yourself applying the data, tracking, tips and recommendations from both the software/tools and the community/content in a way that produces far more than $99/month in revenue, that's awesome. But if not, please don't feel bad at all about cancelling. We make it very easy to do so (right on your profile page) because we want folks to have a phenomenal, positive experience with SEOmoz, even if our product isn't right for you. And who knows, perhaps in months or years to come, you'll find that as your businesses grow, there's a greater need and come back.

I wish you luck whatever you choose - and please do let us know (through our feature request forum) if there are particular items you'd like to see.

Cheers,

Rand

[kerplow]

That's a tough question to answer. From my point of view it is well worth it, but my employer and past employers paid for the account. You certainly would want to figure out how much work you plan to put in to your SEO strategy and consider other aspects and costs of running a website.

My feeling is that if your sites aren't pulling in at least 1k US per month (net) or you plan to be in that range soon then it may not be worth it. So many other variables to consider though.

That's my 2 cents.

(*Edited was 1000k, typo. Corrected it, thanks ezpnet-ss.)

[acs111]

I'm just starting out doing SEO as a main role. Im going to be the only person there who knows anything about SEO.
Without a team of SEO dudes to ask questions too, SEOmoz is ideal.

If I were you I'd ask as many questions as possible as this will easily justify the payout for membership.