An SEO campaign is remarkably like a science experiment.

Both require gathering background information, testing a hypothesis, analyzing the results, tweaking the hypothesis and repeating the process.

And both require different tools at different stages. Imagine scientists trying to collect data without calculators, stopwatches, microscopes and other tools.

At best, it would be inefficient. At worst, it would be impossible.

It’s the same with SEO. The right tools make all the difference for managing marketing strategy. Each stage of the marketing process needs a different tool. You can stock up a collection of tools scattered around from various companies, building up a collection of subscription costs along the way.

Or you can use Moz.

A Quick Intro to Moz

Moz Pro is a subscription-based product designed to offer everything you need for effective SEO strategy and implementation. Keyword research? Check. Improving rankings? Check. Competition analysis? Check. It’s all wrapped up in a nice, neat bundle to use at every stage of online marketing.

The most convenient thing about Moz is how many different features and services are bundled together—this is a huge plus for content marketers like me, who want to see results without juggling a million tools and separate fees. It also goes a long way towards demystifying search engine rankings and how to reach your customers.

Here, I’m going to show you exactly how you could use Moz Pro tools to move your marketing strategy right along.

Moz Review: Why Moz Pro Matters at Every Stage of SEO Marketing

Keyword Research and Developing an SEO Strategy

Keywords are the foundation of your marketing strategy “house.” It’s what you’re building everything else on top of. Strong keywords create the solid infrastructure needed to keep building bigger and taller. Weak keyword choices make for a shaky strategy that’s bound to run into issues like underperforming campaigns.

Instead of using trial and error to find the best keywords, rely on Moz’s Keyword Explorer. Enter a word and it spits out data for you, such as the monthly volume score and related keyword suggestions that may also fit your campaign.

Collecting data on your keywords—and how to rank highly for them—is a great first step for any SEO campaign. The SERP analysis feature of the Explorer tool will give you an incredibly good idea of what’s already ranking for which keywords and why. This is a sneaky intel-gathering tool for understanding and outpacing the competition.

All in all, Moz gives you the information needed to pick the best possible keywords so you can start your marketing approach off strong.

Analysis: Assessing Your SEO Efforts

Picking the keywords and implementing your marketing strategy takes time, but your job is only about halfway over at this point. After your marketing plan is designed and starting to get put into action, you’ve still got plenty of work to do. Now comes the analysis stage, where you’ll pick apart your campaign to see what’s working and what needs fixing.

To effectively dissect your campaign, you need data. Gathering this data on your own is time-consuming (and outsourcing it costs you precious money). With Moz Pro, a bevy of information is gathered for you and presented at your fingertips.

Moz Rank Tracker helps gather data on keyword rankings for multiple search engines in over 200 countries on a weekly basis. Break up the data by campaign, keyword label and location to manage multiple marketing efforts at once. Use this information to see how your keywords perform in Google results and other search engines, even targeting specific regions and audiences. This can help you figure out what’s working and what isn’t, and decide when you should change up your keyword strategy (or not).

Moz Links dives into data on your links, such as your backlinks, top-performing links and link opportunities. You’ll be able to sniff out brand new pages on the internet you can link out to for fresh link juice, and it’ll give you the information you need to do some serious link cleanup—wiping all those dead and outdated links from your site.

You can use all of this data to make your link presence stronger, better and more thorough. This is something you might not otherwise have thought to invest in, but now you’ve got a tool to guide you through upping your link game.

Moz Reporting rounds up different metrics on your site traffic that can be created daily, weekly or monthly. Use this data to track your efforts and present it in a branded, easy-to-understand format for your own use, for your clients or for internal stakeholders.

Looking over all this data helps you continually tweak and improve your marketing efforts. Numbers don’t lie. Sometimes they speak a harsh truth (like that the current plan isn’t working). Other times they shout out your success (like when your campaign exceeds expectations). It’s important to pinpoint the state of your campaigns so you can always be improving them, either fixing what’s broken or keeping up what’s working.

Reports: Comparing to Your Competition

The first jackpot of marketing insight on Moz is the data you’ll get regarding your own efforts. The second is the information about your competition.

Competition research is a backbone of solid marketing. Think about it. You’re both targeting the same audience with the same goals (sell your given products/services). That’s why they’re your competition. Knowing what does and doesn’t work for them gives you clues on what will or won’t work for you. It’s like conducting several case studies without all the hassle.

