SEOmoz is now Moz
You don’t have to be in the SEO industry to frequent SEOmoz, even web developers go there to check on new aspects of design they may have to implement at a later date for clients. Additionally, almost any webmaster can find information there to help them do things the right way. So when I went to SEOmoz this morning and saw SEOmoz is now Moz I was surprised for a moment. I knew they were planning on moving over to the new domain, just somehow never thought about it actually happening.
Rand Fishkin explained it along these lines:
But today, we’re retiring that brand for a number of reasons
- Calling ourselves “SEO”moz is no longer transparent and authentic. With products like Fresh Web Explorer,FollowerWonk, GetListed, and the beta of Moz Analytics (alongside the vast array of non-SEO content we publish), we’re no longer purely an SEO software company. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous, and that violates our core values.
- SEO is bigger than just SEO – as hard as I’ve fought personally and we’ve fought as an organization over the last decade to make marketers and organizations think more holistically about organic search, the branding of the past remains. SEO is seen as a narrow set of activities that move rankings up and bring search visitors in. To truly help with SEO, we have to do more than just place keywords, make sites accessible, and build links, but first we need the influence to make these changes. A broader marketer is often granted that influence, while pure SEOs still, unfairly, must strive for it.
- For many folks outside of our community, the acronym SEO has (unfair) associations with spam or manipulation. To quote an all-to-frequent comment we see when our site is mentioned around the web, “Don’t trust any domain with SEO in the name.” That feedback is hard to hear, and it’s wrong, but that doesn’t change the impact. We know that the “SEO” in SEOmoz has, in the past, hurt our ability to persuade people about the incredible value of organic search marketing. Moz gives us a chance to do something all marketers love – test something new and observe the results.
- It’s surpisingly hard for folks who don’t know to say the acronym “SEO” as letters to pronounce the brand name. I’ve heard everything from see-oh-moez to say-ow-mahz to sh-ow-moss. For years, I didn’t think it was a big deal, but fluency bias suggests this probably has a substantive negative impact on the brand’s perception.
- The SEOmoz name retains a strong branding connection and expectation to our historical consulting business (just last week, I received 4 consulting inquiries!). We haven’t offered consulting in many years, and this move can help distance our 2004-2009 incarnation from the software focus we have today.
- For the sake of transparency, I need to be honest that this is also marketing move – a rebrand is a chance to earn a second look from people who’ve long known us and had associations with the company. We hope that second look is going to lead those who haven’t yet seen what we’ve become over the last few years to check out our content, Moz Analytics, and the many functions our research tools provide.
So worry not, how can progress and improvement be a bad thing?
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