Hello Rusty,
You should simply ask yourself the question: what is your time worth?
Compare this to how much time you save using SEOmoz.
You make: $1000,- per month. Lets say you work 40 hours a week, that's 160 per month. So 1000/160 = $6,25.
SEOmoz costs a hundred dollars a month. 100 / 6,25 = 16 hours. Does SEOmoz save you two days?
I've just signed up two days ago. Keyword data report and ranking factors save me a whole lot of time.
Doing the research via Google Traffic Estimator: as I used to, will not give me any data about competitors.
Normally in a keyword research, i'd manually find information about competitors. Among other things:
- By searching Google for :intitle
- By checking the top 10 websites on incoming links
- By checking PageRanks
- By checking out internal linking structures
- By manually grading these websites on optimization
This amazing tool tells me how hard it is to score on a specific keyword with the click of a button. The 'full-report' is even better. Literally saved me hours. And that's just one tool. So I think i'll stick around.