| The core piece of information every search
engine optimizer (SEO) must have is, where are my pages positioned in the search engine
rankings?
Of course, we can manually query the search engines as many
webmasters do when they have only a few pages to keep track of. However, those of us
in-the-know wouldn't dream of tracking such an automatable task, manually – too hard,
way too much work, wouldn't even think of it, are just a few of the thoughts that
immediately come to mind.
That's why, for years, we've used WebPosition to track and
report our pages' positioning in the search engines. WebPosition renders what would
otherwise be a time-consuming, labor-intensive, and tedious task . . . pleasurable. By
that I mean that it's a pleasure to only have to look at a report rather than spend
countless hours and days manually querying the major SE's to locate and track our
multitudinous page rankings.
Even better is the fact that whenever the automated
functions of WebPosition alert us to ranking changes they indirectly suggest that we
should also be on the lookout for changes in the SE algorithms. Behind the scenes we've
often whispered thanks to Brent Winters for creating what is probably the most useful SE
tool ever invented. There's no doubt the tracking and reporting function of WebPosition is
absolutely indispensable.
In light of our high regard for the functionality of
WebPosition, you may have noticed we've kind of ignored it within this publication for the
past year or so. Frankly, there hasn't been anything new to report other than the fact of
its recent acquisition by NetIQ (maker of WebTrends, the popular website statistics
application).
And, even though that event was extensively reported in
press releases, there wasn't anything new to report about WP itself. It seemed prudent to
wait and see whether or not it would adapt or die in light of all the recent changes
within the SE world. We are now happy to report in agreement with the people at WebTrends
that, indeed, the best just got better!
Introducing the new WebPosition 3
A New Look Since this is the first major upgrade to
WebPosition in the past two years, there's a number of new features to review in addition
to its core function of tracking and reporting page positioning within SE rankings. For
starters, they've modernized and revamped the user interface. The various tool components
of WebPosition are now accessed through an Outlook-style toolbar located on the left side
of your screen (as seen in the screenshot below):
Revamped Interface
WordTracker Keywords Module
Another nice addition is the built-in interface to the
WordTracker service, which greatly facilitates the keyword selection process. We can now
import WordTracker keywords directly into the other WebPosition tools such as Reporter and
Page Builder.
If you're familiar with the WordTracker website, you'll be
pleased to learn that the interface remains the same even when accessed via the
WebPosition client. The rest of the integration takes place seamlessly behind the scenes.
Supported Search Engines Search Engines
About.com AllTheWeb AltaVista AskJeeves Entireweb Galaxy
Google Google Groups HotBot ISleuth Lycos MSN Search.com SearchKing Teoma WiseNut Yahoo
Web Results Pay Per Click Engines
7Search Enhance (formerly Ah-Ha) Epilot FindWhat Google
AdWords Kanoodle Overture SearchFeed Xuppa (formerly Bay9)
Directory Engines
- Google Directory
- Jayde
- LookSmart
- NationalDirectory
- Open Directory
- Yahoo Directory
Metacrawlers
- Dogpile
- ExactSeek
- Excite
- Ixquick
- Mamma
- MetaCrawler
- WebCrawler
- Google
Alternatives
- AOL Web Sites
- Earthlink
- Go
- ICQSearch
- IWon
- Netscape
Shopping Engines
Froogle Supported Countries Argentina Australia Austria
Brazil Belgium Canada China Denmark Findland France Germany Greece India Ireland Italy
Japan Korea Latin America Malaysia Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Russia
Singapore South Africa Sweden Switzerland Spain United Kingdom United States Increased
International Support WebPosition now supports a total of 202 U.S. and International
search engines. You can easily specify any of 30 international search engines for targeted
reporting and submission of your pages.
Froogle Support WebPosition can now report on your page
positions within Froogle's consumer-item price shopping engine. This is especially useful
if you're tracking your page positioning for a large catalog-style site.
Enhanced Exporting The Pro version of WebPosition supports
the exporting of data into Excel spreadsheets for a more refined analysis of data.
Consultants can also export data to email for client
reporting (and can also include a custom logo).
