Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz ! Why We're Retiring SEOmoz

Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz ! Why We're Retiring SEOmoz 

For the last two years, the 130+ Mozzers across product, engineering, marketing, and operations have been working to transform this company to the next stage of our evolution. Today, that incredibly demanding, intense, but ultimately rewarding process has reached its first goal. I'm excited to announce that as of today, SEOmoz is formally transitioning our brand, our products, our company name, and all of our efforts to Moz.

Why We're Retiring SEOmoz

The company and the name 'SEOmoz' began in 2004 with a blog. I'd been reading, participating, and sharing a lot on SEO forums and wanted a place to post in my own format with more detail than what I could do on other sites. Fast forward to 2006; SEOmoz had became quite a popular site, and we changed the name of the company to match it. In 2009, when we retired our consulting business to focus exclusively on software, SEOmoz was seeing more than 500,000 visits a month (in April 2013 that number was over two million).

The Mission & Vision for Moz

Moz's mission is to help people do better marketing.

We've long had a similar core purpose with SEOmoz - to simplify the promotion of ideas on the web. But "better marketing" is a more accurate and succinct description of why we exist. Moz is about educating marketers and those they work with. It's about providing tools and software to help measure and improve marketing efforts. It's about giving marketers a platform to ask questions and show off their skill and knowledge. The catalyst for all of that is a belief we hold - that, tragically, a lot of marketing sucks.

Together, we can change that. The marketers who are part of the Moz community are on the cutting edge of technology and tactics, but they're also passionate about bringing value from their efforts without compromising ethics or burning bridges with customers. We want to constantly push ourselves and the world of marketing to join them and do better.

Moz's current vision is to power the shift from interruption to inbound marketing by giving every marketer affordable software to measure and improve their efforts.

Today, 90% of marketing investment is spent on channels that interrupt people in order to get their attention. TV commercials, print ads, radio spots, and billboards are part of this, but so too are web channels like banner advertising, pop-ups and pop-unders, non-opt-in emails, and interstitials.

It's not that these channels are evil or wrong - interruption-based marketing can still be effective if it's done empathetically and delights its audience. But on the web at least, less than 10% of all the clicks and traffic go through these channels. The vast majority of web users' time and attention, whether desktop, tablet, or mobile goes to inbound sources - personal & opt-in emails we want to read, content we want to consume, search results we want to click, social media we want to engage with, videos we want to watch, etc.

We believe that in the next decade, the effort and dollars put toward web marketing will become more sophisticated, and growth in channels like SEO, social media marketing, content creation, etc. will dwarf the growth rates of those in more traditional, interruption-based endeavors. For many institutional and historic reasons (including the self-interest of web properties to encourage the flow of ad dollars), these may never be fully proportional, but our passion and our goal is to help marketers, especially those outside Fortune 1000s, with analytics and recommendations for these earned channels.

Our core values remain unchanged. They are TAGFEE:

• Transparency - we believe in sharing what we know and what we do openly, and in letting everyone participate in the adventure that is Moz.
• Authenticity - we never want to be someone other than ourselves. We won't put on a figurative fancy suit just to impress; we will embrace our true identities and let everyone experience the real us.
• Generosity - we believe in giving without thought of return, and in sharing what we have with others. Our generosity should extend to our co-workers, our customers, and our communities, all of whom have already given so generously to us.
• Fun - work is only work if you make it so. We want to always love what we do, and we believe that love and enjoyment of our professional tasks will carry us through the tough times.
• Empathy - it is our duty to put ourselves in the shoes of others and see things from their perspective. Empathy begins with kindness, too, and we seek to apply warmth and understanding in every aspect of how we do business.
• The Exception - wherever there is a common practice or standard methodology, we seek to question its value before deciding what to do. We believe that immense opportunity exists where others fear to tread. Our goal is to be the exception, not stick to the rules.

These three elements - our mission, vision, and values - are the architecture that helps us operate and grow the company. They're also the yardstick against which we measure ourselves and expect to be judged by others. If you see us engaging in behavior that's not a match with this, or if you're ever confused by how what we've done compares to our mission, vision, and values, call us on it. Being held accountable is the best way for us to stay true to the right path.