Moz
Understand the basics of utilizing Moz, a popular all-in-one SEO toolset that offers plenty of resources to improve search engine visibility for any website.
Like most other SEO toolsets, Moz offers some free tools relevant to those who are either just getting started on SEO or trying to decide which SEO platform works best for them. Besides the free tools, there are paid packages for individuals or companies who invest deeper in SEO. Overall, the toolset aims to make keyword research, rank tracking, and link building easier for even those with little background in SEO.
Moz offers multiple subscriptions, of which Moz Pro is the most popular. We’ll go through all the important SEO features the subscription offers and how to use them to their maximum potential.
Create and track campaign
When we sign up on Moz, it prompts us to create a campaign. With each campaign we create, we can track one URL. We can add up to three competitors to track this URL across four search engines. Other than our domain, we can also create campaigns for subfolders or subdomains to monitor the SEO of a specific area on our site. All the campaigns we create can be managed through the Campaign section of the MozPro toolbar. On the Manage Your Campaigns page, we can see some important metrics related to our campaigns, such as domain authority, visibility, crawl issues, and more.
When we click on any of the campaigns on the "Manage Your Campaign" page, the Dashboard for that campaign will open. Here, we can view this campaign's weekly or monthly SEO tracking data.
For the time frame we choose, we can see our search visibility based on the keywords we are tracking for this campaign. The search visibility can also be compared to our competitors for the same keywords. We can also compare our current visibility against the visibility that was tracked for this campaign during the last update. Next to the Search Visibility box, we will find a Desktop vs. Mobile Search Visibility box, where we can compare the visibility on these devices.
Next, we can see the visits our website gets from different channels. This data is pulled from our Google Analytics profile, so we must connect our campaign to Google Analytics through Campaign Settings.
Other things we can see on this page include our site’s Domain Authority compared to our competitors.
Lower down on the Dashboard, we’ll be able to see the local and national keywords for which our site is ranking best. If we want in-depth data on any of these keywords, we can click on them to go to the Analyze a Keyword tool for our selected keyword.
On the same page, we can also get a quick view of our backlink profile. We can compare our current backlink data against the last update and also against our competitors’ backlinks.
It will also show us how many of our tracked keywords rank in the first ten positions against our competitors.
The last thing we’ll find on the page is the Insights button that we can click to go to a list of actionable insights that the tool generated while crawling our website. It will show us a list of improvements we can make to improve the SEO. Here, we can find crawl issues that need fixing, linking opportunities, and other insights.
Keyword research
While using Moz Pro, we can conduct keyword research using Keyword Explorer, create a list of keywords we want to target, and add them to our Moz Pro campaign to track their progress.
Keyword Explorer allows us to explore keywords by entering a keyword, page, or site.
Next, we can either start with the keywords it’s already ranking for, search for new keywords, or enter any other keywords we have in mind to explore more. When we enter a keyword in the search bar, we’ll see a report with all the important metrics related to that keyword. These include monthly volume, difficulty, CTR, and priority.
Further down, there’s a Keyword Suggestions box that we can expand to see all keywords related to the keyword we typed. The suggestions are listed in order of relevancy to the seed keyword we entered. We can further customize our search through filters. We can also search keywords from the list to find more suggestions related to our search.
In the SERP analysis tab, we can find which web pages rank for our entered keyword.
Once we have keywords that our site is already ranking for and the keywords we want to rank for, we can create a list and add these keywords to our Campaign.
Keyword Explorer also allows us to create a keyword list through the Keyword List tab by either entering them manually or through a CSV file. Once we have created our keyword list, we can track their metrics in bulk. We can also add keywords of our choice from the Keyword Suggestions list to the keyword list we have already created.
Other than adding keywords to the keyword list, we can also select keywords from the Keywords Suggestion list to add to our Campaign by clicking the "Add to" button.
If we want to add the keywords we’re already ranking for to our Campaign, that’s also possible. For this, we’ll go to the Ranking Keywords tab and enter our website to get a list of keywords our site is ranking for.
From the list of keywords that appear, we can select any or all of them to add to our Campaign and start tracking them.
Track keywords
Once we’ve added keywords to our Campaign, we can start tracking them. To start tracking our target keywords, we can go to the Rankings tab inside our Campaign. Here we’ll get a quick summary of our keywords' rankings. It will tell us how many of our keywords are ranking in the top three positions, how many are in the fourth to tenth position, and so on. It will also tell us any changes in rankings that the tool has experienced since the last crawl. For example, how many keywords have moved up or down in ranking?
If we want to see how each of our keywords is performing individually, we can see that in Tracked Keywords Overview list lower down in the same report. It shows us a list of all the keywords we are tracking for the campaign, their monthly volumes, rank, any changes in the rank, and the URL on our website ranking the highest for this keyword.
If our website is ranking for a Featured Snippet for a particular keyword, it will have a scissor symbol next to its rank.
We can also track rankings for our local keywords from the Tracked Keyword Overview list. For this, we will need to select the keywords that we want to track locally using the checkbox on the left and then press the Add Location(s) button.
Link building
Moz Pro’s Link Explorer includes multiple tabs that allow us to compare our backlink profile to that of our competitors and find better link opportunities. To start with Link Explorer, we can enter a root domain, subdomain, or exact page and click "Analyze". This will take us to the Overview Report, where we can see the domain authority, backlinks, linking domains, and the keywords ranking for the searched domain.
The Overview Report also has a section for Discovered and Lost Linking Domains. Under this section, we can find the new linking domains that have been found and the old ones that have been lost over the past month.
Under the Metrics Over Time section, we can follow how the domain authority, page authority, and linking domains have changed over time.
Page optimization
When working on our page content, the Page Optimization report of Moz Pro will come in handy. This report allows us to check if a particular page is optimized for a keyword and also provides suggestions for further improvement. Each time we run a Page Optimization report, it is also added to our Track and Monitor tab. This means that Moz Pro will track our progress for those pages and update the report each week. If we want to remove tracking of a particular keyword-page pair, we can uncheck the Track checkbox.
Test your knowledge
What is the purpose of the “Insights” button in Moz Pro’s campaign dashboard?
To provide competitor analysis
To display website traffic sources
To offer actionable SEO improvement suggestions
To track backlink profiles
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