Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz

They are not going to have much of a problem. People who knew SEOmoz will recognize Moz. Besides they are a strong SEO company. They will own many of the Moz related keywords soon enough.

I can't manipulate the way you process the terms "Moz" and it's association. The "Moz" = "Mozilla" comparison is easy to make so I hope time and continuing branding efforts by Moz will hopefully change that.

This transition from solely focusing on SEO to a more holistic marketing tool is not new. They've been moving in this direction for at least the past year. I think this is a good time for them to make the break from being pigeonholed as an SEO company to something bigger, something more inclusive. SEO is no longer a narrow niche type of marketing, at least not to the people who perform SEO daily or on a professional level.

It's a combination of content creation, site optimization, outreach and relationship building, branding and more. Not all these components are always associated with "SEO", which often times has a negative connotation attached to it. Moz is hoping to capture a larger part of the inbound marketing market than SEOmoz ever could.

Well, at some bitcoin related forums informal 'Gox' is actually used quite a lot to refer to MtGox. Regarding SEOmoz to Moz change, I'm more concerned that people may start to somehow see Moz as being associated with Mozilla Corporation. The idea behind rebranding (to distance from 'pure SEO', so to speak) is valid, but the choice of the new name seems unfortunate to me.

I have this aliased pretty strongly in my head from years of typing '-moz' in front of experimentally supported CSS features.

I would argue a name change at the point of a pivot or significant redesign is a great time to refresh the brand identity as well. The internet marketing industry is changing rapidly right now in light of Google Panda/Penguin and the massive growth we're seeing in mobile. Lots of SEO companies are changing their software offerings to fit the evolving needs of marketers.

The name moz ("m-ah-z") makes me think of SEOmoz. The name moz ("m-oe-z") makes me think of Mozilla or Dwight's crazy brother from The Office. Moz is simple, short and recognizable to those in the SEO industry. I don't think they'll have too much trouble getting people to recognize the new brand.

By the way, the old domain was SEOmoz.org which isn't a great domain name for a commercial product. I never understood why they didn't loose the .org since they owned the .com.

It's just how the brain works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKKa_OlSXgQ

Sorry, couldn't resist. :)

I am not saying, that your perspective is wrong - I certainly feel that you have made a good point there.

But maybe we (You & I) just aren't in their target audience and while it does not seem a good idea to us, it is an insanely awesome idea for their market? Who knows...

Even when it was SEOmoz the first thing I always thought of was Mozilla. And I haven't even used a Mozilla browser in years.

The differentiation between what Moz does and what SEOs do is both real and useful. Moz hasn't fit into the paradigm of "SEO" for a while, so it's best they don't call themselves an SEO tool company anymore.

Interestingly, the same is true of many consultancies who have also become tired of the expectations and (in my opinion, justified) stereotypes of SEOs as spammers. Many have begun removing "SEO" from their branding messages.

I really don't think anyone is going to confuse Moz and Mozilla. Would you? Outside the tech community, most people only know "Firefox" anyway. Those who are even vaguely familiar with either brand will immediately see the difference.

For me personally, the only reason I know what MtGox is, is that I've heard it enough times in relation to Bitcoins that I've made the connection. I don't know anything about bitcoins and I don't know anything about the root of it's name. "Moz" will be fine in the same way that "MtGox" is fine. They put out a lot of content and each time it will reference and reinforce the name. I think dumping "SEO" from the name is a fine move on their part.

It'll be interesting to see which company Google's autocomplete ends up suggesting when someone types "Moz".. right now it's Mozilla, but with SEOmoz's abilities I wonder if that'll change.

I also think it is a bad move for the end user. But likely a great move for Moz.

They realize that SEO has limited revenue potential and probably already maxed it out. If they pivot themselves to create tools for marketing then they can magically double or triple their revenue. In order to do that, they have to ditch the geeky and, sometimes slightly slimy, "SEO" prefix.

Companies will pay big bucks for tools related to marketing whether they are worth it or not.

This is a very lukewarm rebranding. It sounds like the kind of thing that is a preface to a second rebranding in the future. Better to do the whole rebranding now, or leave it alone. But a very difficult decision to make internally to the company losing its old name.

The thing is, most marketing types who actually pay for this software don't think like this. As mentioned in the article, a lot of people actually had troubled pronouncing the brand as they didn't realise it was an acronym.

Albeit, I would of thought most marketers should know what SEO is. But still, I think this will help them sell their product to a more mainstream audience.

I agree about the Mozilla connection.

It's also interesting that SEOMoz filed for the Moz trademark back in August 2011, so this has been under consideration for a while and it's already been published for review and is live. So if it this bothers the Mozilla folks, at this point it may be difficult for them to contest (IANAL).

I think you're entirely correct.

I'd add that SEO is an easy target because it is (or has been until its very recent transformation into content marketing + nice clean usable sites) blatantly a zero-sum game, whereas most marketing is not inherently zero-sum.

There's uncertainty about what SEO is right now which makes the scammers even harder to spot. Many people using harmful practices (harmful to users as well as the company they're working for) genuinely believe that they are helping.

Black Hat SEO is hilarious. Oh, it works. It works very well, and definitely at least as long as it takes for the SEO to collect their check & a recommendation for the next job.

Interesting that this update comes in the wake of Penguin 2.0, incidentally - could Moz have fallen victim?

Just change (unfair) to (sometimes unfair), and I think he's dead on.

Most of the SEO companies out there are still either link spammers or impotent content marketers. There are exceptions: SEO-centered companies doing legitimate digital marketing - but it's fairly rare for them to do it well.

I use Moz's Open Site Explorer, and I watch closely to see what SEO companies are doing. More often than not, they're spamming links all across the web. This is true even today, even with Google's spam-fighting techniques becoming increasingly sophisticated. SEO companies are often leading their clients to the slaughter. Some companies that preach "great content, great UX" also turn around and buy or blast links.

To Moz's credit, they've really been pushing hard to encourage people to stop spamming and buying links. Their writers constantly argue against link spam, encouraging SEOs to instead create content that people will love. Their message actually meshes quite well with PG's philosophy on start ups, and indeed I know Rand is influenced by PG and HN.

It's possible that someone deeply involved in the Moz community, as Rand is, may just see a non-representative sample of non-spammers. They must realize this to some extent, as they're pulling "SEO" out of their branding.

Fair or unfair, whenever I see the letters SEO next to each other like that, I get immediately turned off. The last time I was looking for work, I just stopped reading when I saw SEOMoz as the company name.

Absolutely. 90% of the time I hear about SEO is via spam submitted via my contact form.

As you say, that is unfair to the people doing good work, but also completely… fair… for me to make that association

Exactly! To each few good "SEO" guys there's a plethora of scammers.

I think it's a great move for them and will help to win a more skeptical crowd. Although, I still don't trust them with or without "SEO" :)

Good point about your prediction, especially since in one of their blog posts (aka, how to move to a new domain), this is exactly how they recommend doing it for the fastest SEO-juice transition.

"True inbound marketing is way too risky at scale."

In what way is it risky? I can see it being too much work for some people/companies who do mediocre work to begin with. But I can't see what risks are inherent in establishing yourself (or your company) as a thought leader in your field.

Legally, Moz =/= Mozilla.

Moz (SEOmoz) has the following trademark: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:tp...

You can search the site for yourself. Aside from tires (for which there is no "likelihood of confusion") there are no other Moz trademarks. If Mozilla wanted to brand themselves as something other than their company name, they should have picked up the Trademark and used it in official commerce.

I seriously doubt Mozilla has a problem with it anyway. I really don't think it's that confusing.