Is SEOMoz only good for "ideas"?

[RyanKent]

Steven, it sounds like you joined to learn the secret handshake. If that is the case then, from your point of view, you will be disappointed.

EGOL and Marcus both shared excellent perspectives on the SEOmoz site's offerings. You have also looked around the site. Based on your replies I think you have examined the site and have not missed any major components.

What SEOmoz does offer members is:

• Tools: Site Explorer, MOZbar and other tools to examine websites. Yes, there are similar tools out there and also some of these tools can be improved. I would like to see all of SEOmoz's tools improved to be the best in the industry. They aren't there yet.

• Original interviews: you mentioned Whiteboard Fridays. The recent interview with Duane Forrester from Bing offered fantastic insight into upcoming changes at Bing. Being part of a network which talks to industry leaders and asks the right questions is very rewarding.

• Active community: if you do get stuck or otherwise have a question, SEOmoz offers a place you can go to for help. From what I have seen, other communities are not very active nor do they offer the quality of feedback these forums provide.

The idea seems to be centered around providing a place for those interested in SEO the tools, information and discussion area to do their job better. If that is not what you are looking for, then I would suggest you simply enjoy your free month then try something else.

[stevenheron]

Hi Ryan,

You're quite right. The site does offer some useful tools and interviews. In fact for that reason alone I will be retaining my membership. I wasn't really after a secret handshake, but more sharing of analysis data.

[EGOL]

Can you tell me the diminishing value of a sitewide link vs a single homepage link for example? And how is it you know the answer to this?

Nobody is going to tell you that a sitewide link is worth 2.76788756 times the value of a homepage link.

The answer isn't that simple.  Sites come in different sizes, they have different linkages, they have different navigation structures and they have different numbers of links hitting homepages and internal pages. Maybe it even matters if these links are in the footer, the top navigation or some other location.

There is a word that is used when people try to reverse engineer something that is really complex..... that is fuzzy logic.  I think that this term has huge application in SEO.

But my personal opinion is when we deal with questions of fuzzy logic, we make the most effective use of our time when we accept answers such as "a little bit more"..... "probably nothing".... and "maybe a little less".  Then we simply apply them, and move on rather than trying to get into proving theorems and attempting to calculate out to five decimal points.

[dignan99]

Hi Steven,

While I don't feel it's necessary to defend SEOmoz, or SEO for that matter, it is impossible to know exactly what do to implement perfect SEO techniques and rank in the top spot for each industry.

However, SEOmoz is one of the few places I have watched webinars that collect vertical data, and process the statistics to made heads and tails of it.  I do remember reading a Google Best Practices Guide from 2010 that did something similar, but not as well as SEOmoz.

The more I read and learn from this site, the more I realize that SEO is not abut tricking Google and other search engines.  It is about relying on the best practices to create high quality, relevant websites that Google will appreciate.  I continue to believe that if SEOers stay consistent in their practices, Google will end up changing their algorithms to suit SEOmoz's standards.  Search engines will be chasing our sites, and our clients sites based on the excellent product we are helping produce.

SEO can be an extremely frustrating if you are looking for black and white answers.  I find the best practices approach to be much less frustrating, and easier to manage in regards to expectations and results.

Edit

I also wanted to mention that I wish people would have more ideas to consider in reference to best practices and techniques.  This is how SEO will evolve, and rarely do people have a chance to be in on the ground floor with cool stuff like this.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I like how EGOL summed it up in regard to the fact that search engines won't reveal their methods.

They claim hundreds of factors, yet when those are cross-related, that leads to exponential sub-factors (and thus why Google and Bing like to tout 10,000 factors behind the hundreds).

We live in a correlation industry.  Any true scientific analysis to reverse engineer the actual factors is by nature going to very likely miss something, and it could be quite significant in how much the results are actually false flag.

Where it gets more complex is that no two situations (in any truly competitive landscape) are exactly alike, and thus the need to replicate for verification is an even more elusive task.

Then add in that hundreds of changes occur to search algorithms throughout the year (some small, some big), and now we're talking about a barrier to true scientific evaluation.

Oh - and let's not forget that unless we have the exact same data set as any search engine, we move even further away from the mark of accepted scientific best practices methodology.

On a final note, the amount of time, computing power and analysis required in most situations, is more likely cost-prohibitive since the results of such effort can not be recouped.  So that leaves it to an entity that has the financial, technical, and academic willingness to take on such a task without expectation of compensation.

Rand gets hammered all the time for referring to Moz's process with the tag line "correlation is not causation", even though we work in a correlation industry.

[EGOL]

Oh - and let's not forget that unless we have the exact same data set as any search engine, we move even further away from the mark of accepted scientific best practices methodology.

This is really important.  In the past SEOs could count all of the onpage factors and count their links and count their anchor text.  Now as Google starts using things like social data, analytics data from Google.com and other information that SEOs can not count or even see - that is when the ability to reverse engineer begins to disappear - and google becomes less likely to be manipulated.

[stevenheron]

I wasn't asking to pin point anything to decimal places. I was only after peoples view on whether its "a little bit more" or "probably nothing" etc. That way I can see who here actually knows anything about SEO.

[AlanBleiweiss]

And when Schema.org is fully implemented, and in turn integrated into ranking factors, it's going to go through the roof as far as factors go.

[EGOL]

OK... for your question... maybe a little bit more if all links go to the same URL.  However, if the links go to different URLs you might get a lot more.

[stevenheron]

Exactly. And so, would it not be greatly beneficial knowledge to all of us to know if and when a limit is reached where this strategy is no longer effective?

For example, there are many PR8 sites with literally hundreds of PR6 pages that allow dofollow commenting. We can alter anchor text and the deeplink to gain links from these PR6 pages. The question is when does this strategy become ineffective? Let's say our site has 100k pages. Should we spend our time getting a link from every available PR6 page from the same domain? Or is there a diminishing value?

Having some sort of a study that's tried and proven to show if a persistent benefit exists, and when it wears off, would be invaluable to practical SEO, and the results of a study such as this are highly unlikely to change within a year.

Surely you'd like to see something like this too?

I do understand the need to keep SEO in-line with Matt Cutt's objectives, however the reality is that Matt Cutts objectives and what works are two different things. There would be no such thing as off-site SEO at all if Google worked the way it meant to. The thing is, is that it doesn't, and that is why off-site SEO exists.

Instead of people giving hogwash answers, we should be demanding these sorts of useful studies. That is just my opinion anyway.