Moz Pro Review: Is It Worth Paying for?

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Moz is a software company that sells SEO monthly subscription tools to bloggers, developers, SEO agencies and small to large corporations.

I have been a follower of Moz ever since 2006 when it was called SEOMoz. Since then, Moz dropped the SEO part and turned into a monthly subscription service for online marketers. The cost for a basic Moz Pro plan is $99 but I received a free 45 day trial for being a loyal member. If you are thinking about subscribing to Moz Pro, then this review will help you decide whether or not you should join.

Why Use Moz Pro?

Lots of beginner SEO’s think they can do everything alone for free. Yes, it’s possible to make a lot of money in SEO without spending much money at all.

But is it likely?

Of course not. Serious companies invest in powerful SEO tools to automate tasks that normally take hours to complete. For example, you could list every page on your website along with its rankings on an Excel spreadsheet but this would take hours. Moz Pro does this in seconds.

How about backlinks? You could use Google Webmaster tools to check all your backlinks then visit them one by one. OpenSiteExplorer does the same thing within seconds.

I think you get the point. Moz Pro gives you unbelievable insight into improving your website instantly. If you manage more than 1 website, then you really need to find ways to save time and cut down on unnecessary tasks.

Features

Moz Pro is a collection of different SEO & marketing tools under one hub. Here’s a list of all the features:

  • Open Site Explorer: Research and compare competitor backlinks, identify top pages, view social activity data, and analyze anchor text.
  • MozBar: Perform keyword research and page analysis from inside Chrome and Firefox browsers.
  • Fresh Web Explorer: Find new link building opportunities as you monitor the web for mentions of your brand, products, and competitors and stay up-to-date on the latest topics related to your business:
  • Rank Tracker: Get immediate reports on where pages or domains rank in search engines for any given keyword.
  • Keyword Difficulty: Find out how difficult it is to rank for a specific term or phrase and who you’ll be competing against.
  • On-Page Grader: Get instant insight into your on-page keyword usage with recommendations to help you rank higher and optimize for your targeted search terms.
  • Crawl Test: Run a site audit of up to 3,000 pages against any public domain. Find bad links, broken pages, and get an analysis of over 20 factors that may affect search engine crawling.

Create a Campaign

When you first sign up, Moz Pro asks you to create a campaign. You receive 5 campaigns with a basic $99 monthly plan. This section gives you powerful control over your website.

Each campaign contains 4 main sections: Search, Social, Links, and Brand Mentions.

Search Overview

This section shows your search engine traffic and provides data on keyword rankings, landing pages, on-page optimization and crawl errors. You have to link your Google Analytics account to Moz for search engine traffic reports to appear.

mozpro-search-overview

Seeing your keyword rankings help you find pages that need a quick boost as well as pages that are ranking well. If you have high rankings pages, then add your highest earning call to actions to boost revenue.

The On-Page optimization chart lets you see which pages need on-page improvements. Moz gives you a grade based on A through F depending on a long list of on-page rankings factors.

If you fulfill a ranking requirement, Moz shows a green check mark. If not, you will get some tips on adding the ranking element to your pages. You may forget to add a few rankings factor so this page is a helpful reminder.

Crawl diagnostics is another important feature. Google Webmaster tools provides a basic crawl report but not much else. Moz Pro sends their own bot to crawl your website and display any known errors. The easier it is for Google to crawl your website, the higher rankings you can achieve.

Social Overview

Social media can send you massive traffic so you need to have at least a Facebook, twitter, and Google+ account for your website. My social shares is pretty low so I need to utilize this part of Moz Pro more often.

If you have a large social media following, then Moz Pro will help you analyze the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. Moz makes it simple to connect your social media accounts to their database so you can start receiving insights and recommendations.

I will update this part of the review when I grow my social media following in the future.

