Just for the record, I am not being paid or influenced in any way to write this review. This is 100% honest feedback.

About two months ago I signed up for SEOmoz’s pro membership. I decided it would be very valuable to sign up for the membership for a couple of reasons:

• I was looking for a way to bounce new ideas that I had and see how I could improve on them. I find that having someone to play devil’s advocate is very valuable to getting the most out of a new SEO strategy.

• I was looking for new ideas. I’ve been in the industry for a couple of years now, and every day I’m eager to come up with a new strategy that will help my clients get more conversions. I’m only one man though, so I knew that I would be able to get the motors running by getting advice from a very knowledgeable SEOmoz staff.

What I love about the SEOmoz membership

I think my favorite thing is the Q&A. You get to ask any question to the SEOmoz staff and they’ll give you advice and tricks that you almost certainly haven’t thought of to help solve your problem. You can either ask it privately or publicly (meaning that other Pro members can see their responses). In questions that I’ve asked, I’ve received multiple responses from different Mozzers, and the advice couldn’t have been better. They answer your question with confidence, and usually give you more than one method to solve your problem.

I’m also a very big fan of their SEO Tips section. A couple of times a month the SEOmoz staff will reveal one of their secrets to promoting sites. I must admit, I had my doubts at first, but they definitely impressed me. Rand once said at a conference that you can learn about 90% of everything there is to know about SEO online, but there is also that 10% which everyone holds on to. Your SEOmoz pro membership will give you access to that 10% of information that bloggers hold onto. The information is invaluable and I found myself starting to think outside the box and come up with a few secrets of my own because of it.

The SEO toolbox. For the last year or so, I’ve tried to compile all the tools I use in an easy to access manner. It was always a struggle for me to do that, and I yearned for a one-stop toolbox that could speed up my process. The SEOmoz Toolbox is exactly what I’d been looking for. The tools are very reliable (in terms of functionality and the results they return), and there is a number of tools that you can’t find free elsewhere. I’ve noticed a large boost in critical information that I need in order to get my websites the high-results I need.

I could go on and on about the great information you get at your fingertips (thorough guides on various aspects of your SEO strategy, access to strong link building resources, great SEO analytics, etc.). The SEOmoz pro membership is like the Willy Wonka factory of SEO – offering all the advice you have been dreaming of in one central location. I would strongly recommend that you get your golden ticket and catch up on what you’ve been missing.

What features I’d like to see in the future

Although the SEOmoz staff is already churning out numerous blog posts, I think it would be really neat to have a membership-only side of the blog. I wouldn’t expect anywhere near the amount of posts they already put out, but I think that 3-4 premium content posts a month would be very valuable.

I’d also love to have access to more guides like their free SEO cheat sheets. I know there is a lot more they could add to them to give them a premium feel, and it would be great to have additional “did we do this?” checklists for my accounts and even for training purposes.

Final thoughts

Overall, I think this is a great service. I was skeptical when they first offered the membership, but they have really exceeded my expectations. Bravo Mozzers.

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

SEO Tools Review: SEOmoz Pro Membership

This week I had the privilege of reviewing a great new tool for SEOs, SheerSEO. This tool is a one-stop visual resource to help you with all of your SEO research. Instead of regurgitating their About Us page, let me go over what I love about this software and what I would like to see them implement in the future.

Benefits of using SheerSEO

• A really liked their ranking report feature. While I don’t think you should report rankings to clients, I do think they are very important to keep track of. Sudden increases and drops in rankings must be analyzed. There is a good bit of ranking software out there, but what I like most about SheerSEO’s reports are that they keep track of historical positions. Making it easier to analyze your results.
• I think my favorite tool that the software contains is their “Main Referrers” tool. This tool gives you a long list of other sites linking to yours and also the anchor text they are using. This is a great tool to use when doing competitive research!
• Accuracy of information. Normally the SEO software that I play around isn’t completely reliable. I performed a number of tests using the software and found that the data it returned was very reliable.
• Finally, I think that the visual charts/graphs that they give you are helpful for client presentations. I’ve had my share of hands-on/technical clients, and they love to see data like this to see how our SEO marketing strategy is progressing.

What would I like to see?

• It would be great if there was an easy way to input 3-5 competitors at once and get their backlink information and recommended search terms.
• A way to easily export the data into Excel. It would be great if I could easily download it to a spreadsheet to add in any extra information that I deem necessary and then save it for my records.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think this is a great (and underrated) piece of SEO software that you should strongly consider bookmarking in your SEO toolbox. I am always itching for new ways to get reliable information to improve my SEO strategies, and this tool does that. Go check out the demo and sign up (it’s free to sign up!)

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

Sofware Review: SheerSEO