On Thursday morning (yesterday), SEOmoz reached 2000 PRO members and we had a mini celebration at the office to commemorate.
To honor the occasion, Mystery Guest stayed up until midnight the night before, baking us fantastic, shortbread, chocolate-dipped cookies in the shape of 2s and 0s.
Left to Right: Danny, Rand, Sarah, Jane, Gillian, Susan, Nick, Scott & Christine
Susan Moskwa had stopped by to do a Whiteboard Friday (which should be posted any minute now) and joined us in the celebration.
Obviously, I'm ecstatic. It may be an arbitrary number, but it's been symbolic to me and many of the other mozzers for months now as a potential tipping point for the service. I'm really proud of what the team at SEOmoz has achieved - buiding great tools and a terrific website, interacting and inspiring people throughout the SEO community and working together to build an atmosphere that makes me excited to go to work every morning.
We're not done - not by any means. In fact, to be perfectly honest, the PRO toolset and value proposition today is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we'd like to offer in the future. Several of us got together for a nearly two-hour meeting (we got a bit sidetracked by some engineering challenges) today on features and functionality for a completely new tool that we think will be a remarkable boost for competitive analysis and brand tracking.
In addition to congratulating my team and sharing a few photos, I'd also like to use this post to officially announce our intention to launch V4 of SEOmoz (the 4th iteration of the site since its birth in 2004). That launch is expected to arrive right around Halloween of this year (October 31st), and will feature a ton of new material, new functionality, a new look and feel and a considerably faster load time (as we're also planning to add load balancing and more robust, scalable code).
However, we can't possibly predict every feature our members (that's you!) might enjoy, so please feel free to leave comments with your suggestions for the PRO section, the free stuff, the blog, YOUmoz, the Marketplace, Events or any other part of the site. In the past, we've gotten many of our best suggestions from our membership, and are hopeful that this time is no different. Obviously, I can't promise that we'll include every feature, but with a longer development cycle, we'll be able to accomplish quite a bit. No suggestion is too big or too small, so please do contribute.
Finally, a huge thanks to all our members - both PRO and non. Early next week, we're on schedule to reach 70,000 total SEOmoz members, another milestone, and looking over the blog, the marketplace, Q+A - the areas where we get to interact as a community, I'm amazed at the quality of people, content and discussion. If we could send you all delicious shortbread cookies and champagne, we totally would :)
p.s. Have you noticed how good the YOUmoz content has been lately? Seriously, there are some very good posts going up there of late - bravo, YOUmozzers!
Great stuff guys - well deserved.
Points for the future (already raised to be fair):
That should do it..
Cut Tom's comments off at 1,000 words.
thats quite a lot - I would propose 1000 characters..
Ciaran & Rishi -
I share your sentiments of cutting off Tom's comments at a certain number of characters. In fact, I was thinking maybe SEOmoz could institute the Twitter rule for Tom.
My only concern (knowing how smart that Critchlow clan is), is that he'll employ a multiple comment tactic, in which case we'll have to see more of his face! Do we really want that?
Is there any way SEOmoz can limit him to One (1) 140 character comment per day?
Cheers, Sean
Steady on people, I think you're mistaking me for Will, I'm the GOOD critchlow remember?
tomato (tuh meh toh) tomato (toh mah toh)
Or as we used to say in Uni - same difference. ;)
"...the GOOD critchlow"
I'm not sure why, but as soon as I read that line, I immediately thought of Dorothy and Toto talking to some hot looking chick named Glinda.
Holy crap, did I just land in Moz? Yes! I believe I did.
I think that you'll find that where pi = a prime number/9th level mage, X= oop north
I'd certainly echo this sentiment. If you could limit each Critchlow to one 140 comment per day, I would get a lot more work out of them...
The fact that you got 8 thumbs up for this already suggests that:
I dont think its a case of not being able to spell - its more like sneaking in comments while working means you are rushing through them... spell check saves time.
lol - no one hates Tom - we just all jumped on board cause of Ciaran... (can anyone say Baa? ) lol
Yeah, I know no one hates Tom and that Ciaran has a fairly good idea about how to spell... Guess I shouldn't make references to Twitter conversations in the comments ;) Don't mind me!