Link Analysis

Link Analysis is the bread and butter of Moz Pro. If you use Open Site Explorer, then you are familiar with handy metrics like DA and PA. The problem is you get limited information with a free Moz account. When you upgrade to Pro, that’s when you access the complete amount of useful data.

mozpro-link-analysis

Link Analysis sorts links by 4 sections: Inbound links, linked domains, anchor text, and pages sorted by PA.

Moz shows where the most powerful backlinks are coming from. They also allow competitor analysis so you can copy your competitor’s backlink profile.

Linked domains shows every single domain that points to a specific website. It’s great for a broad link analysis.

Anchor text gives you a general feel of the website topic. It’s also great for avoiding Google penalties because you will quickly see any repetitive anchor text problems.

Top pages by PA lists the most powerful webpages ranked by PA. For most websites, the homepage is first then followed by inner pages with lots of quality links pointing to them. If you want to build backlinks with blog comments, then this tool will help you identify the most valuable pages on any website.

Mentions without Links

One of the easiest ways to build links is to identify mentions of your business online then encourage the webmaster to link to your website. Sometimes, your website gets mentioned in a blog post but the blogger failed to link back to your site. With this tool, you see all of your unlinked mentions on the web. Once you find some good candidates, reach out to the webmaster or owner via email and ask them to link back to your site. This section is great for getting lots of easy links without spending money on content creation or outsourced link management services.

Brands & Mentions

Wonder how much people are talking about your website/company? The brands & mentions section creates a visual graph of all your company’s mentions in one place.

Compare your brand’s mentions with industry benchmarks or against your biggest competitor. It’s a great tool for larger companies that spend a big budget on advertising and brand management.

Fresh Web Index

Ever wonder how many times a keyword is mentioned online? Google trends is one way to gauge the number of times your target keyword gets used. However, you don’t get much insight into the mentions.

Fresh Web Explorer is a HUGE time saver for finding web mentions across a variey of keywords. Here’s how to use it:

Let’s say I have a client who markets Roth IRA retirement accounts to people who want to invest for their retirement. I type “roth ira” into the search bar and hit search.

Moz Pro searches and returns a graph tracking mentions of the keyword “Roth IRA.

mozpro-roth-ira

Not only do they track the mentions, but they provide a complete list along with URLs. Now, I can visit each website and market my Roth IRA investment services to prospective readers. You can use this tool to track brand mentions, product launches, competitors or any search term.

mozpro-mentions

If you’re an affiliate marketer, use this tool to find places to drop a link to your website. Many of the listed websites allow comments at the end of the article. If it’s a forum, then sign up and join the conversation. Fresh Web Index is like Google Alerts + Trends on steroids.

Rank Tracker

Rank tracking is an important part of a successful SEO campaign. What doesn’t get measured doesn’t improve.

If you have a list of target keywords, then you can track your Google rankings over time to test out new SEO strategies or help your clients boost their rankings.

mozpro-ranktracker

Track up to 50 keywords at a time for the basic plan. You can export your rankings to Excel and receive email notifications when your rankings change.

Crawl Test

Moz’s crawl test crawls a given website and its linked-to pages to help you discover duplicate content, summarize redirect locations, learn rel=canonical values, and more. Enter any sub domain below, and we’ll crawl up to 3,000 pages of links from it. In the next few days, we’ll deliver an email containing a CSV report with the results. Your report will be available for 90 days after the crawl is generated.

Keyword Difficulty

Have you ever wondered how easy or hard it is to rank for a specific keyword? Keyword difficultly provides useful insight into the difficulty of any keyword.

In this example, I am trying to rank for the keyword “Serpbook Review”. I built a brand new website but only rank #8 for the particular keyword. I thought about an aggressive link building campaign until I used Keyword Difficultly. Take a look at the results:

mozpro-keyword-difficultly

Moz reveals that my competitors have a higher DA and more backlinks to their homepages. With this valuable information, I should built more links to the homepage to boost my rank. Not only will my DA increase, but I will build more links to the inner page to easily have more direct backlinks than any of the other top 10 listings.

