WebPosition Gold and similar SEO software

[giovanni]

Hi there,

I have been trying to get my site noticed by more than 10 people per day. (OK, laugh if you must but it's my first attempt).

A few people have suggested purchasing a piece of software called 'WebPosition Gold 2'

I have done some looking into this and it seems ok but I don't know if it is worth buying or not.

The easiest thing to do would be to pass my site onto someone else to help get it listed higher within the SE ranks but I can't afford that yet.

Option 2 would be to learn it all myself but this would take a while for me as I would have to start with the basics. I design graphics and clothes and don't want to get too tangled in this web (excuse the pun) just yet.

Have any of you tried it and if so, how do you rate it.

Thanks for your time.

Gio,

[fathom]

1. WPG2 violates search engines TOS

Google Information for Webmasters

2. WPG2 comes with a knowledge database to help you learn -- however tons of reading is required and all of it comes from here - and other topical forums.

3. WPG2 has a page generator that adds meta data to your pages - this is obsolete.

All in all, I strongly recommend -- not worth the investment.

You should read here, ask specific questions, and implement what you learn... I have seen (and helped) total non-web savvy people develop site visitation to 2,000 per day inside 6 months... all on free reading, a little advice, and common sense.

[giovanni]

Thanks fathom,

That is useful info and also saves me some money.

I suppose I am just panicking a little as I am only getting a limited number of hits.

Though I feel I have learnt a lot since joining this site, I have so much more to learn.

I would be grateful for any advice on how to generate more visitors to my site. (who wouldn't

Regards

Gio,

[fathom]

The best short term (as you learn) place to start is develop links to your site through directories, forum posts (with your link in sig/www, and link exchanges).

Beyond the commonly known link popularity and PageRank development you get -- each new link is a new path for bots and spiders to get into your site and the more paths means "crawled more often" and more often ensures your site is fresh with the best chance of total saturation (all pages indexed)... and ranked result will improve

[rambodog]

I purchased the original version of WPG and found it to be of little use. You will find much better information at http://www.highrankings.com/. Depending on your experience you might find WPG useful but I found straight forward design to be better. Who knows now that Google has stirred the pot.

[giovanni]

Thanks for your advice rambodog,

I have found out more by just going through the forums and advice from people like yourselves.

I really appreciate it dude :-)

Gio,

[achronister]

On a scale from 1-10...... -452. that's a negative 452.

Stay away from that junk. Like Fathom mentioned, it violates TOS for nearly all engines. And they have begun to notice these things more quickly now.

I can't really comment on alternatives, since I don't know your business model, budget and so forth, but there are much better alternatives than WPG2.

Aaron

[fathom]

For Google try http://www.seocount.com

It is based on Google's own API technology... and thus NOT in voilation of TOS.

[giovanni]

Thanks guys,

Some good advice and I have looked at the suggested links provided.

I think I have improved the keywords within the pages but would appreciate if someone could take a look at one or two to see if I really am a complete idiot or if it is ok.

Would I be right in thinking that the more (relevant) text there is on your page, the better it is. (for spidering that is)

The Site URL is www.doseuk.com

Please be warned though as there are some tops on the site that are unsuitable for under 18's.


Thanks,

Gio,

[Elite Skills]

There's many sites that use those exact keywords. Try not to use the word 'cool'. Be more specific with your keywords. Go to the search engine and search for sites similar to yours and see if they want to affiliate.

[Mel]

As a tool to optimize your site WPG is not all that useful, but as a ranking tool it is very good, but Google has stated that it does not like the use of such automated tools, and has in the past penalized for its use.

I use it for rankings on other search engines and explain to customers that Google disapproves of it but that AOL, Netscape and Yahoo all use Google search and so thier rankings on those engines will be very similar to what the google rankings would have been if I had reported them.

[vilesilencer]

The best short term (as you learn) place to start is develop links to your site through directories, forum posts (with your link in sig/www, and link exchanges).

Beyond the commonly known link popularity and PageRank development you get -- each new link is a new path for bots and spiders to get into your site and the more paths means "crawled more often" and more often ensures your site is fresh with the best chance of total saturation (all pages indexed)... and ranked result will improve

totally agree fathom, but there are so many more things one can do. More importantly its all free

Auto submission software is garbage, always manually submit your page.

- obviously submitting to DMOZ and google is going to boost your hits. DMOZ feeds tonnes of search sites which use ODP for their searches.

- submit to any submit-for-free search engines you come across (avoid FFA pages, these are considered spam links). Only add to genuine search engines/directories. Remember only your index page is required, and you only do it once. Maybe in 3 months time or something when your site has changed considerably you submit to those sites again. I find though that once you have submitted, they send their bot at frequent intervals to update their listing of your site.

- When building link exchanges try to get linked from sites that are similar to yours content-wise. If you manage to get an "every-page" link where your link appears on every page of a persons site (I have a few like that) you will build a high link popularity. I know cos mine jumped from 100's to 1000's purely on the strength of that.

