The Tools of the Trade
By Sumantra Roy

Perhaps I should have named this article "The Tool of the Trade". This is because there is one and only tool that you will need when you are trying to improve the ranking of your web site in the search engines. It's called WebPosition Gold - an award winning software that almost every search engine ranking expert uses.

So, what is WebPosition Gold? Well, I doubt if there can be any software which can be called the "ultimate site promotion tool", but if I were to choose one which comes close to it, I would blindly choose WebPosition Gold. Why? Have a look at what it can do for you:

• WebPosition Gold's Reporter allows you to find out the search engine ranking of your web site and that of your competitors for different keywords. You can also find out which of the pages in your site are listed in the search engines. It also records the position of your site over time so that you can watch out for any downward trend in the search engine ranking of your site.

• The Page Critic analyzes the placement of keywords in your pages and tells you how you can improve the placement of keywords in your pages in order to obtain better rankings in the search engines. It also allows you to compare the placement of keywords in your pages with the placement of keywords in your competitors' pages.

• The Upload Manager allows you to upload the optimized pages that you create to your server.

• The Traffic Analyzer allows you to analyze the traffic that your web site is getting. This will tell you which of the search engines are sending visitors to your site and the keywords which people are using to access your site from the search engines.

• The Scheduler allows you to schedule common tasks such as reporting and submitting for after hours, thus saving you hours of valuable time.

However, there are two features of WebPosition Gold that I do not recommend you use. They are the Page Generator and the Submitter.

The Page Generator allows you to automatically generate doorway pages. However, if you use the doorway pages that WebPosition Gold creates for you, you could be penalized by the search engines for spamming.

While FirstPlace Software, the company which makes WebPosition Gold, claims that the latest version of WebPosition Gold will not create doorway pages which can cause you to be penalized, I am not so sure. In my opinion, instead of using the Page Generator, you should manually create the pages which are optimized for the search engines.

The Submitter allows you to automatically submit pages to the search engines. However, the search engines often penalize you for using automatic submission tools.

While FirstPlace Software claims that the Submitter manages to make it appear to the search engines that your site is actually being submitted manually, in my opinion, the top search engines are simply too important for you to run the risk of being penalized for using an automatic submission tool. Submitting a particular page to all the major engines will not take more than 30 minutes of your time. Hence, you are better off submitting your pages manually than using WebPosition Gold's Submitter. Better yet, why not use our Submitter? It allows you to submit your site to many of the search engines manually without having to go to the search engines' Add URL page. And it's absolutely free!

Apart from these issues, however, WebPosition Gold is a top-notch program. The Reporter is by itself well worth the cost of the program. In fact, the product is so good that it received a ZD Net Labs 5 out of 5 star rating. Also, here's what Dr. Ralph Wilson, the editor of the famous Web Marketing Today newsletter had to say about WebPosition Gold:

"After spending several months using the beta version of WebPosition Gold, I am convinced it is the best product of its kind on the market, bar none."

(Web Marketing Today, Issue 54, March 1, 1999)

WebPosition Gold also comes with an unconditional money back guarantee - if you are not satisfied with the software, you can return it within 45 days for a full refund. Furthermore, FirstPlace Software also offers a 200% guarantee - if, within 45 days from the time that you purchase the software, you can find any other product that does everything that WebPosition Gold does for less money, they'll pay you double your money back for your trouble.

Click here to download a free evaluation version of WebPosition Gold.

Search Engine Secrets:

• SEM - Research Measures Success
• Sitemaps and Hypertext Links: "Food" for Search Engine Robots
• Wordtracker Wisdom: Common keyword questions and Answers
• Becoming an Open Directory Project editor
• Creating a Robots.txt file
• Creating keyword rich pages
• Frames and search engines
• Glossary of search engine ranking terms
• How To Get Your Site Listed in the Search Engines
• How to choose domain names
• Importance of having your own domain name
• Improve the link popularity of your site
• Measuring Link popularity
• Page Cloaking - To cloak or not to cloak
• Submitting your site to Yahoo!
• Submitting your site to the Open Directory
• The Tools of the Trade
• Think Again!...Trading Links DOES Work!
• Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes
• Which keywords should you optimize your site for?