• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 2, 2010

SEOmoz launched the platform Web App on Thursday, giving its 6,000 members access to a variety of SEO software, tools and reports. It the first major step, aside from announcing the deal with BrightEdge, to rebrand the company as a tools provider, rather than a SEO services provider.

That's not always easy. eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman says it means gauging how much clients associate the name with products or services, and how much starting over with name, logo or more is needed to support the new offerings.

Hopefully it sticks soon because SEOmoz plans to rollout a line of SEO tools. Next up, SEOmoz will integrate the Web App platform with Google Analytics, which means tying visitor and traffic data to metrics like crawl errors, warnings, on-page optimization, and links. The Web App platform went into private beta with about 1,300 members two weeks ago after 18 months in design. Production began in November. SEOmoz founder Rand Fishkin says web app will become the center piece for future releases of SEOmoz software.

The platform supports SEOmoz tools and reports that allow member to manage, maintain and track SEO-related functions such as seeing all links on a page, or verify pages that return the correct response code. The tools let members see results from reports to make sure rankings, crawl diagnostic, traffic and links are working to optimize sites. If there's a missed opportunity or technical error, the platform identifies the flaws, Fishkin says.

It can find a page that no longer targets specific keywords, blocks texts or more, and then makes recommendations accordingly. "When I first became an entrepreneur, I would build things I thought everyone would want, but in fact I was the only one wanting them," Fishkin says. "This automated tool is built for people in the real world, those who don't spend every waking moment in SEO."

The SEOmoz Web App crawls pages on Web sites to find errors, warning and notices similar to a "Google WMTools on steroids," which will show you several issues, but Fishkin's tool provides much more information. The web app crawls a site weekly up to a specific number of pages depending on price. The lowest price will crawl 10,000 pages per week, followed by 100,000 and 1 million.

It also tracks rankings for hundreds-thousands of keywords automatically and builds colorful charts, and provides on-page optimization grades to every keyword or URL pair based on the grading system in the United States.

I didn't give it much thought until Fishkin mentioned that the school grading system in Europe and Asia differs from the one in the U.S. This could complicate things if not careful.