Open Site Explorer is Pretty Slick
From a marketing and a public relations standpoint this tool is brilliant. Rand just put up a full in-depth review here.
In the past I have not been a fan of certain outing policies, but of late I have seen that practice has went away...and if it stays that way how could I not recommend the above tool?
Sometimes it is hard to appreciate how spoiled we are as SEOs with cheap to free keyword data, cheap to free great link data, and lots of useful tools to help us organize and make sense of it all. And even lots of charts :)
One area where some of our tools could be better is on the usability front...we tend to presume some level of knowledge and/or the willingness to work through things to figure them out, but the presentation on OSE is very easy to grasp & understand at first glance. Part of this challenge comes from limited resources...and the most limiting one being time. It is so hard to make money servicing the SEO market (because there are so many great free options). As the market continues to open up more with more tools and options, at the same time the SEO *process* keeps getting more complex, with more competitors jumping into the SEO market.
It certainly feels like it will keep getting easier to make money as a publisher rather than a person servicing the SEO market.
But not all forms of publishing will get easier & more profitable. Companies like Demand Media and Aol sharing their results publicly will saturate some segments, but there are many areas where bullshit content won't be enough to compete. And some thin operations will see margin contraction as the investment needed to stay competitive increases.
But we are quite literally drowning in opportunity. If a person can't make money as a publisher with SEO knowledge, it is simply because they are not willing to put in the effort (or they are part of an old bureaucratic publishing company which moves slowly, is debt laden, and has a high cost structure).
I have always avoided scaling as a company, but there is so much opportunity that I might have a resolution for 2010 :D
Comments
Neat tool! I've finally let off some steam by ranting about SEOmoz's outing policies - in a round about way - and if they continue to play ethically, I'll have no choice but to give them their kudos again, that is, whenever they do great things.
It's a nice tool, but I can get pretty much the same functionality with sheerseo.com
It's definitely worth checking out.
But the big difference is what happens when the Yahoo! link data goes away? SeoMoz will still have their crawled data, but where will SheerSeo get their data from?
Aaron,
I know you've talked about the Yahoo data going away, but do you have any time fram as to when that will happen? Keep up the great posts. I've been an avid reader of your for the past year.
Hard for me to know the exact dates on anything with them...I just post about stuff when I know about it, and things to look out for going forward.
I really like the user interface of OSE - SEOMOZ have really nailed the design of this tool. I think there is something to be said for looking nice & being easy to use (even for SEO noobs).
I currently use Majestic & occasionally Linkscape; however after a cursory inspection I think I will definitely be using OSE.
I just hope that Majestic can keep powering along as I like the idea of not being too reliant on a single data source.
When I first heard we were losing site explorer I was pretty concerned but like you've said, there are some viable alternatives out there. Still sad to lose the original though
Shit... hasn't it always been better to rank your sites instead of someone else's?
But for me it seems I keep realizing a greater spread in delta grows as the SEO market gets more saturated, and all the pieces get commoditized layer by layer.
And a key point here is that you don't need to operate a big company to make a big footprint...so many pieces are there ready to be bolted together. About the only things which have not been commoditized are links & cashflow generating websites. ;)
ya damn right..
a one man operation with a few things outsourced and your in the game and can hit several home runs... but only if you know and actually play ball...
Nice Tool - but I actually found it's missing some root domains linked to my site (other tools have found them). Anyone else notice anything like this?
"I have always avoided scaling as a company, but there is so much opportunity that I might have a resolution for 2010"
So you have finally decided to scale as a company... Way to go Aaron. Good luck and success.
http://www.seopractices.com
I don't know of any other place to post this, sorry its off topic. Can somebody polease lend some advice?
This is a question I just asked my developer about creating my niche industry a glossary.
For SEO purposes, what do you think the best glossary format would be?
I like SEOBooks.com a lot because it makes it very easy for somebody to link to an individual term, I like because I want people to link to my site. However, I have a lot more terms and it would be a very long page this way.
Then there is apogee search - they make it so that each individual letter has its own page, and then when you click on each term that has its own page as well. That’s good because we can load each page with a lot of keywords and titles that will help rankings.
There is also seoglossary.com - they have it so when you click on a letter, you are taken to another page where you can easily see all terms in that letter, then when you click on anyone of the terms, it takes you to a page where all terms for that letter are listed. I’m unsure how this will effect SEO.
Obviously each method will take different level of time from you, and therefore a different price. Let's pretend price isn't an issue, and the only thing i want is the best SEO rankings. What do you recommend we do? Please give me some insight as to what the different options will yield and at what $ to do it.
I may slim down the terms to stay on budget or to make it easier and more concise but I'm not sure yet.
Thank you very much for your help.
--
Thomas W Farrell
I believe Aaron will offer you his time if you sign up for his membership... http://www.seobook.com/join/ ..
how about YOU invest the time, instead of trying to catch freebies ;)
Don't we all !!
Anyone here knows the useragent of OSE/Link Scape?
I believe that is this one unless they have changed it:
“Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Seomozbot/1.0; +http://www.seomoz.com/bot.html)”,
& I agree with Aaron - 5***** rating for OSE here:
http://siteexplorer.co/top-10-yahoo-site-explorer-alternatives/
It is at the top of the pack for an excellent YSE replacement.
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