Me? Nkow who to slpel?
Knowing the theory and implementing it are two different things :)
right I couldnt resist - for Mambo / Joomla users you may recognise:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Rsihi,
Taht is so fcuking fnuny!
Saen
Please dont mention joomla - just finished a 3 week project with that! had nightmares... but tis fnuny! :)
"Please don't mention Joomla"
/Cry
Why no love the for the J? :-(
Congrats to the whole SEOmoz - this is a great achievement and I'm happy to have been part of the community :-)
Moz V4 you say? Here's what I'd like:
That's all I can think of at the moment - if anything else comes to me I'll let you know :-)
I thought of another one (reading the above comment) if you could find a way of letting my firefox spell checker work with moz comments all my comments would end up with much better spelling! :-)
@Tom_C I guess you are right about the signal to noise ratio - and I think I am guilty of submitting stuff on a whim...
@Rand I think this post may still be valid to an extent!
I'm going to disagree with the TOM C YOUmoz idea. I'm right behind Rishil in number of YOUmoz posts, so I'm sure I'm guilty of contributing more noise than signal, but I like that anyone can throw an idea out on YOUmoz as long as it is properly written.
It might take some people a while to find their YOUmoz voice, and I don't think you should discourage posting until they've found it.
I think we disagree on what our view of youmoz should be (which is fine!).
While I agree mainly that you should be able to throw an idea out there without having to think about it sometimes I see posts which just aren't worth reading (though the discussion they often generate is usually of a high standard I don't think that always justifies the original post being low quality).
Maybe some kind of thumbs up threshold before you can contribute to youmoz? I'm not talking lots, maybe 20 or something? (the same as gets you an un-nofollowed link on your profile page). Most of the low quality posts have been from people who don't comment much and generally don't contribute to the community so maybe that would be a way of keeping the quality high while still allowing people to just talk about whatever they want
I would support a thumbs up standard. It allows mozzers to digest the culture here better and from that probably see some better posts. The youmoz posts which I think are poorer are typically from mozzers with fewer than 5 mozpoints, and their posts border on the conversational. I'm an old fashion essay guy, i like to be told what the post is about in the first paragraph.
We've got a little something in mind ;)
Well isnt that the purpose of Youmoz? To be a bit more spontaneous and write things on a whim. Acorns/trees etc. Or are you just jealous that some people can read great content without paying? lol
Personally I like the noise and I imagine stats will say the same thing about a large percentage of users.
I agree on the spell check ;) That would be most helpful!
You know you can right click in the comment box and select, "Spell check this field", right? For some reason it doesn't get all spelling mistakes, but it catches most.
I did not know that! Thanks for the tip - excellent stuff! :-)
Yeah, but on most sites you can set it as default but on the Moz, you have to do it every time.
I think it's just because they like seeing the resluts of me trying to type fast.
That was on purpose by the way!
;)
It's telling that you had to include the disclaimer...
How about a "hot" category for Youmoz? That way, it could remain very accessable to anyone who wants to contribute, but the community could serve as a filter for the quality.
Some link love for articles that go hot would help to encourage quality UGC.
I've been thinking of doing a weekly comic thing (probably on Fridays) that would just be a one-photo panel with me injecting stupid speech bubbles into it.
Also, regarding YOUmoz, if you don't like a post, thumb it down. The only editorial decisions I make are rejecting dupe submissions, rejecting spam, rejecting what are essentially forum questions, rejecting very, very basic posts (e.g., "Search engine optimization is defined as..."), and proofing posts. That's it. I leave the rest up to members to judge the quality of the content; in fact, a couple times I've published posts and thumbed them down. Just because I publish something, that doesn't mean I necessarily vouch for the quality of the post. It's YOUmoz, not BECCAmoz. :)
If it were BECCAmoz, she'd just splog Best Week Ever.
