SEOmoz PRO has been taking some big leaps in improvement, albeit quietly. You may have noticed many small improvements and fewer bugs (though we're still working out some kinks), but you might not have noticed one awesome change to how we support campaigns.
Subdomains, Subfolders & Root Domains Now Included!
Since the web app launched, one of our most requested items (in fact, I think it actually was #1 on the request list) has been the ability to track keyword rankings + crawl data on either a specific subdomain, an entire root domain or a specific subfolder. After many challenging hours of re-writing our crawl and tracking system, the engineering team launched this last week! What does it mean, you ask?
Thus, I could not set up a campaign in SEOmoz PRO for any of the following:
- The subdomain "webdesign.about.com" which would only crawl pages and track rankings from that subdomain
- The root domain "*.about.com" which would crawl pages and track rankings on any page on the about.com root domain
- The subfolder "geography.about.com/climate/" which would limit crawling and rank tracking to pages in that particular folder
For many of us who already use the web app extensively, the best part of this may be the ability to put separate subfolders into separate campaigns. With a 5 campaign, $99 account, you can now track 5 subfolders on the same site, meaning your crawl, keywords tracked, etc. can scale up much better. Those of us who've been frustrated by rank tracking not catching other subdomains on our sites (one of my personal pet peeves) should switch to root domain tracking (yes, sadly, this means having to set up a new campaign) to catch everything.
NOTE: We can't automatically segment your Google Analytics data, so if you want to separate visit numbers into subfolders or subdomains, be sure to create a unique campaign in GA and connect the right one to the app.
Linkscape Update: Index 40
Linkscape's index updated this past weekend with brand new link data crawled in April. Be sure to check OSE + the web app for your new scores.
- 40,283,351,470 (40.3 billion) URLs
- 395,648,189 (396 million) Subdomains
- 115,483,313 (115 million) Root Domains
- 410,406,731,584 (410 billion) Links
- Followed vs. Nofollowed
- 2.24% of all links found were nofollowed
- 57.25% of nofollowed links are internal, 42.75% are external
- Rel Canonical - 7.49% of all pages now employ a rel=canonical tag
- The average page has 61 links on it (up from 60.88 last index - the first rise in many months)
- 51.64 internal links on average
- 9.36 external links on average
NOTE: We're trying something new in the next Linkscape index (index 41, scheduled for early June) that may have a dramatic impact on some of our metrics. We believe this is the right thing to do and will increase the quality of the resource, but there may be some oddities as it will be the first time we publicly show an index with this structure.
Linkscape Metrics' Latest Correlation w/ Google Rankings
Although we've been tracking Linkscape's correlations with rankings on a semi-regular basis, this is now becoming a key part of how we measure each index. Below are the latest correlation numbers (these use the top 30 results in Google across ~10K keywords):
As you can see, Page Authority is still our best correlated metric and the one I'd generally bias toward when doing link opportunity analysis. Domain authority is, likewise, the best correlated domain-based metric, though it's only slightly better than other domain-based data like DmT (of the root domain).
In this index, we also worked with SEO By The Sea's Bill Slawski to help build a more robust, more accurate trusted seed set for MozTrust. Although the correlations with rankings aren't much higher (only +0.01 improvement from our previous index), we're not sure that rank prediction is the best way to actually measure mozTrust. If you've got feedback about the new mT or DmT scores, please do let us know - my rough observation was that it seemed at least as good, possibly better than before.
More Improvements to PRO
As long as I've still got your attention, I thought I'd call out a couple of other smaller improvements that went out last week as well:
- New help guides: We've just released this awesome PDF guide.
- Faster loading Google Analytics data. You'll notice that the traffic data on the ranking summary and history now load right away. You can also see this with the weekly data on the traffic data tab, and soon with the monthly data too!
- .csv exports from the ranking summary reports now include the ranking URLs.
Coming Soon:
- A big update to our SEO toolbar for Firefox with a bunch of cool new capabilities for analyzing pages and SERPs (with Chrome to follow). BTW - speaking of the MozBar, it does work with the new FF 4; if you're having any trouble, just re-install!
- Some brand new PRO pricing and plans, providing some great new options for those seeking more campaigns and keywords.
- The much-anticipated SERPs Analysis tool (no certain deadline, but probably before July).
That's actually not all - there's some other big features on the way, but we have to keep those secret (particularly the launch of something very exciting at Day 1 of MozCon).
If you've got feedback for PRO, don't be shy! Tell us what's bugging you, what you want and all your hopes & dreams (for SEO tools that is).
Looking forward the new WebApp improvements.
