Every now and then it's important to take a good look at your community, see where you stand, remember where you've been and take a look at where you're going. Today I wanted to take the time to do just that. Over the next month-ish we have a number of changes and additions happening to the SEOmoz Community that I wanted to let everyone know about. I also thought it would be fun to take a look at our community from a numbers perspective.
So let's jump right in, take a look at the numbers, then meander through the upcoming community awesomeness. Who's with me!? Onward folks...
The Numbers
First things first, let's check out the SEOmoz Community in numbers (as of the time of publishing this post):
6,518 Active Community Members (any member who participated in comments, Q & A or YOUmoz in the past 6 mo.)
7,600 PRO Members (the Active Member list above isn't looking at tool/web app usage)
279,599 Total Members (PRO and non-PRO, active and inactive, plus free tool members)
13,321 comments in the past 6 months (you people write A LOT)
70 YOUmoz posts in the past 6 months
22 of those YOUmoz posts have been promoted to the main blog (nice work!)
26,924 Twitter Followers
7,325 Facebook Fans (or whatever they want us to call them these days)
83,971 RSS Feed Subscribers
Before I finish with the numbers, let's look at a few more fun facts. We hit 2000 PRO members on March 13, 2008 and 6000 on August 24, 2010. In May of 2009 we had just over 4,000 Twitter followers, which means in 18 months we've increased our Twitter followers by 624% simply by engaging with people. [That's a lot of percentages, yo.] I also found this fun post from 2008 asking the community what they wanted to see in our Twitter feed. What do you think, how are we doing?
Newsletter
Last month we kicked off our inaugural PRO Newsletter (thanks to Lauren!) and will be sending out a non-PRO one later this month. Each month you'll get all sorts of SEO and mozzy goodness right into your inbox.
MozPoints
Most of the changes you're going to see outlined below actually have one major theme in common, MORE MOZPOINTS!! [Ok I got that out of my system. Whew.] As you'll read below, the new profiles, Q & A and YOUmoz changes are all bringing you more ways to earn mozPoints. At the same time, since we're giving you more ways to earn, we're also making a bit harder and giving you some sweet rewards.
Profiles
Perhaps you've noticed, or perhaps not, but our profiles have essentially looked the same for several years. It's time to kick them into overdrive. Not only are the profiles getting a whole new look, with more ways to promote yourself or company, you'll also earn mozPoints as you complete your profile.
Q & A
This is really the doozy of the bunch. Over the last few months we've been working on a whole new system for PRO Q & A. As our membership grows, it has become painfully clear that in order to keep up with the number of great questions coming in, we needed to rethink the system a bit. There will be a full post with all the details coming out soon.
The basis of the changes is to give PRO members the ability to:
- Ask more questions (we are often asked to increase this number)
- Receive responses faster
- Respond to other member's questions
- Earn mozPoints by answering questions well
Yes, that's right! We're putting the ability to answer PRO questions into your hands. The SEOmoz staff and Associates will still be in there answering questions and moderating. Essentially our roles won't change (at least not right away), but we're giving our users the ability to gain points for answering questions. You'll get more points for answering questions within the first 4 hours it was asked and if the answer is "SEOmoz approved" you'll gain even more points.
I know, I know, you have questions about Q & A [giggle] and we're happy to answer your questions in the comments below. Remember though that in the coming weeks you'll get a lot more info! Plus if you're quite active in Q & A right now, you may get an email in the next week asking you to be a beta tester. W00t!
Let's take a quick peek at some screenshots:
Your new Q & A Overview Page
This is the view when you go to ask a question
This is what an answered question will look like
Pretty slick eh?! You'll get your questions answered quicker and gain mozPoints at the same time. Plus you'll still be able to ask one private question per month which will be answered by the SEOmoz stafff or an Associate. hoorah!
YOUmoz
Hopefully you've already noticed that YOUmoz is KICKIN' so far this year. It's mostly because the posts submitted are just phenomenal, but we've also raised our standards. Not that we had "low standards" previously, but it's beneficial to everyone if the posts published there are of high quality.