- Do u use meta tags? Many people think they are dead, and perhaps they are on the way out, however, many meta search engines still exist, and if they come across your site then you wont get listed. I get many hits still from meta search engines.

[Mel]

WPG has just answered its critics in its newsletter at http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0104.htm

This is more in line with my experience.

[cbp]

vilesilencer wrote:

Do u use meta tags? Many people think they are dead, and perhaps they are on the way out, however, many meta search engines still exist, and if they come across your site then you wont get listed. I get many hits still from meta search engines.

huh? Meta search engines do not search meta tags!!! They do not even search your site. Meta search engines search other search engines and combine the results. Nothing to do with your meta tags.

CBP

[vilesilencer]

Perhaps I've worded that badly CBP.

My point is that the actual tags themselves will still be used in the listing. Scrub the web for example uses the meta description straight from the meta tag... Not any other description I have used on a directory or other engine. I hope that clarifies it for you :)

[jumpstartpro]

Web Position Gold, All-In-One Submission, IBP, Submit Wolf Pro...I have heard of these and many others, but do they actually get the job done or even work at all?

(MOD note: moved here from another forum)

[Mel]

The most important tool for SEO is the human brain adequately stuffed with SEO knowledge.

All the tools that you mentioned are just tools designed to save you time or effort but by themselves will not get the job done and/or may get you into trouble if you misuse them.

IMO
WPG2 is great for preparing ranking reports for your clients, and if you subscribe to the knowledge base ($99 per year) will give you another tool to compare web pages easily, but it will not optimize them for you.

I have not used any of the others and so cannot comment.

[jumpstartpro]

Taking the responses to the post, I guess it is safe to say the best way to go about getting your site listed is to do it by hand and have a nice optimized site/pages that are search engine friendly.

[seafoam]

Would I be right in thinking that the more (relevant) text there is on your page, the better it is. (for spidering that is)

The Site URL is www.doseuk.com

I just took a quick look.

First thing I noticed was the lack of textual content, especially on the home page. There are lots of alt tags, but several say the same thing, and they nearly all have 't-shirts' in them, which might not be a good thing. Keyword density can be overdone, that's one thing WPG will tell you, but I just saved you some cash:-) But basically I think you need some content, thats what search engines like. Not sure what one writes about t-shirts, but maybe something aimed at your target market?

Second thing I noticed was that your home page has a Google Page Rank of 4, but all the other pages have 0. There are explanations for this, like you just renamed all your files, but it is unusual and rings alarm bells. Maybe some one else can explain it?

[giovanni]

Thanks for that seafoam.

I must admit that as a newbie, I thought it a good idea to have as many of the alt tags listed with t-shirts in them.

I will try to change them to more appropriate words to lower the density of the word t-shirts as this is probably ringing alarm bells with search engines.

It is difficult to find what to say about t-shirts but I will come up with something informative that will add density to the page.

One more question though.

How important is it to have the url name matching what people are looking for. e.g.

Say people were looking for 'funny t-shirts', would you come higher in the search results if your site was called something like 'funny-t-shirts.com' or something similar?

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by giovanni

I must admit that as a newbie, I thought it a good idea to have as many of the alt tags listed with t-shirts in them.

I will try to change them to more appropriate words to lower the density of the word t-shirts as this is probably ringing alarm bells with search engines.

you don't have to remove that word entirely... embed it in a phrase which changes from one alt-tag to the next.

Say people were looking for 'funny t-shirts', would you come higher in the search results if your site was called something like 'funny-t-shirts.com' or something similar?

It certainly has made a difference, at least until the recent past, if the words in the domain name included a popular keyphrase. As one example, in terms of SE placement, two of my main competitors are www.ottawa-psychologists.com - they shot straight to the top and stayed there when they arrived - and www.ottawa-psychologists.org - coming online about a year later, they as a professional organization felt they were more entitled to that designation than the first group and the .org designation seemed to give them an edge. I still include these two sites as comparisons when evaluating my own site.

Whether anything that is happening with all the search engine shuffling will change this is unclear.

I have to say, I have wondered what was in your mind when you chose the current domain name for your site since it seems restrictive at best and possibly misleading to potential customers. However, if you are thinking of changing it, you are going to need to make the changeover in a way which builds on the value the current site has and redirects that gradually over to the new one.

[giovanni]

Thanks minstrel.

You're wondering why I chose doseuk. After joining this forum and gaining so much more information on site op. so am I!!! :-)

The reason my site is called doseuk is because I originally tried to start a skaterwear label called 'dose uk'. I still had the name and decided to completely revamp the site.

I have learnt more in the past 3-4 weeks since being a member of this site than I ever new.

I never new what exactly was involved in making a succesful website.

anyway, thanks for the advice.

As I am based in the uk, would it be more beneficial to get a name that ends in .co.uk than .com or doesn't that matter really?

Gio,