WebPosition's Core Features WebPosition comes in two
editions, Standard and Professional. WP3 Gold Standard is geared for the webmaster who
manages his or her own website, while Professional is targeted at webmasters or
consultants who professionally manage a number of sites for various clients. Additionally,
a Platinum upgrade is available for either version and includes a few more useful tools.
Here's a rundown of what's included in each of the WP
versions. Note that the Pro and Platinum editions include everything offered in the
Standard edition.
WP3 Gold Standard Tools Mission Manager The Mission Manager
is the central location for managing all of the various missions. Since each tool has its
own mission file, while each of your domains is likely to utilize a number of missions,
this manager will greatly assist you in keeping your projects organized while helping to
eliminate confusion.
Wordtracker Keywords As mentioned previously, WordTracker
integration is new to WebPosition 3. This feature allows direct WordTracker access through
the WebPosition client. After selecting your keywords through this tool, you can import
them into other parts of the program.
Worth mentioning is the fact that WordTracker integrated
through WebPosition delivers 50% more keywords than what would otherwise be available
through WordTracker's customary trial version.
Reporter The Reporter tool is considered by many to be the
heart of WebPosition. This tool allows you to locate and track your web site's SERP
(search engine results page) position across any of over 200 search engines on an
automated and scheduled basis. Once you configure the initial mission, simply schedule it
to run as often as necessary. WebPosition will then automatically check your rankings and
perform any number of actions you configure; from emailing you reports to exporting
detailed HTML documents.
Page Builder The Page Builder is a tool that helps with the
initial page generation process. By selecting your targeted keywords and keyphrases, along
with a targeted engine, Page Builder will output an HTML page containing keywords and
phrases optimized for that engine. You can also create any number of templates to match
the look-and-feel of your existing web site. This tool can be used to quickly build a
large number of targeted information pages.
Page Critic Backed by a continually updated
"knowledgebase" maintained by the folks at WebPosition, the Page Critic can
analyze your web pages and make suggestions to improve your site's SE-friendly design.
Of course, we all know about the changing nature of the
engines, so that's why this feature of WebPosition needs periodic updating. Accordingly,
there is a subscription fee to maintain current updates to the Page Critic knowledgebase
after the first three months (price details below).
Upload Manager Generally used after the Page Building
process, the Upload Manager can upload your new pages to your server without requiring a
third-party FTP program. Even if you already have a preferred FTP client you may still
find this tool handy once you already have WP3 launched and running.
Submitter When it comes to submitting pages to Google or
Yahoo we've already said that it's best to build links from "known" pages so
Google and Yahoo's spiders can "discover" your new pages. We stand by that
recommendation. However, when it comes to getting your pages listed in the minor engines
and directories, WP3's submitter is a great way to get the job done quickly and
effortlessly.
WebTrends Analytics NetIQ, the new owner of WebPosition,
also makes the popular stat analyzer, WebTrends. Therefore, it's only natural that the two
be integrated. So far, the integration is minimal, but we suspect the integration to
improve in upcoming releases.
Scheduler The Scheduler is used to manage all of your
scheduled Reporter and Submission missions. Typically, we'll set this to monitor and
report our positioning based on how often each engine updates their index.
For instance, in the case of Google, we'll run this
function about once or twice a month, depending on the nature of the site and the
competitiveness of the keywords being monitored.
WP3 Gold Professional Tools The Professional edition of
WebPosition is geared towards SEOs who manage more than five sites. As such, it has these
additional features and capabilities:
Support for unlimited domains (whereas the Standard edition
is limited to only five domains) Branding of all reports with your custom logos and
company information. Schedule automatic email reports sent to clients or company
executives. Enhanced export capabilities that allow you to look at your data in a
spreadsheet. Platinum Tools The Platinum Tools are a set of optional upgrades for
WebPosition. While not absolutely essential to the SEO process, these tools can greatly
minimize the tedium of maintaining large sites.
Meta Manager Meta Manager is a tool that helps you manage
meta keywords, meta descriptions, and title tags within your HTML documents. Meta Manager
can update any number of pages at once. If your task is to change the meta tags on a few
hundred pages, Meta Manager is perfect. It also keeps track of the total number of words,
keywords, and characters as you work.
Link Defender Link Defender locates broken internal and
external links on entire websites. Once broken links have been found, it will generate
reports, and even email them to your clients if you desire, or give you the option to fix
them as you work.
