What value am I getting from SEOmoz?

[TomHu]

Okay, I've been using the trial version of SEOmoz for almost a week, but, I'm just not sure what to do with it to be honest. I'm not an SEO expert, so, a lot of the terminology and reports are confusing.

So far the only thing I've found useful are the domain and page duplication errors, but, I can get the same info from Google Webmaster Tools.

Am I missing something? We have a very simple site for a small business, not sure I can justify $99 per month for a service I don't really understand. Is this service more for SEO professionals than business owners?

-Tom

[chris.kent]

When I first started SEO I had the same question. Is this tool set really worth 99$/month. However as I've learned more about SEO and I've begun to use the tools more and see the value in them. My advice is to really see the value of this tool set you need to learn as much as you can about SEO & start trying to execute your own strategies. I'd be surprised if you didn't see that these tools make it all easier. Here's a small list of ways I use the tools

OSE: competitor analysis,anchor text distribution. Helps me see opportunities as well as how prepared my opponents are & what it will probably take to beat them.

Keyword tool: great for finding and evaluating profitable niches/opportunities for existing businesses.

Followerwonk: helps me target influencers, and strategize for more followers on twitter. Which is probably one of the best ways to scale up link building efforts.

The on page reports & weekly crawls/rank checks: those just make my life easier.

Those are just a few benefits of the tools.

[Michael-Goode]

In addition to what Chris said, the tools listed below are quite useful to my everyday tasks:

On-Page Report Cards: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new

The competitive link finder:  http://www.seomoz.org/labs/link-intersect

Link Acquisition Assistant: http://www.seomoz.org/labs/link-finder/index.php

[Personnel_Concept]

Best is to get arrange a training for yourself or any other staff from some SEO consultant for a day or so. Get the basic understanding of tools, and their benefits so you can use it efficiently in future without any help. Once you have the training you will see that suddenly seomoz will start making lot of sense to you!

[EGOL]

One great question answered in Q&A can be worth an entire year of subscriptions.... but it is up to you to ask the right questions.

[TomHu]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I've learned a lot about SEO in the past year, but, what I've learned most is that it's practically a full-time job to appease the Google god, time I just don't have running a small business. It's just two of us who do all the work. We can't afford to hire an SEO consultant, which is why I'm trying out this site. But, I'm finding it difficult to even spend the amount of time needed on this site to make good use of it.

I think our site and business niche is just too small for SEO tools to be of any use. 99% of our business comes from client referrals. The tiny amount of search engine traffic we do get rarely leads to sales. So, it's becoming clear that it makes more sense for us to spend our efforts encouraging and incentivizing client referrals than spending hours of time each week trying to get 4 more search engine referrals a day.

Thanks again. 
Tom