Moz is a respected veteran in the SEO industry, emerging in 2004 as an agency before transitioning into a robust SaaS product. The company's metrics like Domain Authority and Page Authority are trusted by many SEO professionals and referenced across other tools. Moz Pro offers an expansive suite covering keyword research, backlink analysis, rank tracking, and more. But how does their platform stack up in real-world use? In this Moz Pro review I will show you how it stacks up with other comparable SEO tools and if it's worth the money or not!
Pricing - 3/5 stars
Moz Pro's pricing starts at $99/month for the Standard plan which is fairly aligned with competitors. However, the limitations on keywords tracking and campaign management make it mediocre value at that tier. The higher-priced plans cater more to agencies. Moz lacks a truly budget-friendly option for very small businesses.
Features - 3/5 stars
While covering all the SEO basics reasonably well, Moz Pro does not stand out in terms of features compared to rivals. Its rank tracking, campaign analysis, and site auditing trail alternative tools. Moz also lacks innovations like automated tracking. Outside its signature DA/PA metrics, the features are average.
Accuracy - 4/5 stars
Moz's core metrics like DA and PA are widely trusted for competitor benchmarking. The data accuracy is quite good. However, some secondary data points like search volume estimates can be questionable. But overall, Moz provides quality SEO metrics.
Pros
Cons
Moz Pro is a premium SEO software platform from Moz, one of the most trusted names in search engine optimization. It offers a robust set of SEO tools to help businesses improve their organic search visibility and performance.
At its core, Moz Pro enhances keyword research and rank tracking capabilities for SEO professionals through its Keyword Explorer and Rank Tracker tools. Users can analyze keyword difficulty, search volume, competitor rankings, and more to identify the best terms to target. Rank Tracker shows keyword rankings in Google along with historical ranking data and SERP analysis.
Beyond keywords, Moz Pro includes powerful site crawling and link analysis. The Link Explorer provides metrics like Domain Authority and Page Authority to evaluate link profile strength. It also identifies toxic backlinks that could potentially harm rankings. The Site Crawl feature scans pages to detect technical SEO issues.
Moz Pro integrates seamlessly with Moz Local to manage local SEO rankings and listings. The platform also offers an API for custom reporting and integrations. Users get access to trusted Moz data right within other tools.
In terms of reporting, Moz Pro offers an SEO dashboard containing actionable recommendations. Users can also build custom reports with rankings, metrics, competitor data and more. For technical SEOs, it provides technical site audit reports.
With its advanced SEO capabilities, rigorous data standards, and trusted authority in the search community, Moz Pro remains an industry-leading software for enterprise SEO teams and agencies. The expansive feature set equips SEO experts with the tools and insights needed to execute complex organic search strategies.
While reasonably intuitive, Moz's interface can sometimes appear slightly outdated and cluttered compared to some newer, sleeker competitors. However, Moz offers helpful onboarding and in-app guidance to get started. Pop-ups provide explanations when using key features for the first time. Though not the most modern or beginner-friendly platform, most users should feel comfortable navigating Moz after some initial learning. For an SEO tool with more simplicity and polish in its user experience, KWFinder is worth considering. Ultimately though, Moz remains a robust option for seasoned SEO practitioners needing advanced capabilities. The breadth of data and insights makes up for any shortcomings in UI design.
Keyword research is a core component of most SEO tools, and Moz is no exception. It provides functionality to research keywords both by seed term and by analyzing competitors' sites. In practice though, there are some limitations in Moz's keyword research capabilities compared to alternative tools.
Using the Explore Keywords feature, Moz offers extensive metrics on individual seed keywords like search volume, difficulty, and CTR. This grants a solid snapshot of a single term. However, to uncover a larger list of viable keywords to target, you need to utilize the keyword suggestions. Moz provides some helpful filters here like questions and commercial modifiers to narrow down the list. But the suggested keywords lack difficulty or competitiveness scores without clicking through to each term's individual overview.
This is a major shortcoming compared to other tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush which display key SEO metrics directly in the suggestion results. The lack of difficulty scores alongside the suggestions makes it extremely tedious to scan and filter for the best opportunities. You end up needing numerous open tabs just to gauge which keywords are worth targeting for rankings. For users focused heavily on extensive keyword research, this added friction is a real hindrance.
While Moz gives ample suggestions, not having those key metrics readily visible significantly reduces the keyword research utility. It simply takes much more work to derive insights compared to rival tools that surface the data upfront. Moz's keyword research provides a decent starting point but lacks the fine-tuned control and visibility needed for advanced SEO keyword projects. For power users doing heavy keyword analysis, alternative tools likely offer a more efficient and seamless experience.
Moz offers robust SERP analysis capabilities, which are critical for evaluating keywords and identifying the best opportunities. The keyword overview snippets provide key metrics like rankings, traffic estimates, and difficulty scores for a quick look. Clicking through to the full SERP analysis grants additional data like Domain Authority, Page Authority, and backlink profiles of ranking pages. This empowers comprehensive competitive research directly within keyword reports.
However, there is room for improvement in Moz's SERP analysis compared to some alternative SEO tools. For example, other platforms allow drilling down into the specific backlinks pointing to a ranking page right from the SERP report. Moz lacks this degree of link analysis visibility. Additionally, adding metrics like number of linking domains could further strengthen competitive insights.
Yet despite these shortcomings, Moz's SERP analysis still provides tremendous value. The Page Authority and Domain Authority metrics offered in reports are trusted across the SEO industry for benchmarking. And the overview of ranking pages' link profiles grants directional competitive intelligence. For most users, Moz supplies ample data to assess keyword difficulty and identify promising opportunities.