Code Defender Code Defender makes it slightly more
difficult for your competition to view the source of your web pages. It does this by
removing all line breaks and white space which effectively scrunches all the code into one
single line.
Of course, this makes no difference to a search engine
spider but the casual source code pirate will have to work a little harder to see, and
steal, your work. Bear in mind, however, that since the code isn't encrypted, it won't
stop a determined person from viewing your code. But, it may dissuade the casual copier
(FYI, actual encryption would prevent the SE spider from indexing your page thereby
defeating your optimization efforts).
Can I Get Banned for Using WebPosition? A common concern
for potential users of WebPosition has been Google's negative view of automated query
programs. The short answer is no, you will not get banned when using WebPosition in a
non-abusive manner. We are not aware of anyone who has been banned by Google for using
WebPosition in the manner it is intended to be used.
The slightly longer answer is, if you use WebPosition to
run massive amounts of Reporter queries on a search engine for an extended period of time
(like daily), the engine will take notice and potentially move to ban access to their
engine from your IP address. However, you'll have to really abuse an engine for them to
take such a drastic step – and, quite honestly, you would deserve it.
In addition, even if you did get carried away, WebPosition
does not pass along any information to the engine that might help it identify your
website. The only identifiable information sent is the IP address of your connection to
the internet. This is typically the IP address of the ISP that you connect through and is
not the IP address of your website!
What Google and other engines really object to is the abuse
of their resources. Over the years there have been a few overzealous webmasters who have
run hundreds or thousands of keyword queries multiple times a day for weeks on end –
thereby prompting Google's ire. But, due to Google's tendency to update their index only
about once a month, running queries more often than monthly or bi-monthly is pointless.
For more information on this topic, see this article:
Dispelling the Myths - Will WebPosition Get My Site Banned from Google?
Minimum System Requirements Windows 95 or newer Pentium 400
MHz or greater 64MB of RAM or more, depending on O/S 10MB of hard disk space, plus space
for downloaded files Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher
WebPosition Pricing As I said above, WebPosition is
available in different flavors geared towards different tastes, so you can rest assured
that there's a WebPosition for you. Here's a recap of each edition along with
recommendations based on anticipated needs:
WebPosition Gold 3 Standard – $149
For webmasters managing up to 5 websites who don't need
private labeled reports, this is a solid, economical choice. WebPosition Gold 3
Professional – $349
For professional SEOs and webmasters managing more than 5
domains, this is the best choice. It allows you to export everything to spread sheets and
generate private labeled reports suitable for client presentation as you manage an
unlimited number of domains. WebPosition 3 Platinum Upgrade – $99
The Platinum upgrade is an optional set of tools available
for either Gold or Pro users. It is designed to assist with common SEO tasks and is right
for users who wish to check links or manage meta tags on a site-wise basis and from a
single interface. These features are especially useful when managing very large sites.
Page Critic Service
The Page Critic knowledgebase is updated on a regular basis
with the latest SEO information. WebPosition 3 comes with three months free updates after
which a subscription is offered on the following price schedule ...
$99 / 12 months $79 / 6 months $49 / 3 months
...chances are, after the three month intro period you'll
know whether or not this feature suits your needs based on your current level of SEO
expertise. Upgrades – 50% off.
If you already own WebPosition Gold (version 2) you should
take advantage of their half-price offer for either the Standard or Professional Edition.
To upgrade, follow this link and click Upgrade located in the navigation bar along the top
of the page. From there you'll be prompted to enter your existing version's serial number
to begin the process. Guarantee – 45 days
Last, but certainly not least, WP3 gives you 45 days to
drive it around the internet, kick the tires, and determine if it's right for your needs.
In truth, you'll know within a few days how indispensable it is for even the causal
webmaster – and if you decide otherwise you can get a complete refund. For more
information, to buy or to download the trial version, visit the WebPosition 3 website.
Conclusion...
The way we see it, it's a choice. We either hire someone to
manually track and report page rankings or else we "hire" WebPosition to
automate the task. Employees are expensive. WP3 Pro costs only $349. In our case, the
decision's a no-brainer because the math is easy. We suspect you'll arrive at the same
conclusion.
Because time is money.
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