Re SEO project transparency, it might be asking too much for such a case study to be delivered for free. Maybe to PRO members.
Note: One thing that convinced me to join months back was Rand's previous posts about costs and how they approached a project. It was the first time I saw anyone willing to let the outside in. I am very pleased at the level of transparency and willingness to educate us.
SEOmoz deserves to be paid well by clients as well as maintain some confidentiality about their process.
SUGGESTION: SEOmoz might want to consider SEOmoz University (SEOmoz U). PRO Members could enroll to obtain transcripts/notes on a weekly basis while "mozFaculty" walks them thru a project or assigns tasks for "moz Students" to study/do homework. I imagine there would be a huge alumni association as a result!
I must agree that being able to subscribe SPECIFICALLY to get emails on RESPONSES TO YOUR COMMENTS and not simply comments to the blog post in general would be a great help. Especially for those of us who ask questions or make suggestions we aren't too sure about and want feedback. I hate checking on every notifying email and seeing it was YET ANOTHER PERSON commenting below me and not answering the question I posted!!!
Congratulations to the seomoz team, well deserved celebration. I would say you can add one more guide: SEO Technical Guide: Technical knowledge for SEO's. You can include stuff like:
-Hosting: Basic info, set up, etc. In general how hosting affects SEO.
-Optimizing PHP, ASP, etc. Sites
-SSI, Javacript, etc
A list of thecnical aspects you guys think an SEO must know, or at least how that affects SEO.
Thanks for all the good information, great job!
That is an excellent suggestion! We often discuss in passing how hosting and IP adresses and shared IP's affect Localised results - but I havent seen specific technical architecture guides that help in SEO..
Ooh, good idea. We may get to finally enlist some devs to author guides!
Definitely a great suggestion. It made me remember an Article I wrote sometime back "Does website hosting affects rankings at Google ?". My 2c is that Hosting does affect Local Search (based on where you are hosted) etc. As far as Unique IP is concerned, if you have an eCommerce Website, then you have SSL Enabled which means you have an SSL Certificate and therefore for that to be in place, a Static IP is required. So no concerns there. But is it recommended to have smaller sites on unique IP's or not is still a sort of gray area. I would recommend not having sites on the same ip block or same class C, linking to each other, if that makes sense.
Congrats guys. Good work.
The things I want (in order of vague possibility from "uh, no" to "you are kidding, right") are: 1. access to your awesome many IP-address, multi-server etc. scraping functionality. An API'd be fine ;) 2. you to make an SEOs' version of Google's cache of the Internet along with map-reduce so we can run our own analysis over the whole thing...
Big enough for you?
Um, I think Scott is in that photo too. Unless Scott is now called Christine..?
Good spot Stephanie
Thanks!
You're not Stephanie - you're Christine.
Danny, Rand, Sarah, Jane, Gillian, Nick, Christine, Rebecca and that hulking beast on the right hand side of the photo (who is that guy?),
Congratulations to each of you for building such a spectacularly valuable, interesting, entertaining and fun business.
A debt of gratitude to "The Greatest SEO Show On Earth"!
Warmest regards,
Sean
Christine's blinding smile rendered me invisible.
Wow, congrats....as I only signed up as a PRO member a couple of days ago am thrilled to be part of achieving this milestone. You guys have taught me so much, your success is richly deserved. Good going, look forward to more!
Congrats SEOmoz crew!
I have one improvement that I'd like to see:
I really like the Q&A section but I suppose this suggestion could apply to all of the other sections (Tips, Blog, etc.). I would like to see a way to "star" or "favorite" certain posts.
I frequently come across content that I would like to revisit because it applies directly to my seo issues (but I don't have time to review them) or I know that it will apply in the near future. After selecting some of my favorite posts I could revisit them without having to search for them by memory or bookmark every single one of them.
Thanks!
How about extending the Q&A with a free version, where Youmozers would answer questions?
that could be potentially risky to be honest. blind leading blind?
Being able to star Youmoz posts would rock!