This unique insights shows you exactly how you stack up with your competition. If you want to rank for a specific keyword, use this tool before you get started. Your target keyword may be too competitive. You can obtain this same information with MozBar but I like how it’s simple and easy to access in Moz Pro.

On-Page Grader

I talked earlier about On-Page grader because it’s available in your Moz Pro campaign section. You can access the same tool and analyze any domain and keyword.

mozpro-on-page-grader

Good On-Page SEO is so important because no amount of Off-Page SEO will help if you don’t target and optimize your pages for the right keywords. This tool provides a simple to follow checklist in case you forget something.

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is easily the most popular tool in Moz. I use it regularly to check key metrics like DA, PA, and top linked pages. Ever since Google discontinued pagerank, I rely on DA to gauge the power of a site’s backlinks. In general, a domain with a higher DA will rank easier than a domain with a lower DA.

mozpro-ose

OSE is powerful but you need a paid subscription to access the best stuff. Here’s the main sections you will use often:

  • Inbound Links: View the basic DA & PA along with number of linking domains and social media stats
  • Just-Discovered: The Just-Discovered Links report helps you identify recently created URLs and links.
  • Top Pages:Target the best pages to maximize link building. See top pages on this domain according to Page Authority.
  • Linking Domains:Gauge your site’s influence by analyzing the root domains that link to the URL or domain you’ve entered.
  • Anchor Text:Learn what keywords the site might be ranking for. Analyze the phrases and terms most commonly used as anchor text to link to the provided URL or domain.
  • Compare Link Metrics:See detailed metrics about the URL you’ve entered on the page level, sub domain level, and root domain level. Compare these metrics for up to five URLs.
  • Spam Analysis: Shows spammy sites that link to your website. It’s a great tool for disavowing links.
  • Link Opportunities: Finds broken and unlinked link phrases on your website.

Moz Pro Pricing

Moz Pro plans start at $99. The Standard plan is good for bloggers, entrepreneurs, and developers. If you need something bigger, they have Medium, Premium and Large plans. You get the same features but more campaigns, keywords, and social media account abilities.

mozpro-pricing

Who is Moz Pro For?

Moz Pro is not for everyone. $99 per month is a decent amount of money to spend on any tool. You should be making at least $2,000 per month in SEO to consider this tool. It will easily help you make more, but you don’t want to sign up for too many expenses when you first start out.

If you need money to afford Moz Pro, either get a job or offer services as a freelancer. You can easily make enough money offering basic SEO services to eventually afford Moz Pro.

Should You Buy Moz Pro?

Sure. I think it’s worth more than $99 per month if you use it properly. It will help me quickly analyze my On-Page SEO, find link building opportunities, spy on my competitors, and rank for very competitive keywords. 1 solid ranking in a highly lucrative keyword is worth at least 5k per month to your business.

Use The Moz Pro Coupon Code “FEBEXTRA45” to get a free 45 day trial

Here’s the link I used to get a free 45 day trial:

http://moz.com/promo?coupon=FEBEXTR45_20f2dbe5d101

For more background information about Moz, refer to the Moz.com wikipedia page.

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6 Comments

  1. Thanks. Good review. I’ve been wanting to signup for the mozpro 30 trial for some time now. But I’m not sure whether I have time with my business and family work to fully make use of it. So been postponing for months.

  2. Hello. I’m business owner and I try to registry Moz Pro trial but I don’t see signup button or anything else after click your link. Cold you please help me?

  3. Thanks, Tarik, for informative article. I noticed that their plan went up to $150/mo. Would you say it’s still worth it? I took advantage of their 30-day trial and see the benefit, but have not been able to really dive in into all the tools yet. We are doing in-house SEO for our website (https://laheatingairconditioning.com/). Not sure if at our level just using free tools would suffice.

  4. Awesome list man!

    I’m using Serpstat’s $20/mo plan and Moz tools. Moz tools are my favorite but they give small margin of error.

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