Good SEO & Placement Software?

[krikkett]

Hello, I'm new to the forum, I started my SEO career back in 1998, but have taken a few years off to have a family. I have been doing alot of reading and catching up.
 
I used to use WPGold way back then, and I re-purchased it a few months back. I dont think it is quite working up to par anymore though. I have been looking around at other software, but I was wondering if there was one that someone could recommend? I like the layouts of WPGold reports but I dont think they are hitting enough of the important directories and SE. Some of the ones they support I had never even heard of at all and when I looked I was amazed that they did support them.
 
Thanks
 
Krikkett

[Commerce Brian]

Hi krikkett, and welcome to business-talk.
 
 As for automated software - I've always kept away actually, as I very much believe that SEO requires some degree of creative thinking - and WPG just doesn't give that. Nuts and bolts are great if you really know what you are doing, but as most people don't, you end up with a site (or part of a site) that may well be search engine friendly - but it's not necessarily as optimised as a human user can make it.
 
 And - and herer's the rub - Google is the king of search engines these days, and the most important point about Google is that to rank well, you need lots of links to your site. The best are from on-topic well established sites, but generally links in number will have some effect. And that's something that WebPositionGold simply cannot do.
 
 At the end of the day, on page elements are great simply for making sure spiders can actually read your site. But if you want them to rank it as well, you need to have the links in - plenty of them, more than you actually need in fact. When you've done that you don't actually need to submit anything to any search engines - they will find you without any problems whatsoever.
 
 2c and hope that's helpful.

[seobook]

WPG = too general and no longer effective = no good
 
 good link analysis software = good stuff

[ZXillion]

WPG = too general and no longer effective = no good
 
  good link analysis software = good stuff

 Advanced Web Ranking is the analysis software I use after trying other software. It's cheap and you won't get your IP banned. It's search engine friendly - comparing to other tools that are said to be nice to search engines, but they aren't.

[escort]

Hi there,
 
Not too sure about paying for any SEO software. I think it's probably best to do it yourself manually, unless you have loads of sites to look after.
 
If it's just a couple of commercial sites it could be  more beneficial to pay the money you would have spent on the software on a Adwords or  overture campaign whilst doing the SEO yourself.
I've found with adwords your site gets spidered at least every other day by googlebot.
 
Regards
 
K:)

[paulhiles]

I just don't trust an automated process to do something like web submissions. I know it will tell you whether the submission was successful or not.. but these days so many directories are employing methods to prevent automatic submissions.. I think the days of the SEO software package (in its current form) are distinctly numbered.

[ZXillion]

Hy guys,
 Advanced Web Ranking isn't a submiter, it's a search engine ranking tool. It show you the position of your site in search engines.
 I'm agree with you about the automatic submissions, manually is the best.
 

[paulhiles]

Advanced Web Ranking isn't a submiter, it's a search engine ranking tool. It show you the position of your site in search engines.

Don't you think there are already enough free online tools for checking your SE position? I mean at the low end of the scale we have googlerankings.com, then there is the keyword and backlink checker at digitalpoint. We must be close to the point where all this software should be freeware.
 What additional features does Advanced Web Ranking have, ZXillion?

[Commerce Brian]

I'm still a sucker for the old manual check.
 
 After all, position isn't everything - who you are competing against can tell you a lot as well.

[ZXillion]

The features of Advanced Web Ranking are great and uniqe for the moment:
 -Runs on Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and more
 -graphical ranking reports for tracking the ranking over time.
 -Friendly to search engines and their resources.
 -Filters for displaying data in reports
 -Overview report for all keywords and search engines
 -Saving the reports automatically after each update to a user specified folder
 -Schedule updates at the time and date of your choice
 -Schedule backups for project data
 -Export generated ranking reports in HTML, PDF, XML, Excel, CSV, Text  formats
 -Printable, customizable ranking reports
 -Custom URL colors for quick identification of the competition
 The data are from the AWR site - comparison page:
 http://www.advancedwebranking.com/comparison.html

[Commerce Brian]

Looks interesting, actually - but I am quite the tightwad.
 
 I presume that it simply searches the engines with a browser, Arelis style - rather than being an API application?

[ZXillion]

Hy Bryan,
 Something like that!
 Looks interesting for me too and helps me a lot!

[Commerce Brian]

I'm still a tightwad - my keywords fall into the following:
 
 1. Targeted - I know what they are, I set them up, I find my site page listed in the top 10 for that term. Great.
 
 2. Untargeted - I didn't aim for it, but suddenly I've tripped a search term and ranking well for it - which I discover from looking through my site stats.
 
 If I have to go through automated software to see where I'm ranking for a particular search term, then I'm not sure at all if I would class it as a keyword - just general flotsam that some strange result somewhere is pushing. You can often blame MSN for those.

[ZXillion]

I don't now what to say. I focuss only on important keywords for my site, keywords that my competitors are in top and I have to work on them. If I have keywords that I'm good ranked on them (1-5) and my competitor is on 30-80 I just let hem like that - they still are keywords for me.

[ZXillion]

Here is a short review of AWR (lack of time is killing me)  
 Advanced Web Ranking it is the only search engine ranking software running on Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and all the Windows platforms starting with Win "98.
 
 Features:
 
 1 - Analyses of Web site's search engines position. Simultaneously searches the engines for the strategic keywords describing a web site. Results are summarized in an easy-to-read format, with details showing how well a site is positioned within each search engine. The engines' list includes Yahoo, Google, AOL, MSN, Lycos, Alta Vista, Overture, Excite, HotBot, other 200 important international and regional engines, and the list keeps on growing.
 
 2 - Unlimited Keywords Sets: Add any number of separate keywords to a single project. This tool can run them all as separate searches and summarize the results in a single step.
 
 3 - Unlimited Domains: Analyze any number of web sites for any number of domains. No restrictions.
 
 4 - Multiple URLs and keywords: Scan results from search engines for your own URL, product, or company name, or those of your competitors.
 
 5 - Concise Reports: Easy to interpret detailed and summary reports of how and where your site ranks among each search engine.
 
 6 - Scoring: Advanced Web Ranking indicates how well your site is positioned among those search engines which list your site. This is extremely useful for comparing your site to competitors'.
 
 7 - Inclusion/exclusion of Search Engines: Individual search engines can be included or excluded using simple checkboxes.
 
 8 - Single-Search: A single search engine can be scanned individually. If a search engine times out or is slow to respond, you won't have to redo all the searches to complete your analysis.
 
 9 - Search results: Search results will be saved with search parameters and reopened later without having to rescan the search engines. This feature is handy for comparing results of previous searches.
 
 - Proxy, Dialup, and Network Compatible: Supports networks behind proxies and regular dialup internet connections.
 
 11 - Friendly to search engines and their resources.
 - Filters for displaying data in reports
 - Overview report for all keywords and search engines
 - Saving the reports automatically after each update to a user specified folder
 - Schedule updates at the time and date of your choice
 - Schedule backups for project data
 - Export generated ranking reports in HTML, PDF, XML, Excel, CSV, Text formats
 - Printable, customizable ranking reports
 - Custom URL colors for quick identification of the competition