August 2002

If you have not already heard the news, WebPosition Gold 2.0 was released July 15th, causing quite a stir in the search engine marketing community. I'm aware of at least a half a dozen third party reviews of the product already. I'm pleased to say that every one of them has been quite positive. Rather than writing my own review of WebPosition Gold 2.0, which could be interpreted as being overtly biased, I'll simply reprint (with permission) one of the many third-party reviews hitting the streets. To be completely fair, I've also included links to all other third-party reviews of the product of which I'm currently aware. That way you can arrive at your own well-rounded opinion.

WebPosition Gold 2.0 Review
By Bill Gentry, Academy of Web Specialists

Search engine marketing specialists rejoice! With WebPosition Gold 2.0, FirstPlace Software has released its first "major paid upgrade since March 1999," and the first major upgrade of any kind since WebPosition Gold 1.60. I think you'll like all of the new features added to WebPosition Gold (WPG) 2.0. For a complete list and description of what's new in WPG 2.0, see What's NEW in Version 2.0

Since most search engine marketing professionals are familiar with the software, I won't go into how to actually use the software. Also, I won't go into a discussion of the proper or ethical use of the software. There have been plenty of articles, newsgroup and forum postings, and even some WPG 2.0 reviews discussing this topic. I feel that topic is not appropriate for a software review. So, I will stick to the task at hand and give you a brief tour of each of the modules and point out some of the new features added to each.

New Features and Improvements

Before getting to the new features unique to the seven modules that make up WPG 2.0, there are some very useful and important general improvements made to WPG.

• More Engines: WPG now supports more than 85 search engines from around the world. You'll see the new engines in the Reporter, Submitter, Page Generator, Page Critic and Traffic Analyzer modules. You asked for them and FirstPlace Software delivered.

• Easier Engine Management: Flag specific engines, and even make your own preferred list. If you use the same set of search engines for most of your clients, this can save you a little time each time you set up WPG for a new client.

• Better Help Documentation: More of everything, including definitions of terms, articles and help for using the software.

• Powerful Multi-tasking: You now have the ability to run multiple instances of WPG at one time, giving you the ability to run a report and still be able to work with WPG at the same time. I suggest that you open more than one instance of WPG before you start a Reporter or Submitter mission. I had difficulty getting WPG to open another instance after starting a Reporter mission.

There are seven modules that make up WebPosition Gold 2.0: Reporter, Page Generator, Page Critic, Upload Manager, Submitter, Traffic Analyzer and Scheduler. Each has gotten a makeover and been improved with new features and improvements.

Reporter

By far the most used module is the Reporter, and it's gotten a number of improvements, including:

• Advanced Browser Emulation: This enhancement makes WPG 2.0 the most search engine friendly rank checking software available. You now have the ability to set the amount of time to wait before running another query. By using this option, you can possibly reduce the chances of your static IP address getting blocked from using the search engine in question.

• Auto E-mail or Upload Reports: You can now automatically e-mail clients their reports or automatically upload them to the Internet using the new internal FTP client. This new feature will save you quite a bit of time each month, especially if you generate many reports for clients.

• Report Customization: No longer are you stuck with WPG's report formats. You can now customize the colors, and add headers and footers to your reports. You've always been able to add a logo and suppress mention of WPG, but now you can fully customize your reports. Add complete contact information, change report colors and more.

• New Visibility Report: Included on the Concise Summary Report, this new report gives you a complete summary of how a site is positioned in the search engines. The Visibility Report shows you and your clients a quick view of how well the search engine marketing campaign is progressing, at least as far as rankings are concerned.

Page Generator

The Page Generator module has been unfairly criticized in the past. Many people think that Page Generator creates machine-generated pages that are nothing but fluff and junk. However, after actually trying it out for the first time, nothing could be further from the truth. You enter 90% or more of the information that will be included in the page, including all of the content. All that Page Generator really does is add the appropriate HTML tags and build the page tailored to the search engine. You can even build your own template to match your site and use it in Page Generator. With that out of the way, the new features in Page Generator are:

• Enhanced Meta Tag Control: allows you complete control over what is put into your meta tags. The software may build them for you from the information you entered in other areas of the module, but you have the ability to change them in any way you see fit.

• Anti-Spam Features: New help and assistance has been added to encourage users to build good, proper search engine friendly pages.

• Easier Engine Management: Filtering out the engines you wish not to target with your search engine marketing campaign is easier than ever.

Page Critic

Page Critic is an incredibly useful module, helping you to build search engine friendly pages that will rank well. Its new features include:

• Expanded Advice: FirstPlace Software has expanded its Knowledge Base with detailed advice for virtually every search engine it now supports.

