Moz Review: The original SEO king - does Moz Pro still hold its own?

Moz features you’ll love

• 🔍 Keyword Explorer

  Keyword research is the backbone of all successful SEO. Thankfully the Moz Pro Keyword Explorer is more than up to the task.

  As the jewel in Moz Pro’s crown, the keyword reearch tool can turn loose ideas of what you want to rank for into a long list of rankable phrases with serious traffic potential. It soon becomes clear that Moz has a few edges over the competition:

  1. First, you get way more keyword results for your search query
  2. Second, the monthly search estimates are more accurate
  3. Third, Moz basically invented Domain Authority and Page Authority
  4. Finally, new filters such as ‘organic CTR’ keep adding new edges

  You start your search with either a keyword or competitor URL…

  

  The info provided at this stage is relatively light but advanced filters, even those as rudimentary as “includes” and “excludes”, make the results more meaningful.

  Moz Pro also boils the keyword’s potential to one handy metric: Priority.

  This is an aggregate of all the other metrics (Difficulty, Opportunity, Volume + Importance) into With so many keyword ideas it really helps to pick out the low hanging fruit.

  

  Click on any keyword and Moz will mine for more suggestions related to it. From there it’s a single click to add the keyword to a list, cluster or campaign.

  You can also run a keyword search at a site level…

  

  For all Moz Pro has going for it, it’s important to note some competitor keyword research features that are missing here. Ahrefs, for example, also shows you other terms a page also ranks for and newly discovered pages that contain your keyword.

• 🔗 Link Explorer

  Moz Pro goes big on link building data. Its live link index is 30x greater than its predecessor Open Site Explorer with even fresher data.

  I found this translates to up to 20% more links than Ahrefs on the same domain with no sign of duplicate counts.

  To get going, enter a domain into the search bar for its full link profile and to assess the potential link target. The centrepiece of this snapshot is its Domain Authority (DA) that summarises how well a site ranks overall on a scale from 1 to 100. This metric was developed by Moz and is now the industry standard for its rankability and link worth.

  

  Under ‘Discovered’ and ‘Lost’ links you can track when a change occurred over the last 60 days and take remedial action.

  Further down the page you’ll encounter Top Metrics. Here sits the overview of you or your competitor’s top pages, top links and top anchor text. A very helpful snapshot of what’s working and what to build on.

  

  There’s a million other ways you can cut this data, looking at ‘follow’ vs ‘no follow’, link intersect with competitors, link spam scores, and much, much more. With all that in mind, Link Explorer is one of Moz’ better features.

• 🥇 Rank Tracking

  I found the way Moz presents this data to be disorientating. It took me a while to get my head round.

  The exception here is the summary panel, which is straightforward enough. It presents an overview of Search Visibility, Keyword Rankings and Ranges, and Featured Snippets you rank for. Plus, any target keywords movement in either direction.

  

  It’s important to note that Moz Pro only shows you data for the top 5 pages (or 50 positions) in the search results. Its reasoning is there’s too many fluctuations in the pages beyond this and that those results are inconsequential.

  One thing Moz does have going for it is Keyword Clusters – allowing you to track groups of keywords to better understand your search visibility in the context of your competitors.

  On the whole though, what’s here isn’t a patch on SEMrush or Ahrefs. They win hands down both on the depth of data and the level of insight, plus they present it in a way I actually want to look at it every day. All you really want is a clear picture of your keyword outlook and the progress you’re making.

  Moz also lags on the freshness of its ranking data and is extremely limited in terms of trackable search engines. Look elsewhere if you need pinpoint rank tracking.

• 📇 On-page Grader

  This Page Optimization tool is a pick of the bunch. When your content is compelling and designed around keywords, you’re on your way to rankings.

  Optimise your rankings and on-page SEO with this simple checklist tool to score and improve your content’s visibility for specific keywords and topics. To start the process of optimising a page for higher rankings, enter a keyword and page URL. This spells out precisely the changes you need to make on web pages and you can use the ‘Track & Monitor’ tab to track progress over time.

  There’s not a lot more to say here, other than its beauty and effectiveness is in its simplicity.

  

• 🏥 Site audit

  Your site audit happens automatically when you start your new project.

  Unlike SEMrush, Serpstat and Ahrefs, there’s no health score and the results are far less complete. That said, it does offer some useful tips on site optimization.

  Moz Pro did pick up on a redirect chain, meaning I was forcing visitors to jump through hoops which was slowing down the user experience.

  

  However, two majorly impressive features here are a) the ability to ignore an issue or mark it as fixed and, b) the expert tips that demystify that element of technical SEO. Nice one Moz!

• 🌱 Fresh Web Explorer (now sunsetted)

  This was killer tool and was far too hidden away. I’m actually sad to see it retired.

  The Moz Fresh Web Explorer hunted down recent mentions of a keyword or phrase, so you could strike while it’s hot and piggyback on them. Much like Exploding Topics.

  You chose the timeframe and created an alert for any new instance. Moz was flagging 200+ new pages a day for me - mainly articles, roundups or resources – which was an open goal for getting Surges added or offering a quote. Such a powerful tool! Here’s their reasons for withdrawing Fresh Web Explorer.