Wow, see what I miss when I actually do work instead of spending all day on the blogs? :) Congratulations, Moz-squad; that's great news! I also notice that, just about every time we see a picture of the group, there's a new face.
haha! Same here - first time to enter the post - and nothing to add, well... except CONGRATS, guys!
I'm late to the party, but I'd add to Critchlow the Good's comment about email notifications: Please include the text of the message in the new comment (along with his suggestions of more control).
Critchlow the good?? Purlease.
Hehe. Glad you caught that! Time to parse a new icon...
ha ha ha! thats an excellent one!
Yes, Critchlow The Good; renowned mage & half-elf (9th level).
Sorry, off-topic, and in-joke.
*leaves*
I just did the math at 2000 members.
Even without taking into account any actual SEO clients, I think your revenue-per-employee is a very respectable number.
I think you can give yourself (and everyone else) a raise now.
Congratulations!
Vin - the only thing I'd say is that you make sure you do your math right. A great number of our members sign up for the 1-year or 6-month packages, which, while an awesome deal, mean that we're not quite "rolling" :)
We've also added 5 staff members since September and have 3 more to add in the next few months, so that money's being spent! Luckily, it's all going to building awesome new stuff for both the PRO content and the freely accessible content on SEOmoz. We're very product-focused, rather than marketing focused, so you can expect that more funds = more good stuff for SEOs.
I heart you guys.
Congrats - I'm sure this is just the beginning.
xo, L
Well done! As someone who's been on and around the site reader, member and commentator for nearly as long as it's been around, I want to say a huge congratulations.
Next time I'm over there, I'll buy you all a beer (slash other drink of choice...)
Whoa, totally missed this (catching up on a few months of Moz posts)
Congratulations, おめでとう, 恭喜 and all that jazz!
Great to see the Moz already acting on some of the feedback ;)
Hi Rand,
I would like to suggest internalization of the tools. It would be great if we could choose the google database region when using some of the SEOMOz tools (Keyword Difficulty, SEOMOZ Strentgh, etc).
Thanks,Luciano.
Congratulations everyone!
Lots of hard work is paying off. Going to celebrate tonight in your honor. :)
We're celebrating tonight in our honor, too!
Congrats!
What I'd like to see in order to stay subscribed:
- More advanced guides and video training. I learned a lot from the first premium guides and I am at a more intermediate level now.
- Social Media directory is great. Please keep it updated and uncover the new sites, new strong profiles, new link sources as the landscape changes.
Overall a solid value, and hope it increase and grows as we all do. Thanks!
I know how important this milestone is and all, but we would be remiss if we didn't also celebrate the original March 14th holiday.
Did the 2000th Pro Member get a mystery gift (SEOMoz Engraved iPhone) ? Congrats SEOMoz...
Steady on people, I think you're mistaking me for Will, I'm the GOOD critchlow remember?
I would really like to see improvements to the Ranking Checker.
Specifically, to have a feature (like in Digital Point) where you can click "update my rankings" and it automatically checks for position changes for all of your keywords.
That would be very helpful.
Congratulations!
Congratulations! It was a great pleasure meeting you guys at SMX. You've been working really hard and you deserve all your success. I can't wait to see what's coming up next.
Congratulations!
A well deserved accomplishment. Congratulations
Congrats to the SEOmoz staff!
I have a single, small request I'd like to make - something that has nagged me for a while and, were it corrected, would save me a lot of time/headache. On the "View My Reports" page for the Keyword Difficulty tool, there is no option to select multiple reports and delete them. I always "clean up my tracks" with this tool and don't leave reports archived - so I end up spending an extra 5 minutes after running a series of reports just going through the deletion process over and over again. Allowing for the selection/deletion of multiple reports here would save a ton of time.
Other than that, I can't request anything other than for you all to keep up the phenomenal work. PRO Membership is an investment I consider well-justified, and I don't see that changing any time soon if things keep up the way they have.
Congrats on the 2K mark! We'd suggest a few things but judging by all of the comments, it truly looks like everyone has covered the ideas we can think of.
