SEOmoz's New Homepage Design - Sink or Swim?

[jrothra]

Originally Posted by rmccarley

I don't think the push for premium membership is a bad thing. They give away a lot of good info for free so trying to offset that cost makes sense.

I don't like the new homepage design. The Seattle graphic isn't very clear IMO and there is just too much going on. Its a showoff of all the latest 2.0 junk and doesn't convey a very clear message.

I agree here. I see nothing wrong with promoting a paid service... almost every major company does it. It's not unexpected today. I'm sure if they notice a negative impact then it will change.

Also, I agree on the site design as not being the best. It seems flashy (not Macromedia Flash), but showy. The color patterns are not complimentary (the dark top/light bottom background and light top/dark bottom content clash). I'm still not sure what Web 2.0 means, other than dynamic stuff, so I can't address that.

Originally Posted by okguyjames

the Page Strength tool, which is an elaborate, marketed way of displaying very common data as if it were being analyzed (which it is not), now carries a nifty pop-over pushing the premium membership option that must be bypassed before you can use the 'tool'. then, when the data retrieval script left out some of the most important metrics (age of domain, pagerank for instance) i followed the advice at the bottom of the page "If your report contains missing data, try refreshing it." Guess what it read:

"Due to hardware constraints we are temporarily limiting this feature to our premium members".

redirect >> to a sale page

This however, is not good at all!!!! Get the front end stuff, which is basically useless for cheap or free... but to really use it, you need the backend stuff. Get-rich-quick infomercials use this bait and switch tactic and it is, IMO, a bad business practice.

[A.N.Onym]

The reason they are on the .org domain is that they want to seem to be a community, rather than a for-profit organization. I suspect that this is a Rand's decision (like anyone would argue with him, anyway).

The homepage redesign is not that noticeable. New graphics, more information blocks? Not too terrible, really. The homepage now shows what the SEOmoz is about: content, digg and such. It is cute that they show their categories in a tag (category) cloud, too.

I think the reason they try to monetize their tools/content is that they want to shift to working on their inner projects by having a stable income. I guess it is the right time to monetize content, too. I can't say that using pop-ups and pop-unders is the way to go, though.

[skitzzo]

Originally Posted by A.N.Onym

The reason they are on the .org domain is that they want to seem to be a community, rather than a for-profit organization. I suspect that this is a Rand's decision (like anyone would argue with him, anyway).

Right, and I get that, but they are a corporation that's trying to make money and if I recall, <edit> I recalled wrong.

[A.N.Onym]

I haven't heard about the movement attempt. I doubt they'll suffer much now - they should be getting repeat customers, customer referrals and premium content revenue to cover the loss of traffic. Then again, the 301 redirect takes months (or so I heard), so it can affect them somehow, indeed.

[skitzzo]

you know, going back and searching for the thread I think I may have been wrong. It looks like seomoz.org was the domain it was being redirected TO rather than from. That changes things a bit.

[eCopt]

Wonder if this thread had anything to do with this post ...

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/help-the-seomoz-home-page

Ah, at least they are listening!

I knew there were others who felt the same about the new look.

[randfish]

Ouch... Well, we try hard to please as many people as we can, and it's certainly very sad to hear criticisms from people like y'all, whom I've respected and listened to for years. Perhaps I should try to address all these concerns on the blog in the near future. For now, though, I'll do my best to hit the main points:

the extreme emphasis on their paid membership has gotten kind of annoying

So, we did make a lot of changes based on some input from friends around the industry who noticed that there was very, very low conversions to SEOmoz premium membership. I won't try to convince anyone of the value - we work hard on the tools, the guides, the premium tips, etc. and if it's worth it to you, great, if not, no worries - we'll keep trying to make it better and better. Re-focusing the site to get more premium memberships is a very commercial move for us - we're shifting from client services to in-house projects and SEOmoz is certainly one we'd like to see become popular. It's done OK so far, but the changes to the site have definitely ramped up conversion rates (though they're still far below 0.5% which is where I'd eventually like to be - after all, we always achieve that for cilents!)

