If you ever search for Marketing tools, a wide range will appear. From tracking tools, conversion tools, to reporting tools, there are tools for just about everything in marketing. Someone outside of the industry asked me once, “Why though? Why do you need so many tools?” Tools often specialize in unique skill sets, just like Moose May specializes in helping you rank on Google while other agencies may assist you best in logo design or a website creation. It’s the same for marketing tasks — specialized tools exist to help automate, analyze, and more.
If you are working on SEO yourself, there are a number of tools that may be on your radar. We’re here to highlight the favorites that we recommend for different purposes.
Today’s highlight: MOZCAST
What is MozCast?
MozCast is “an experiment in tracking the ‘weather’ patterns of the Google algorithm. While big updates like Panda and Penguin get a lot of press, Google revealed that they made 516 changes in 2010, and all evidence suggests that pace has continued. What we notice is barely the tip of the iceberg.
MozCast was designed to help you keep track of the day-to-day changes in the Google algorithm. The hotter and stormier the weather, the more Google’s rankings changed.” (Read the full “About” page for a quick primer.)
How Can MozCast Help My SEO?
MozCast tells us how much SEO rankings are shaking up across the Internet on any given day and the previous five days, as well the entire previous month. You can see what MozCast is seeing across the web in relation to rankings. This helps gauge large algorithm changes (changes to how Google ranks your site,) or if it may be a smaller rollout of algorithm changes (Google says they do 2-3 per day).
For example, say you are normally ranking on the first page for three important keywords. Then, you run a report and boom! Your ranking dropped down to the second page for one of those keywords. Using MozCast will help you gauge whether this drop is possibly due to algorithm changes (thanks a lot, Google!).
In short, MozCast is a great FREE tool that can help you better understand how other people are seeing ranking changes throughout searches. It can also help you assess and edit your SEO strategy based on the data you glean from the ‘weather report’.
At Moose May, we use MozCast to help us check algorithm changes against rises or drops and consult with our clients on what’s working and what may need to be changed. Sometimes it’s hard to put an exact finger on what moved your rankings up. Most of the time we see the rank increase because we’ve just implemented some great on-page SEO, but sometimes it’s because of algorithm changes — and we love to know which it is.
Was this helpful to you? Want to learn more about digital marketing and SEO? Every few weeks we’ll be sharing tool highlights just like this in order to help you improve your SEO. Make sure to sign up for our blog alerts so you’ll know as they come out!