You find out new effective strategies to try. You see areas to target where your competition isn’t hitting the mark. You discover the ineffective tactics your competition uses that you should avoid.

Moz helps give you the data needed to understand your competition’s marketing efforts. Moz Rank Tracker, which we touched on earlier, gives you keyword rankings for competitors’ websites. Moz Competitive Link Metrics places your efforts side-by-side with those of the competition. Moz Competitive Reporting allows you to include data on your competition in your reports and track their efforts.

On your own, it can be difficult and time-consuming to gather all this information. Moz does all the research for you, so you can focus on making fresh content, interacting with your audience and putting the results of the data analysis into practice. Without Moz Pro, you’d be doing this work across a range of sites and tools, spending all of your time collecting and analyzing data on your own. Believe me, I’ve been there.

Results: Addressing Errors in SEO Efforts

Marketers are human. We make mistakes. It’d be great if every first attempt at building a website was error-free, but that’s not reality. It’s all a learning process. Inevitably, you’ll miss opportunities and make mistakes when optimizing your site for SEO. That’s where Moz Site Crawl comes into play.

This little tool will scan your website for errors that tend to fly under the radar, like duplicate content or broken links. Sure, you could manually check these on your own. But imagine the time it would take to click every link or cross-check every new blog post title.

The site crawl will continually monitor your website for you. If a new problem crops up, you’ll get a notification right away. No need to review your website every month for these errors. This tool will proactively search for you.

SEO Success: Optimizing What’s Working

One of the most exciting stages of marketing is seeing great results from your efforts. Well done! Now’s the time to try to figure out how to replicate it again and again.

Moz Page Optimization gives you tailored tips for maximizing your marketing efforts. It also searches for page opportunities with potential just waiting for you to take advantage of. Even our best work can still be improved, so use the optimization feature to continually improve and excel at your marketing work.

Moz Pro Pricing: Is It Worth Subscribing?

Moz is a bit of an investment, with the lowest package starting out at $99 a month. If you’re curious to see how Moz can help your business but are hesitant to commit so much of your marketing budget, take advantage of the 30-day free trial.

A month lets you explore the different features, familiarize yourself with the system and start gathering marketing data. By the end of the trial, you’ll get a clear picture of whether Moz is beneficial for your organization or not.

If you choose to subscribe to Moz, you can pick from four plans. The standard comes in at $99 a month, the medium costs $149 a month, the large runs $249 a month and the premium is $599 a month. If you run a large agency necessitating more than the premium offers, Moz will create a bigger plan tailored to your needs.

So, Moz is a solid all-around SEO marketing toolkit. But is it something you need to subscribe to? Any company can benefit from more SEO assistance, of course, but there are certain groups who stand to benefit the most from Moz. Marketers conducting extensive SEO and wanting to really improve their efforts will find the reporting and analysis tools highly valuable. More established businesses looking to solidify themselves as industry experts will find high value in the competition marketing features.

A newly-launched business or blogger may not be in the best position to pay for Moz. The SEO marketing insight will be valuable without a doubt. But if the marketing budget is slim, the money is probably better spent on designing a stunning website, fine-tuning marketing materials and getting up and running with social media. As the company or blog grows (and the budget grows alongside it), then Moz can be a subscription to consider.

At the end of the day, a craftsman is only as good as his tools.

With Moz, you can be an industry-leading, digital craftsman, and you can start cobbling together brilliant, top-notch marketing plans.

 

 

A Free SEO Gift from Us to You!

CoSpot readers can now receive a free trial of the Monitor Backlinks SEO tool.

If you’re looking for a rank tracker with a little oomph, like Moz, you’re going to love Monitor Backlinks.

It offers an incredible keyword rank tracking tool, a powerful backlink management tool, slick reporting, ample automations and email notifications to make your life easier, an overview of key SEO metrics and a top-down look at organic performance.

You’ll get valuable, actionable insights on your keyword rankings, SEO metrics, backlinks and competitor SEO strategies—straightforward, without all the bells and whistles of other SEO tools.

Take advantage of the trial period to compare both Monitor Backlinks and Moz, then choose what’s best for you.

Claim your free trial of Monitor Backlinks today!