Hello Everyone,

I have been asked to do a review of the new upgraded WebPosition Gold that is due to be released next month. I used the older version and it was really good. The program optimizes your site for search engines, checks your placement and compairs your site to competing sites. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Check back in the forum next week for my results. I'm also going to post the review at the SOHO site.

That sounds interesting! What are some of the tips they suggest?

Lisa,

They don't offer general tips. The software analyzes your website and then offers specific recommendations for each website. For example, the software may analyze my Virtual Assistance website for Google. It may say that it recommends I include the words secretarial and web design in my meta tags.

If the software is correct, making the recommended changes should dramatically improve my website rankings.

I have the article/review completed already. It will be featured on Monday.

Are the changes it usually suggests involving meta tags? I thought that many search engines were completely ignoring those now, because so many spammers were filling them with meaningless words ...?

It seems to depend on the search engines, but yes, more and more of them ignore the meta information. They find it more valuable to check the actual content of the page, and the more targeted that content on a specific topic, the better it ranks for that topic. So a page on

"Symptoms of West Nile Virus"

would get lots more hits than a page that was just about "summer diseases and their symptoms" and had a bunch of different information.

Search engines can be very complicated. As soon as we think we've got them figured out, they change again.

For instance, more and more search engines are moving towards paid placements.

Also, many search engines seem to be weighing receipical linking heavily. The thought process behind this is that if a lot of people are linking to your site then it must be interesting.

Also, blank pages on a website are a no-no. Search engines do NOT like them.

These are just a few tips to help get you going in the race to the top!!! <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I do agree completely with the linking idea, and think that's a good, valid way of judging popularity. So the more people that you can encourage to link to your site, the better!

Hi there, one way to increase link popularity is to thoroughly evaluate your competitors' links by visiting marketleap.com or linkpoularity.com. (Both are free). Then, do a comparative search on how many sites are linking to them. Once you've done that, make a spreasheet of all potential link partners and draft a well written but short letter that details the importance of quality links. Make sure that you personalize it for each potential partner and then send it out. This can be a timely process but will be well worth it in the end. This method worked for me for my resume website and I now have a ton of sites linking to mine.