I cannot deny I was really positively surprised to see the possibility to segment site's tracking into root, subdomain and subfolder, as it makes life so much easier for any of us who - like me - does International SEO.
It's fantastic that SEOmoz collaborates with great people like Bill Slawski so to better our tools. Now, and it's a warm suggestion for the future, why not create some tools related to Local Search. We see daily how it is important and surely a big % of Mozzers are playing in a local sphere. Knowing the friendship between SEOmoz and David Mihm (and Whitespark too), would be nice to have a "Google Places Profile Analizer" based on the Local Ranking Factors run yearly by Mihm, and somehow similar to the Page Analyisis already running under Pro and WebApp.
And I see that also have been retouched also the design in some little parts, making the site more usable: surely our so missed friend Goodnewscowboy will thank for that.
To end... so so curious about the "secret news". I will have to wait to be there at the MozCon to finally discover it, but I cannot deny that my mind is already trying to guess its nature (two main ideas: integration with social signs, or a relaunch of LDA related tools...)
Ciao
P.S.: I did the suggestion here because Zendesk start a loop asking me to login, bouncing me to SEOmoz home page as logged and then, again, asking me to login... And the Feedback tab on the left seems disappeared (at least for my on Chrome)
P.S. 2: nice to see LinkedIn Share now... shame Stumble Upon disappeared (even though maybe I was the only one stumbling)
I want to underline: "yes, we miss Goodnewscowboy!"
You and I definitely think alike Gianluca!
The priorities at SEOmoz are:
If anyone thinks I'm making a wrong move on these, please let me know.
Ah! Maybe is the beard effect :)
That list is giving me other 6 fantastic reasons to be a Mozzer.
Can't wait to to see them live; especially excited about the Social Media App!A tiny new feature, but great to have nevertheless.. if we could sort keywords by Traffic #s as well. As of now we can sort by Ranks, Rank changes, etc but it ll be good to see the most important keywords at a glance.Also, could we manually update ranks of all keywords at once - right now we can update ranks one keyword at a time and considering the frequency of rank changes since past, I think many of us will find it useful.
I think you're spot on with all of those -
I'd love to see a larger index available through the api - maybe all of the lower quality noise that the tools filter out. Some of that nasty low quality link garbage can have (sadly) a positive impact on rankings - so it's good to know it's there if I need to see it.
Iterative index updates (daily?) with whatever crawl data you've picked up for that day would be fantastic. The metrics don't nessecarily have to be available - just to see *new* links with a pending authority metric would be awesome!
I'd be super keen to see the web app have a feature to crawl your site via the XML sitemap - and to highlight pages with low / no internal links (orphaned content).
Other than that, I'm kind of quietly getting excited about serp analysis and the social media app ;-)
One last thing - I'd love it if we could start naming the index updates....
So much information, so little time...WHat do I do?....SEOmoz!...They do it all for me....sigh
Sounds great, can't wait for the new SERP analysis tool. currently Market Sumari has been having some issues =( so the new offering from SEOmoz is welcome =)
Also great news on the updates about the subdomains, I found that issue recently when we were trying to do some large level analsis a specific client with 10 different global sub domains. So this new update is very usedful.
Also great information on the top 30 ranking factors too =)
Great work SEOmoz team =)
Love how it keeps geting better - thanks SEOmoz :-)
As always purely good stuff from the Moz'ers. Can't wait to see the SERP analysis tool in action.
I don't really see anything new on the pricing/plans section. What am I missing?
Thats planned to launch around the end of the month so stay tuned. You'll see a blog post about in.
Hence the 'Coming Soon' title that I somehow overlooked. :)
Mmm... the COMING SOON just above it is quite big...
I am looking forward to much-anticipated SERPs Analysis tool. But Rand I do have a question. I run a weekly backling report on some of my site and competitors to track movements, but I have not seen many updates from Open Site Explorer and Linkscape data... how often does the backlinks data get update?
Right now we update our Linkscape index about every 4 weeks. Sometimes it's a little bit shorter and sometimes a little be longer. However, we're actively working to improve both the size and frequency of our index, and you should expect to see some big incremental improvements over the next year.
Adam that is helpful. I will extend the reporting period because right now we maintain weekly logs, but do not see frequent changes.
Hi Eryck,
You should also check out our Linkscape Update Calendar. It doesn't do much to predict the future, but sometimes seeing the frequency of past updates helps give you an idea of what we're capable of. :)
Hope this helps!
Sarah Bird you are a God send!
I've said this before, but I have to re-iterate just how excited I am for the SERPs Analysis Tool. I've been using a spreadsheet for this that required a lot of the data to be pulled from different places, and it took forever. This will save SO much time and provide a ton of value to the community.