Moz also makes reverse engineering competitors' sites straightforward to uncover content gaps. The platform displays competitors' top ranking keywords and pages, allowing you to pinpoint potential topics and terms to target. Expanding to multiple competitors gives an even broader picture of the overall niche and where potential gaps exist. Moz's metrics give a sense of difficulty for going after various terms or content. While again, more link data could be beneficial, Moz provides the must-have SEO metrics for this strategy.
Since Moz lacks a singular competitive analysis report, users should leverage the keyword and SERP analysis to compile competitor insights. The capabilities are there, just decentralized compared to some tools. With its trusted authority metrics and aggregate competitive data, Moz enables users to thoroughly size up rivals and find strategic openings. The platform delivers on competitive SEO reconnaissance, albeit through assembling various reports.
Moz provides a solid set of link analysis capabilities to research competitors' backlink profiles and identify new link building opportunities. The Link Explorer offers an overview of a domain's links with metrics like Domain Authority, total links, historical trends, and nofollow percentages. Drilling into specific pages also shows helpful Page Authority data and top linking domains.
While not revolutionary, these features cover the basics for competitive link analysis and initial outreach prospecting. The domain overview equips users with a broad snapshot of competitors' overall link profiles. And page-level analysis narrows the focus to prioritize pages and get Page Authority metrics to gauge impact. Most competitor backlink tools offer similar features, but Moz provides the core information needed in an easy to digest format.
A particularly useful component is Moz's link comparison tool. It stacks up the Domain Authority, Page Authority, and top linking domains of different pages and sites. This allows assessing the relative strength of competitors' backlink profiles at a glance. When coupled with keyword research, the comparison gives directional intelligence on who will be toughest to outrank. It paints a clear picture of the link equity within a niche.
However, Moz's link analysis capabilities do have some clear gaps compared to alternatives like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and SERPStat. There is no bulk backlink data download, detailed analysis of a specific backlink, or link intersect graphs. Some users, especially agencies and enterprises, may find Moz lacking in the raw link data needed for large-scale projects. But for most SEO practitioners, Moz provides more than enough link intelligence to execute on an SEO strategy. It nails the 80/20 of competitive link research and prospecting.
Moz offers social monitoring and alert capabilities through its Web Explorer feature. Users can input brand names, keywords, or URLs to surface mentions across social networks, forums, blogs, and news sites. For SEOs and marketers, Web Explorer aids online reputation management and identifying new link building opportunities. Setting up alerts ensures you get notified of new brand mentions without manual searches.
While the tool provides useful visibility into brand perception and outreach prospects, it lacks some of the depth offered by dedicated social listening platforms. There is no sentiment analysis, influencer identification, or demographics on who is mentioning your brand. But as a free add-on to an SEO toolkit, Web Explorer delivers value for monitoring brand reputation.
Moz's Page Analysis tool evaluates how optimized a specific page is for a target keyword. It examines elements like title tag, URLs, headings, and page content to provide an optimization score and actionable recommendations. For basic technical and on-page SEO, Page Analysis offers quick wins like improving meta descriptions and content.
However, it cannot replace a full technical site audit. For flagging comprehensive technical issues across an entire website, tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs provide more thorough crawling and flagging of problems. But for rapid on-page optimization suggestions, Page Analysis is a handy tool.
Moz recently introduced rank tracking capabilities, allowing users to manually add keywords and locations to monitor positions over time. However, Moz lags behind tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush that automatically pull ranking history and current data. The need to manually configure rank tracking makes it tougher to scale.
Similarly, Moz Campaigns enables tracking groups of keywords but does not seem markedly different from the rank tracking workflow. The tool could better integrate SEO and PPC data for true campaign intelligence. For now, Moz Campaigns provide the basic ability to monitor keyword group performance but are not a standout or revolutionary feature.
So in both rank tracking and campaign analysis, Moz checked the boxes on offering the expected capabilities but did not leapfrog competitors. Users wanting robust, seamless rank monitoring are still better served by other vendors. But Moz provides the fundamentals for keeping tabs on rankings.
Moz offers four paid plans ranging from $99 to $599 per month, along with a free 30-day trial. The lowest-priced Standard plan provides core SEO functionality but with limited keyword and site tracking. The higher-tier plans add features like rank monitoring and API access, catering more to agencies and power users.
Overall, Moz is competitively priced compared to alternatives. However, the inability to track more than 25 keywords on the Standard plan is a notable restriction for smaller businesses wanting to monitor their core terms. But the one month free trial does allow properly evaluating if Moz's features warrant the ongoing cost.
Moz provides stellar onboarding resources and help documentation for new users. The in-app guided tours when accessing key reports eases the learning curve. Moz's online knowledge base contains hundreds of articles answering common questions.
However, direct customer support is more limited. Live chat support requires higher-priced plans, while priority email support comes with the Standard plan. But for most users, Moz's self-service onboarding and guides are sufficient to get acquainted with the platform.
While the interface can seem slightly outdated, Moz remains straightforward to use once accustomed to the workflow. The tool tips and onboarding guide users through the critical pathways. Moz avoids feature overload keeping the core reports focused on the essential SEO data points. The metrics are also clearly defined within the platform.
Moz delivers a competent SEO toolset centered around its trusted proprietary metrics like DA and PA. However, it lacks innovation in areas like rank tracking and competitive analysis compared to alternatives like Ahrefs that provide greater depth. Moz nailed SEO basics years ago but has not leapfrogged rivals on advanced features. For most users, Ahrefs provides more robust keyword research, link analysis, and site auditing capabilities per dollar. But brands relying heavily on DA and PA metrics may find long-term value in Moz's platform.
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