• Enhanced Link Popularity Support: Page Critic now calculates link popularity and gives advice for increasing your score.

• Improved Accuracy: This module now analyzes the top pages for a given keyword. It also tries to detect changes made to a page since last indexing so that you get more accurate advice when making adjustments to your page for better rankings.

Upload Manager

The Upload Manager has always been a helpful timesaving module. Its new features make it even better at saving you time.

• Built-In FTP Client: Now you have the option of using this new feature to automatically upload reports to the Internet after a Reporter mission has run.

• New Report Processing Features: You can strip out non-ranking keywords from the Concise Summary Report when you're ready to e-mail or upload reports.

Submitter

While many search engine marketing specialists feel that manual submissions are the only way to submit to the search engines, often it's just not practical, especially for search engine marketing specialists with international clients. With the addition of more than 60 new search engines the Submitter module is more useful than ever, especially if you need to submit client sites to international search engines. A few of the new features include:

• Better Multi-Domain Support: You can now include multiple domains in a single mission, whereas before you were required to create a separate mission for each domain.

• Built-In Spider: Gather pages for submission with this spider from the Internet, rather than entering each page manually.

• Easy URL Importing: Import page URLs from a text file or the clipboard instead of entering them manually.

• Easier Directory Submissions: The Guided Submission section will help you with your manual directory submissions, by notifying you of character and word limits and more. Also enter the manual submission date, which will be included on any automated submission reports you generate.

• Add Custom Engines: After more supported search engines, this was probably the next most requested feature, and now it's been added. You can now add any search engine to the Submission Assistant. While you cannot use Submitter to automatically submit to the search engines you add, it will track your manual submissions to these newly added engines. This allows you to send a single submission report to your clients, regardless of whether the submissions were automated or done manually.

Traffic Analyzer

The Traffic Analyzer is offered in conjunction with HitsLink.com. You can purchase a subscription after the 90-day free trial, or get a free subscription. If you select the free subscription, you're required to place an ad on each page you want tracked. Paid subscriptions are cheaper than WebTrends Live for low traffic levels. The main new feature is that it supports all of the search engines that WPG 2.0 supports, while continuing to support WPG 1.6.

Scheduler

While no other search engine marketing software has all of the features of WPG 2.0, few, if any, have attempted to offer a Scheduler module that does not require knowledge of how the Window's command prompt works. The Scheduler module is by far one of the most useful modules WPG has to offer, and in 2.0 it's gotten even better.

• New Interface: The new interface is consistent with the rest of WPG.

• Scheduled Uploads Supported: Previously only Reporter and Submitter missions could be scheduled. Now Upload missions can be scheduled, freeing you up to make page adjustments and take care of your clients rather than spending time uploading reports.

• New Report Log: You can now see at a glance the outcome of your missions, rather than having to open them up to see if they were successful or not.

• More Scheduling Options: Gives you more flexibility in scheduling missions. You're no longer stuck running missions one time, daily, weekly or monthly.

There you have just a few of the many new features and improvements in WPG 2.0. There are so many others that I just didn't have room to mention. As always, you get free technical support and maintenance updates for the life of the product.

Pricing

Upgrade from Standard Edition to Standard Edition 2.0 - $74
Upgrade from Pro Edition to Pro Edition 2.0 - $174
Upgrade from Standard Edition to Pro Edition 2.0 - $224
Purchase Standard Edition 2.0 (not an upgrade) - $149
Purchase Pro Edition 2.0 (not an upgrade) - $349

http://goldposition.com 

What really strikes me about the prices for the full software (not the upgrades) is that these are the same prices for which WPG 1.x sold. Now you are getting so much more for the same price! I cannot believe that the price did not go up, considering all of the new features that were added and all of the time and money that must have gone into developing WPG 2.0.

Recommendation

Even though WPG 2.0 may not support as many search engines as a couple of its competitors, with support of more than 85 search engines, WPG 2.0 covers the most important US and international search engines. However, those competitors only perform submissions and possibly check rankings. Few of them can help you make your pages search engine friendly and offer advice on how to improve your search engine rankings and link popularity scores. I seriously doubt you could find software that does what each module in WPG does for the same price or less than what WPG costs. WebPosition Gold was the premiere search engine marketing tool, and that has not changed with the release of WebPosition Gold 2.0. The price was great before, and I feel it's even more of a bargain now. All of the new features are designed to save you time, whether it's developing high-ranking pages, setting up reports, submitting to search engines, checking rankings or uploading reports. With a 45-day money back guarantee, you absolutely can't lose. No search engine marketing specialist should be without WebPosition Gold 2.0.

Bill Gentry is the Academy of Web Specialists Product Reviewer. He has been a professional Web designer since 1999 and a Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing specialist with Look Sharp Designs since February 2000. E-mail: billg@acws.com. This article has been reprinted here with permission.