You guys rock.
Will historical data ever be recorded so we can measure the impact of the links we build?
This is a feature we plan to look at for the web app this summer. I don't have a timeframe yet, but will keep you posted.
I used to try to do all this measurement myself (and logic behind the hows and whys and whats of measuring). Thank you SEOmoz for saving me hundreds of hours gathering data.... and for the insights these tools enable. Mad props yall.
You guys do great work but I need https support (my whole site is https).
Just want to let you know that we are working on including https pages in the campaign crawls right now. We hope to have support for it in place within the next month and will be sure to announce it when it is ready.
SERP Analysis Report = future dream come true.
Rand, I'd really like to use your PRO tool for PETCO.com but I'm being told that if I don't spend $2000 per month or more, your company wont sign an Indemnification Agreement that our legal team requires of all vendors. I'm really only looking for the level of services that are included in your PRO level offerings. Anything we can do to get around this small hurdle in order to start working together?
Hi Sandiegoseo,
I'm the chief operations officer at SEOmoz. I'm responsible for our billing and legal departments.
I'm sorry you're frustrated about our policy of not doing special custom contracts for PRO and PRO Plus accounts. The reason we can offer such an affordable tool is that there are very low transactions costs. Lawyers cost money. Often the terms that they impose also require money (for example, insurance provisions).
We would LOVE to have your business. I wish it was economical for SEOmoz to have a custom relationship with every customer. Unfortunately, that's just not an effective way to build an affordable, scalable product.
Thanks for the feedback. I hope we can find a way to serve you in the future.
Respectfully,
Sarah
Really very Good Information based on subfolders, root domains linkscape.
SEOmoz Rocks :) Haha. I've been a mozzer for about 1 month now but have found that all my seo knowledge was not enough. With all the goodies Seomoz is preparing will definetly stick around. Keep up the good work.
Keep Getting Better!
I'd love to be able to do away with my other tools (Market Samurai, MAjestic SEO) and coutless others
the day will come when I can use SEOmoz tools for everything
Keep moving forward
So much awesome-ness coming from SEOMoz!
Rand-
Any chance (I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest this...) we'll see the addition of a "404 search" feature to help us find and replace :) all of those poor broken links out there? Like say I give this hypothetical 404 tool a keyword and it returns pages that have broken external links that are highly relevant to that keyword? Would be nifty.
Thanks for all the great stuff SEOMoz is doing to help the community!
-Noah
This is such a timely update on SEOMoz software. Our migration from different websites to subfolders is something we want to segmentize really well. I hope this update is an answer. Thanks in advance!
Very exciting stuff! Web apps that continue to change and add on great features that add value to it's clients? Yes, that's what will make me never question my SEOmoz PRO membership.
I think that was a great idea to make a user guide. I read through it, but it doesn't give an example of how a newbie would be able to find the back links for a specific webpage. For example, I want to see why url.com/123 ranks for a particular keyword phrase. I guess just entering url.com/123 into OSE will work.
That and the On Page keyword analizer (sorry, I do not remember the real name it has), that you can use under On Page > Report Card (if not a keyword you are tracking)
Good call, Gianluca. You can find the on-page keyword optimizer here: https://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/
Thanks Rand, I just wanted to pick up on some of the data that came out of the update. The following 'typical profiles are interesting:
What would be really interesting to add to this insight would be the split between contextual versus brand versus URL links, and the average number of inbound links per domain, to give us a real picture for what a typical link profile would actually look like.
THEN, if you could pull out what those profiles look like for e-comms sites, travel sites, finance sites etc, I would expect them to be noticeably different across channels (even based on the different levels of online PR activity alone).
...if you could get that on my desk by 9:00 that would be lovely, thanks ;)
Sounds Good :)
Absolutely great news! It's getting better and better and I have the fealing that the "top of the iceberg" is still far away :-).
Good to hear that the MozBar is working now with FF4 - I had to de-install the newest brower version lately because it wasn't compatible.
Thank you seomoz, you are the best.
WooHooo!!!!!!
Great stuff SEOmoz team! You guys rock!
Looking forward to try this
Fantastic! Baited breath for MozCon. Any hints? Not just 1? Pretty Please?
Thanks for this! I can't wait to try out the new features.
Thanks - looking foward to the new tools
Excellent job guys! that's awesome, I have to admit that with all the tools we have, I am getting very lazy, I don't even want to do SERP analysis until the new tool comes out... :) thanks for making the job easier and even more enjoyable.
Looking forward to the new features
Great news! ...and just in-time for us too, we're are about to start a new campaign to optimise a regional site placed in a /uk/ subfolder on the domain. Nice work guys!