SEOmoz Plugin for Link Building

Having instant access to key metrics about a website or web page you hope to secure a link from is an absolutely crucial aspect of the link building process. Without this information to hand it can be difficult to determine whether or not a link is likely to have any SEO benefit.

Fast access to this information can be achieved by installing the SEOmoz toolbar plug-in for Firefox. If you don’t have the Firefox browser installed on your computer, you’ll need to download it to follow this advice. This will explain what is search engine optimization.

SEOmoz Toolbar

SEOmoz are pioneers in search engine optimisation software and their toolbar for Firefox is one that I use daily and could not live without. It’s an essential tool for link analysis and research and will help you to make informed link building decisions.

Here’s a quick summary of its essential metrics and components:

1. Page Authority Metric

Page Authority Metric is SEOmoz’s calculated metric for a how well a particular web page is likely to rank in Google’s search engine results pages. Based on a 100 point, logarithmic scale, the higher the Page Authority the greater potential that page has to rank. Securing links from web pages with high PA is likely to have beneficial effects on your site’s SEO.

However, bear in mind that the context of your link will determine how influential it is. For example, “in-content” links and those higher up the HTML code may be more influential than those in the footer or blog-roll of the page.

2. MozRank Metric

is SEOmoz’s equivalent to Google’s PageRank metric. Google PR has long been used by SEO consultants to determine the importance of particular web pages. However, its use by professional SEOs has been on the wane for a number of years for several reasons but mainly due to the fact that it is now considered an unreliable and outmoded metric.

Unreliable because Google themselves have admitted to the random attribution of incorrect PR to certain sites, specifically to confuse the process of SEO, and outmoded because PageRank updates can be very infrequent (with many months passing between new scores for pages). MozRank, on the other hand, is updated monthly and presents a much more reliable link popularity score.

3. Domain Authority Metric

In contrast to Page Authority, which is a page level metric, Domain Authority predicts how well a specific website will perform in the search engines. Securing contextual, “in-content” links from sites with very high Domain Authority scores is likely to have a very beneficial effect on your SEO endeavours so, again, access to this metric is key to your link campaign planning.

SEOmoz Other Features:

In addition to offering you a fast snapshot of key metrics, the SEOmoz toolbar also enables you to carry out quick and easy tests and analysis to help you with your link building efforts.

Features that I use daily include: Fast access to Open Site Explorer (in-depth back-link analysis tool) for the webpage you’re viewing; Highlight tool to help you determine quickly if the site you wish to secure a link from uses the “nofollow” attribute plus quick access to archive tools to help you determine the age of the site you’re on (older, established sites are usually better link acquisition targets).

For link analysis “on the go” or for measured link acquisition research, the SEOmoz toolbar is essential for anyone thinking about implementing their own SEO campaign.