In the near future when you go to submit at YOUmoz post, you'll be asked to first read through the guidelines and accept that you've clearly read them. You'll also see tips on creating a good post. Some of the items you'll see on this page are:
- Have you added useful images/charts/screenshots? It is so important to format a post well (as well as possible in our WYSIWYG editor) and make sure that you include relevant screenshots, images, charts, any sort of visual that will add depth to your post.
- Don't forget your Title! So many times posts are submitted with mediocre titles. There have been times where a post was almost skipped because it looked like spam.
- Does this post already exist on the web? If it does, please don't submit it. We only take unique posts and it wastes everyone's time to submit previously published posts. We do a search on every post before publishing.
- Check your spelling and grammar. I fix spelling and grammar in each and every post (even on the main blog), but having a post free of these issues will likely get your post published sooner.
Having these guidelines in place will also help me to explain to an author why a post wasn't published. We read through every single post submitted, do a search for duplicates, plus check for spelling and grammar so it can take a while to get published. Before you submit a post, just be sure to read it through carefully and put the same time and energy into the post that you would on your own blog.
Keep up the great work YOUmoz authors. As I stated before, this has been an excellent year so far for posts and by the looks of the queue right now, it's only getting better.
Navigation
Whatever you do, don't freak out! When we first started talking about changing the navigation, my biggest concern was how the community was going to react. Any time you make changes to what people are used to there is an uproar [hello Facebook & Digg, I'm talking to you here]. So we wanted to give you a quick preview of what's to come in the next month.
The main difference you'll notice right away is that there will now be two versions of the navigation, PRO and non-PRO. When you log in as a PRO member your experience will be geared toward using the web app, tools and other PRO features.
The non-PRO and logged out version
The PRO navigation
Note: These aren't the finalized versions. :)
Community
Remember earlier when I talked about freaking out... yea you should have all seen me when we first started talking about having a Community section in the top nav. It was truly a combination of elation and mind-numbing fear. Picture this conversation that went on my head if you will:
I really wish I could tell you that conversation didn't happen, but it did. :) I'm super excited about the addition of a Community section and although the screenshot below doesn't show all the goodies (such as the Mozzer Spotlight, Top Comments of the Week and Top Users for the Month), I think you too will start to get excited as well!
Ok, so now I've spilled the beans on some of the new Community changes happening over the next month, I'd love to get feedback on what you see here. Again, as each one of these launches we'll have more detailed information about them. I wanted to give the community plenty of time to soak in all this cool stuff before we just threw it at you. :) I can't wait to hear from you!
Wow Jen! This is really big stuff. And I'm with you on feeling a bit of trepidation about making changes. But in this case I'm almost 100% positive that these changes will be for the good.
Since I'm a solo, the community here is the equivalent for me of being the water cooler where I can go hang out with fellow workers and shoot the breeze a bit. So anything that will enhance it is a good thing.
But now I'll have to wrestle with myself to see if the extra moz points will be worth adding to my profile. Hmmmm. My baby, my job, my baby, my job..."
While we're on the subject of positive changes, I would be in seventh heaven if you could talk the devs into changing the commenting format and instead of the "New!" that shows up as a smaller washed out orange, they could change it to a bolder and *much* brighter color. There are times I'll go back to a posts comments to see what's been added but I give up as I have to scroll really slowly to spot the new entries and I just don't have the time to do it so I leave. FWIW :)
[edit] I forgot to mention the newsletter. Great new feature!
First I have to say that I love seeing your real photo in here. :) I appreciate what you're saying, as you can see with my little internal conversation I freaked out a bit at first as well.
And regarding the "new" comments, I promise you this is something we'll fix. I've talked about it several times with design and they hear you loud and clear. :) Of course I had to tell them "the dog guy" keeps asking about it, and they said "OH YEA! he comments a lot." heh. True story.
LOL! Well I could be called a lot worse than "the dog guy" I suppose ;)
On this note - I tweeted this to you guys last week. I would like to be able to when viewing profiles, specifically mine, where is says how many thumbs up and thumbs down that user has, click either of those and find a page where all my thumbs up are, and if you have downs, downs are.
Well well well... a lot of changes are coming, and all seem very interesting ones.