Well done guys!
Thanks for all the valuable tips and tricks on SEO. Your posts have proven extremely useful!
Keep it up!
Cogratulations!
Keep up the good work.
Aleyda, Rebecca was probably recovering from doing all the research for her blog post Roundup Thursday for the Week of 3/9/08.
Congrats. I remember being very excited when V3 was launched, and it was a major improvement over V2.
I would like to see one thing that was available before: links for my comments. And additionally it would be nice to see next to them which ones received thumbs or not.
Congratulations SEOmoz team! .. I am not a PRO member though :( so this is another good reason (besides the handy tools and excellent content you have for PRO members) to re-evaluate and organize my expenses better to stop buying so much candy and start investing more on my SEO education! :P
By the way.. Rebecca, Why aren't you in the picture!?
Congrats Rand. One of the best websites in the entire seo community! Here's to v4. richardbaxterseo
Many congratulations on your success so far and best wishes for the future. Great photos by the way - so smiley :)
Congrats on the #. But more importantly congrats on creating a truly unique resource. I have tried to be a part of this community more in the last few months. Prior to being able to afford the Pro membership I found tons of resources with Moz.
First, congrats on "M2k"!
Now, here's my quick wishlist for V4:
Analytics - a robust analytics platform I can use on multiple sites (first item, asking too much yet?).
Rank Checker Integration - for your Rank Check tool, pull all the rankings I've done (for the same URL and phrase) into a single chart for easier research, and allow me to make notes associated with certain dates so I can track the usefullness of various strategies.
That's all I'll add, those to things would save me time.
Congrats again.
Dan
Congrats with this achievement, it's well deserved. Keep up the good work!
Cheers to the entire SEOmoz team :) Keep up the good work!
My suggestions:
Congrats on the milestone guys! SEOmoz is truly one of my favorite resources on the net.
momentum is on your side! congrats!
the nice thing is that as subscriber base builds the possibilities for new/bigger/better tools expands.
so Go Pro mozzers!
For anyone who's interested in the extent of our raging party (half a sip of champagne at 11am on a Thursday) the photos are on Flickr :)
Why hold off v4 until late this year? The anticipation is going to be life-threatening.
Congrats to all the team at SeoMoz, I'm sure you all have grins on today, as to things desired:Cartoons! Where are they?! When are they back?!More trips to Paris ;) as that really was a great post!Easier handling of email alerts, including allowing email alerts to blog posts on specific topics, ie Web 2.0, Google, HardwareAn SeoMoz toolbar - to replace the ones i've got now!
Youmoz - to be honest I dont read it unless it gets to main blog, as i've got enough work. But i appreciate Tom's point and think its tough to decide whats valid, I had a thought the other day that veered between Q&A and Youmoz...
Apart from that I'm happy to see what the team serve up, this year we've had the great legal posts go up - that seem to be getting some really interesting views from SEO and legal minds, new tools and new guides. All Great stuff!!
I think expanding out the "Rebecca & Scott's Clandestine Adventures" series is a great idea! Paris was a good start, but we haven't snuck off across international borders in over a year now.
España para la gana.
Unfortunately, my trip to New Zealand is totally sanctioned and thus I won't have to write letters of excuse to Rand on the back of a receipt from the Hilton bar.
Well THAT's no fun.
We could always make a break for Parramatta - that's almost a different country to Sydney...
"Rand, we're in Cairns..."
Congrats on the achievement! I tried using the SEO toolbox to utilize for 4 websites I know of (startup-forums, appraisemycar, 2levelsabove and alltherides). It was awesome (e.g, the backlinks,pagerank, etc). It was bummer that I couldn't use ALL the tools as I have to become a PRO member...haha. Still, a job well done though! :)
- Casey Removed Link
CONGRATS
Isn't internet marketing all about generating as much traffic as possible and converting this traffic into signups and sales?I know it is... that's why I concentrate on getting as much free traffic to my website as possible. Here is one great source that has helped me a lot. https://www.easy-viral-traffic.com/members.php