WhatClinic.com Blog

SEOMOZ is a collection of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools that automate a wide range of tasks. These include checking a site’s ranking for a selection of keywords, crawling a site for errors, and competitive intelligence. Compared to other SEO tools they have a killer marketing feature – credibility.

Not only does the product ooze quality, it was also created by long standing and respected members of the SEO community. In our world, where SEO has become such as distrusted and misunderstood profession, the importance of credibility cannot be overstated.

[Disclosure: We use SEOMOZ at WhatClinic.com, but have no further relationships with the company.]

Test 1 – Simplicity

SEOMOZ Pricing

At first glance the pricing looks pretty overwhelming. There are three plans that each have different volume limits for each of four different feature sets, and to make matters worse each feature set has its own incremental scale, each of which is independent of the overall pricing scale:

To a potential first time customer this makes the pricing seem complicated and confusing. To alleviate this SEOMOZ do an extremely good job of promoting the lowest price option and give reassurance that the first 30 day period is risk free.

Test 2 – Market Size

Pricing is definitely set high enough to make SEOMOZ commercially successful with any kind of reasonable market penetration.  If they have any kind of success getting customers onto higher price plans then I could see a tremendous amount of revenue being generated.

Normally I would think that a $99 per month entry was too high as it would exclude the bulk of the market. However, I feel that that this entry point is correct or near correct for SEOMOZ for two reasons.

1. Price sensitive customers can rationalize a $99 expense by treating the purchase as a single $99 purchase which they then unsubscribe from. I see a slight potential problem here in that the 30 day money back guarantee essentially allows this market segment to game the system and get value for nothing.
2. The market advantage SEOMOZ has is credibility, which would not be enhanced by low end pricing.

Test 3 – Comparable Pricing

Complete failure here. As a potential customer I have no idea if SEOMOZ is reasonably priced, there is simply no frame of reference. To make matters worse SEOMOZ price points are so distantly spaced that I can’t easily compare one price to another to determine the best one.  I would nearly always recommend having two price points relatively close to each other so that potential customers can directly and easily compare one to the other.

Test 4 – Adoption

The 30 day money back guarantee massively reduces the barrier to entry of the $99 per month price.  None-the-less I think I would prefer to see a massively crippled free version that I would use for lead generation.

For example I think a free plan that crawled just 25 pages and tracked 10 key phrases would be commercially useless but would still allow a potential customer who was wary of entering their credit card details to become comfortable with the product. In addition, amateurs would use it and talk about it which would increase overall market awareness.

Test 5 – Price Discrimination

SEOMOZ discriminate on volume not features. Essentially they’re saying “the more sites that you have & the bigger the sites the more you pay us”. This is a perfectly reasonable method of price discrimination, but I think that some feature discrimination could segment the market further and therefore improve revenues.

For example, I would suggest that the Q&A feature not be made available on the base plan.  This would then create strong pressure to upgrade during an SEO crisis period when the customer’s need of the product is at its highest and their price sensitivity is at its lowest.

SEOMOZ’s price discrimination is extremely aggressive. In fact I think it is far too aggressive. There is a massive difference between $100 a month and $500 a month. There have to be a large number of users on the $99 plan who would happily pay more, but won’t stretch to $500 per month.

Suggested New Pricing

The main point of this new pricing is the introduction of a new price point closer to the base plan. The base plan has also been reduced in functionality and number of campaigns. I believe that such a pricing structure wouldn’t hurt adoption while providing an attractive upgrade route for satisfied customers.

At this level of pricing I really don’t think that people are going to sign up for anything but the base plan so I think it’s okay that the PRO membership is still clearly the preferable option to start at.

SEOMOZ Pricing Analysis Score Card