The Q&A is surely going to be the new most used "tool" here on SEOmoz. I like its format, and wonder how much it was influenced by Quora, as it reminds me in many aspects...
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Disclaimer: I never wrote a YouMoz titled "5 Simple Google Analytics Tip You Should Be Using" (wasn't a post you wrote, Jennita?), but it was funny to see my avatar popping up in the image :)
I must agree, the new version of Q&A looks/sounds very promising- this feature was actually the one that finally convinced me to become Pro.
Congrats to Seomoz, the screenshots look really good! And don't be discouraged if not everyone immediately loves the improvements, as Jennita said, some people just need time to get used to changes.
Funny! I was wondering if I missed one LOL.
I am making my prediciton now so it can go on public record:
I predict that Gianluca (gfiorelli1) will be the answerer with the most points in the new Q&A
Somehow I think you might be on to something! (also notice how we commented on the same comment at the same time? BFFs? :)
You betcha Jen. Regardless of our musical taste difference, BFF!
hehe Our designers like to get a little creative. :) It can get pretty boring to show real posts all the time! Did you see some of the questions they created to use? heh
Well... your fake question title was really a blog post > https://www.seomoz.org/ugc/why-does-google-hate-me
And the answer of Randfished Dr Pete is really a comment I did to a Laura Lippay great post here.
Was easy to reverse engineering the designers job with your internal search box here above ;)
Yes the new q&a is going to be awesome for the community. And for SEOmoz, who is going to own much of the serious SEO discussions online (which I obviously fully endorse as I tend to spend most of my SEO reading/discussion time on this website anyways).
Weldone. Exciting to see how its grown over the years.
I am one of few people that embrace change. I live for it. I am personally very excited about the changes that are coming. Especially if it's going to help this community grow.
I, like most others, am most excited about the Q & A section. I just hope it doesn't become like other Q & A's and a place where lazy people post questions that have millions of answers if you just do one simple google search. I found that was the case with seo chats forums.
Cheers guys, digging the new digs.
Edit: & of course i ^ this one.
One thing to remember is that Q & A is still PRO only. We are changing it so that after a certain amount of time (2 weeks I believe) anyone can view the questions and answers. But they can still only be asked and answered by PRO members.
Oh, and the current Q & A is sometimes used to ask questions that are easily found by doing a simple Google search. ;) #justsayin
The only thing holding me back from switching from Raven Tools to SEO Moz Pro is the amount of campaings you guys allow. I currently have over 15 in my Raven Tools account. I would LOVE to switch though, wish it was in the cards for me. I can dream...
Bonus - Free members with over 500 mozPoints may be given access to the PRO Q&A and be able to ask and answer questions just like a PRO member.
Congrats on the fantastic growth!
I'm excited for the interface upgrades and the Q&A increase, but while we're on the subject of community updates, I would LOVE to see a new pricing structure that focuses on resources consumed only, with more campaigns.
I don't mind paying $99/month or $499/month for the amazing tools you offer, but I can't help but feel like I'm losing a lot of bang for my buck when I'm so severely limited in campaigns while my keywords and pages remain at less than 20% of their capacity.
Perhaps I'm in a unique situation, though I doubt it:
I have a lot of clients and projects with smaller websites (primarily local sites with <50 pages and typically 5-10 core keywords), so having the option to pay $99/month for 25+ (or unlimited) campaigns, that is still limited to 250 keywords tracked and 10,000 pages crawled, would help me tremendously!
If I'm way off base here and the campaigns themselves consume a significant amount of resources for SEOmoz, please let me know and I'll totally understand.
If not, and the keywords & pages are the major expenses on your end, then please create a plan with far more campaigns and the same usage limits.
Thanks for all your hard work SEOmoz!
Thanks for your thoughts on this! We have been actively discussing our pricing/pivots of late, and your particular scenario is one which we realize we do not support very well. I can't promise an exact fit, but some changes coming in the next couple of months should help suit your needs better.
I'll be sharing more information on this soon. If you have any questions, or any other thoughts on pricing and pivots, don't hesitate to contact me directly.