Does Bill Gentry Stand Alone? Here Are More WPG2 Reviews

Google Wins Over AOL & IWon

Last month I reported how FAST had announced surpassing Google in the number of pages indexed on the Web and claimed to offer a fresher, more up to date index. Fighting back, Google has struck a deal with both AOL and IWon to carry its search results on those major portals. You will now find that these two popular engines serve almost identical results to Google.com. Whether AOL or IWon will tweak the results with their own unique formula in the future remains to be seen.

Certainly the announcement was a blow to Inktomi, which had previously served results to these two well-known engines. Inktomi's last major partner right now is MSN, although a variety of smaller engines like HotBot still carry Inktomi. Expect to see a shift in traffic to your site. Those with high rankings in Google will gain big this month, while those with high ranking on Inktomi stand to lose traffic.

Continuing Google's momentum, starting in September, AskJeeves and its recently acquired engine, Teoma, will begin serving AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) ads. This will bump out Overture who for much of the past few years has dominated the PPC ad market. I still remember not too long ago when it seemed all but certain that Inktomi was going to dominate all the search results, and then later it was Overture. This just shows how things can change quickly in just a year or two on the Web. If you don't like how things are today, simply wait until next month.

Yahoo Still Undecided

While Google made major gains with AOL, IWon, and with its AdWords program last month, it is still in limbo regarding its most significant partner, Yahoo. Yahoo has traditionally been the most popular search engine on the Web for many years. However, it is a title that has recently been challenged by MSN.

Yahoo has been using Google to supplement its directory-based search results since dropping Inktomi as its preferred provider a couple of years back. Yahoo gave Google a temporary extension on its contract until September. Possible replacements for Google, assuming Yahoo does in fact opt for a change this year, are thought to be FAST or Inktomi.

Check back here same time, same place next month. Just when you think you have these search engines all figured out, you can bet it will change yet again. The key is to take the time to know more than your competitor. More importantly, you must use that knowledge to take advantage of the opportunities offered by a continually changing marketplace. This may sound challenging to some. However, gaining the knowledge and the tools necessary to compete is the key to winning. This is not only true with regard to the search engines, but also in regard to all aspects of your business's marketing.

A Powerful, Yet Often Overlooked Tip
To Improve your Rankings (and it's free)

With the growing importance of Google this month, you should be thinking about how to garner more quality links to your Web site. Google ranks your page not only on its content, but on other factors such as how many links across the Web point to your site, how popular the linking sites are, and whether they contain content related to your own.

It's often recommended that you submit your site to Yahoo and Open Directory, not only for the traffic they can directly provide, but also for the increased link popularity you'll receive. WebPosition provides guidance on how to perform these critical submissions while achieving the best results.

What is not common knowledge is the importance of submitting your site to another important content site: About.com. When doing searches on Google, you'll notice that About.com articles pop up fairly often. About.com has long provided rich, custom-built content on hundreds of topics. In addition, the site enjoys thousands of links to its site, causing it to score highly in terms of link popularity. Consequently, sites that are linked to from About.com not only receive additional free traffic, but receive a boost in link popularity, and in turn, an improvement in their rankings.

Many Web marketers often overlook About.com, since it has no single, formal submission page. Instead, the secret is to gain the favor of the About.com "Guide" in charge of compiling the content for the area that relates to your Web site. To do this, simply navigate to the area of their site that your Web site's content is best suited.

By clicking on the link to the Guide's name in the top left corner of the page, you can obtain a bio of the person and generally their contact information. Pay close attention to whether the person has any stated preferences to how Web sites or new content should be suggested.

Avoid making your e-mail to the Guide sound like a commercial. They are looking for quality content, but they are by no means obligated to include yours if you turn them off. To improve your odds, review the type of content that the guide has chosen to include or link to. Then, if you have written an article or page that would add value to the existing content that the Guide has, then suggest that the Guide link to your article. Give the Guide reasons for why it would enhance the quality of their site. Do this while being polite, to the point, and keeping things low-key and friendly. Do it right, and you may be surprised how easy it is to gain entry into such a popular Web site.

For more tips regarding the best way to obtain links from About.com and other important sites, see the WebPosition Gold 2 Page Critic:

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Last Month:

Last month we talked about several important topics including:

• Search Engine Marketing: Optional or Essential?
• Find Out Who Has Surpassed Google in Size
• Are You Losing Visibility by Duplicating Titles?
• Paid Ad Disclosure Recommended by FTC
• Further Shockwaves at LookSmart: Directors and CEO resign

If you missed these or other key discussions, you can find the back issues at:

http://www.marketposition.com/newsletters.htm