The first being that they are still on a .org domain. I'm not sure why it bothers me but it does. It seems like it goes against SEOmoz's values or something.

We've always been on a .org, and although we do own the .com, I'm not sure it would make any brand sense to switch over, get new business cards, have to make everyone understand the change, etc. Granted, the site is now offering paid services directly, as well as a community, but I think Craigslist, which is the most prominent .org I can think of, does exactly the same thing - big community, lots of free stuff, some paid stuff, too (though, granted, they don't push the paid material like we do).

Seomoz is not one of the best group blogs. I visit SELand, Shoemoney and Scoop every day they are the leading blogs for me.

You know how sometimes a comment breaks your heart - this is that comment for me. I can't tell you how hard I work to try and make the blog as valuable and noteworthy and unique and interesting as possible. I love SELand and Scoop, too, and I certainly won't hold anything against folks who like those sites better, but I wish we could be mentioned at least on par with those great blogs.

Something about SEOMoz has been annoying me... I don't know what it is. I'll have to think about that. I don't like it when my subconscious is trying to send me a mesage and I'm not listening

Please let me know what it is when you figure it out, and we'll do our best to address it. I really want the site to be the best it can be and as valuable as possible for everyone, premium or non-premium.

That is bait and switch... that sucks. I like SEOmoz... but that sucks.

OK - I can try to re-word it, but really, if I showed you how much bandwidth it consumed to offer the Page Strength tool for free, and how much it damages the accuracy and consistency of the tool when we let free members run unlimited reports, you'd see that from a business standpoint, it can't be maintained. SEO_AM - I learned a lot of my early SEO from you and I respect you a great deal. Please feel free to email me anytime with your insight or problems/issues you see.

Get-rich-quick infomercials use this bait and switch tactic and it is, IMO, a bad business practice.

This seems unfair to me... I wish we could provide it for free, too, but it seems unreasonable to ask a business to serve all that information for free. We give away a ton of free stuff - more than almost anyone in the SEO world, and I know we should be doing more, and we will do more over time, but it's hard. It's really hard. My schedule alone is ludicrous and the rest of the folks here have lots of work, too.

Obviously, I greatly appreciate everyone's input and I'll try to keep making things better. I'll try to check out this thread again tonight or tomorrow.

[eCopt]

Thanks for personally addressing the concerns in this thread Rand, nice rep management in action!

Don't take our CONSTRUCTIVE criticism too personally. You offer a great site, great service and exceptionally good advice. I understand the schedules and organization constraints, the difficulties being a manager and the need to make money off your site. You have done a nice job of holding it all together and I for one really look up to you for it.

I think when you reach a certain level, people expect more. Time will tell, but so far there is nothing too terrible about your site, at least nothing that keep me from visiting it!

[SEO_AM]

Originally Posted by randfish

OK - I can try to re-word it, but really, if I showed you how much bandwidth it consumed to offer the Page Strength tool for free, and how much it damages the accuracy and consistency of the tool when we let free members run unlimited reports, you'd see that from a business standpoint, it can't be maintained. SEO_AM - I learned a lot of my early SEO from you and I respect you a great deal. Please feel free to email me anytime with your insight or problems/issues you see.

Rand... You already know I hold you in the highest respect. In doing that, I also hold you to a higher measure of excellence. If your tools are free... say so up front. If they are for a fee... do not make them appear that they are free... then advise that their use is fee only.

You have a great rep in the industry... I would hate to see it sullied by any misconceptions on the part of what you are offering. Like I said before... I like SEOmoz and that randfish guy.

[skitzzo]

Rand, thanks for stopping in. As others have said, I don't want you to feel like we're trashing your site. I read it daily and think it's one of the tops out there. However, you guys are sort of blazing the trail in terms of paid content and you'll likely get scraped up a bit here and there.

In terms of what is bothering me about it, I think it may have been partly due to your absence and partly due to the signal to noise ratio recently. Its not something that would keep from visiting, more something that just seems off kilter. Although, to be fair, the same can probably be said of our blog here when we do sponsored posts so...