Thanks Adam! I appreciate the quick response, and I can't wait to see the changes you mentioned.
Very nice updates... looks like you're doing a great job, especially with the profile changes and the mozpoints :) i'm also looking forward to see the newsletter. LE: i don't know who thumbed down this post, but the features you're adding area really great
A social network for SEOs? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... sorry, I mean, well done. If anyones gonna get enough momentum for a decent one, its gonna be seomoz
Looking forward to the changes generally, the Q&A changes look good.
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Please fix the comments boxes. Ive tried both setups and they both suck - take forever to load, cursor is invisible, hang on loading data from seomoz.org yada yada yada
Cursor is ALWAYS invisible! Please fix!
Thanks for the feedback guys! This is definitely on the radar to fix. #annoying
I'll withhold judgment for now, but I can't help but get the first impression that the new community tools are much more handsome than the old ones ;)
Having been an active part of the community for 4-1/2 years now, it's still one of the best parts of SEOmoz, and I'm excited to see what's next. If I can survive turning 40 and having a daughter, I can survive the new Q&A.
I wasn't sure if you'd like the fact you were featured so much in the comps or hate it. But really what was I thinking... of course you'd love it! ;)
No one loves me more than I do. You should know that by now.
I get a little freaked out by how much they use my photos in comps. In fact it even made it to a new page (watch for it next week ;) which makes me wince every time I see it. ewww
My only complaint was "Pete Peterson". I mean, c'mon, you can do better than that. It's like the design team wasn't even TRYING to insult me, and Lord knows I've given them plenty of reasons.
Yea.. you might be on to something there. ;)
The SEOmoz numbers and news summed up excellently and the post truly puts the SEOmoz's best foot forward. Proud to be a part of this community and take this opportunity to acknowledge the fact that I have learnt a lot from this blog over a period of time which has greatly contributed to the confidence that I have today.
I remember coming across this blog when I did a search for 'How To Price An SEO Campaign' long time back in 2006 0r 2007 and read the post in which Rand had explained about how the amount can be split into 3 installments and charged stage wise. I had got an answer to what I was looking for and since then have been regularly reading it.
Great work Jennita ! All The Very Best to you and SEOmoz - for more and more remarkable acheivements in future.
Seomoz is the best seo company in entire world!
Wow - so many new things to look at, to participate and to communicate! I am just worried I have to work besides that whole fun ;-)
Haha Petra! I know what you mean. Some days I'm positively torn between productivity and my desire to get back the the blog to see what's new.
7,600 pro members? Nice! even if we assume that all of them are at the bottom rung (which I imagine would be incorrect) it means SEOmoz is a $9mil/year company. That is pretty impressive! most SEO companies that have any sort of info on revenue seem to be capping out at about 3-5mil. Look at you guys chillin in the top 10%. Kudos and great job!
To be fully transparent, we've got lots of older legacy members paying grandfathered rates of $39, $49 and $79 and plenty of annual members getting PRO at the 20% annual rate discount. That said, we are very excited about revenue and growth, but we're not letting it sit in the bank. Our community and members deserve way more awesomeness in the web app/OSE/tools and we plan to be aggressive in hiring more talent on engineering, marketing, content and customer service to ensure we're doing just that.
All you need to do is poach a couple of Google search engineers! Maybe get them doing a bit of moonlighting for you ;-)
Seriously though, SEOmoz is doing an awesome job - please keep it up!
Yep! I'm on of the $79/mo subscribers. The 2 reasons I signed up were:
1) Webapp
2) Rand shot me an email saying the price was going up!
The webapp is an SEO Dashboard. It's like Quickbook's dashboard for business accounting, but for SEO! I was a former SEOBook subscriber, but the SEOMoz webapp provided much more value to me. It's the automated rankings reports and SEO Grader (A,B,C,D,F). I wonder what the webapp will be like in 1 year!
I go the Pro Premier for $129 / month, how cool is that? Never letting go...
That really great ansewer Rand :) thank for time and passion you put in seo field (blog posts, comments, webinars, tweets...) You are every where like Google bot
I wish a bright future to SEOMOZ and more internationalisation :) Go beyond borders , SEO is up!
