Since the release of Moz Pro in 2010, Moz (formerly SEOmoz) has built its reputation on providing the digital marketing industry with the gold standard of SEO tools. On October 15th the long-awaited Moz Analytics, spawn of the famed Moz Pro, was released to the public—and it’s definitely worth your attention.
Moz Analytics is an online platform that tracks key inbound marketing metrics, produces reports, and makes actionable recommendations for improvement and opportunities. Moz Analytics reports on campaign activity at the top of the digital marketing funnel, as can be seen in the graphic below. The software includes analytics for search, social, links, brand, and mentions, as well as a host of powerful research tools that you’ll find indispensable.
Moz Analytics stands in contrast to all-in-one digital marketing software because it does not encompass the lead nurturing, content creation, social publishing, or CRM capabilities associated with the rest of the digital marketing funnel. However, with all-in-one marketing software providers (most notably Hubspot) now offering many of the same inbound tracking and reporting solutions, Moz must prove that their platform provides enough residual value over their competitors’ SaaS products to warrant a monthly subscription fee.
So far, they haven’t disappointed.
What are the features that allow Moz to rise above the competition? Here are the top five reasons you need Moz Analytics:
Whether you’re stacking yourself up against your competitors by tracked keywords, social growth, link profile, or Web mentions, Moz Analytics allows you to paint a clear picture of your competitive landscape using rankings, data, and graphs that update automatically. Open Site Explorer features a beautiful interface that allows for a clear juxtaposition of link ranking metrics, and many of the other tools available in the software suite can be used to gain powerful competitive insights, especially if you’re able to get creative!
This unique tool provides you with the ability to grade any URL (yes, even your competitors’) based on any keyword or keyword phrase. Then, it shows you a list of on-page optimization action items that can be taken to improve search ranking for that keyword. It even sorts the fixes by priority and difficulty level.
This tool allows you to analyze online mentions of anything you want—brand, competitors, industry topics—to discover the most relevant content being published on the Web. This is another weapon that can be leveraged for competitive intelligence.
Moz Analytics lets you track rankings for up to 350 keywords, which is not exactly a revolutionary concept. However, it also shows you the untracked keywords that drive traffic to your website, along with local and global search volume, bounce rates, average time spent on-site, and much more. Insights like these make it significantly easier to build out a keyword strategy for your website’s content.
Also, in light of recent Google encryption of (not provided) keywords driving traffic, Moz will soon be releasing features that will give users the ability to estimate keyword traffic based on page-level performance. How sweet is that?
The interface is easy to navigate and understand. In fact, it’s so intuitive that you’ll feel like a pro in no time. Data is displayed graphically and numerically in ways that allow interpretations and conclusions to come naturally. The dashboard provides a simple overview of your analytics and the tabs invite you to dig deeper into the metrics. Simply put, the design is beautiful.
You now know what Moz Analytics is and what it isn’t. It’s an exceptionally useful tool that provides amazing insights into your inbound marketing efforts and focuses your attention on opportunities for growth and improvement—but it’s not going to replace your all-in-one digital marketing platform. Instead, it can (and should) be used in conjunction with other software programs to provide a more holistic approach to an effective inbound strategy.
Moz Analytics is affordable, effective, easy-to-use, and available for a 30-day free trial to boot! Give it a whirl, you won’t regret it.
Image credit: Moz