That's a long way from being close to bankrupt. Pat on the back. Keep up the good work!
... Speaking of work... on the tracking modified by geo search engine results... when is that beta over? =)
I'm not sure if there's a day that goes by that I don't think about becoming a pro member,........ thats how you can tell you've built a great set of products and a devoted following.
Well, but let's be honest here, we'd be doing an even greater job if you'd actually purchased PRO. :)
Great news, Jen. Any idea on roll out dates, particularly Profiles, Q & As, and MozPoints?
Great to see the profile section is been updated lol, I found when you update a new profile image that was always really buggy.
As said above the comment boxes on the blog seem to be buggy =)
But yeah one more thing when you make a youmoz post is it possible for the team to write when a specific post is not alloud. I had one accepted and another not accepted and under author comments nothing came up it is a little annoying spending time writing a post and then no comments are made to why it is not alloud.
But yeah great work team =)
Cool thing about the Q&A part! How about putting a preview window in their 1st so we know what our post will look like. One other thing, 1 MozPoint for every thumbs up? There are going to be a lot of people going through old posts to rack up MozPoints. It may dilute the value of older subscribers.
Well... Maybe you don't know that SEOmoz owns its MozPoints AntiSpam Team, and it works better than the Google one ;)
I'll put this here, as its about the web app...what I would love to see, and what would convince me to stay a pro member, would be speeding up the crawl rate!
New clients enquire about their websites, and all i want to do is send the beautiful PDF over to them highlighting the changes possible, but we have to wait almost a week for the crawl!
What about teach them that to have reports every 2 days or less does not change a lot in the perception of the state of a website?
Hey man, all of this sounds really cool! But extra mozpoints for responding in 4 hours to Q & A? That's a bit unfair for those of us that live in different time zones isn't it? Other than that...sounds really interesting!
Don't forget though that people will be answering questions in all different time zones!
Love the spy shot! "Sorry! You can't see this part yet :)"
I had to give up PRO status a while back but I got the PRO newsletter on the 28th.
Hi there! Welcome to The Moz Monthly - Your Exclusive PRO Newsletter!
Hey thanks for letting us know, I'll check into that!
All of these changes look super cool! Can't wait to see them implemented over the next few days / weeks!
Looks really promising! Integrate Facebook and Twitter directly into the community and I won't ever have to leave seomoz.org :)
I agree that would be nice. A couple less window open on my screens too. :)
Keep your eyes on the web app. ;)
Ooo, can you expand upon this hint slightly?
Very interesting stuff, thanks for the heads up... looks good!
All the new changes seem to be very exciting, and we can see that SEOmoz is working hard to please its community with great new features (the Q&A seems so nice). The new navigation is also a great point, and warning us is effectively the best way to avoid surprise and incomprehension :D (even if I am not a big fan of the "yellow" color :p )
All you need to do now is sign up and become a pro!
"Starsky: No, seriously, come on, do it. Do it. DO IT! "
Some very exciting changes! Glad to be apart of this community. Thanks to everyone at SEOmoz for working hard to keep it fresh!
Am I the only one thinking that you look like George Clooney? Anyway, love your work SEOmoz, and will keeping a close eye on developments. Looking to sign up to Pro in the near future...
LOL Croozie! It's a whole Hollywood tour on our blog.
Croozie, Richard IS George Clooney. He's just kept a low profile...until now that is.
This is great news. Congratulations on all your past, current and future success. I'm excited to see some of the new features getting rolled out. :)
And you look like Matt Damon. Uncanny.
Great update guys!
I really look forward to seeing the new layout changes to SEOmoz, it looks like it will be much easier to find what you are looking for now, and the enhancement of the Q&A section looks stellar.
Great Work Jennita and SEOMOZ : ) Hows your health now?
Thank you! That's very sweet of you to ask. :) I'm doing well!
It sounds like Quora is going to lose Rand's awesome answers. I really look forward to the new features, thanks to the seoMoz team for the community and tools they provide!
That's highly doubtful! :) Rand already shines in Quora and in our current Q & A, I'm thinking that won't change much. :)