Position Technologies’ Position
Pro is "a powerful combination of tools providing you the ability
to analyze your website like a search engine would." Position Pro’s
tools include site crawling, page analysis, search engine submissions
and various reports to help you determine the effectiveness of your
page optimization. We’ll take a look at each of these sections
individually.
Signing Up
Upon signing up you need to fill out a little information so that Position
Pro knows what to look for and how to analyze your site. You need to
enter your e-mail address so that you can be notified when Position
Pro’s spider has completed crawling your site, and it can send
you information for a site map. You can also enter up to 10 search phrases.
Position Pro suggests focusing on "words that are used by your
target audience and not your product or business name. If, for instance,
you are a legal firm specializing in criminal law, do not enter "law"
but "criminal law" or "criminal law boston" as better
choices. Position Pro also warns you that changing keywords during a
campaign can introduce inconsistent reporting. So you need to decide
early in your campaign those keywords you wish to use for Position Pro’s
analysis.
Site Crawling
Once you have filled in the necessary information, you can put your
site in the queue to be crawled by Position Pro’s sophisticated
spider. With your subscription, Position Pro will crawl your site six
times per year, charging a small fee for additional spider crawls. Its
spider crawls your site and finds and indexes pages on your site that
are acceptable to the search engines. Position Pro’s spider is
able to crawl pages that most search engines can’t or won’t
crawl. The spider finds and indexes key page elements, titles, meta
descriptions, meta keywords and page content, so that they may be reviewed
in report form later. These reports are valuable as you analyze and
optimize your pages.
Site Analysis
For each page that Position Pro’s spider found and indexed, it
counts the number of words and assigns an index value to each page.
This index value is a quality score for the page, similar to how a search
engine might score your page.
On the main site analysis page, you’ll see a chart that has each
of your pages plotted on it. The y-axis is word count, and the x-axis
is index value. Position Pro states that it has found that pages with
an average word count of 200-600 words and an average index value of
100-350 normally rank well in the search engines. By looking at the
chart, you can tell at a glance those pages that have the best chance
at ranking well. If you mouseover the green dots, you can find out the
page names and click to find out specific details for each page.
Clicking on the site analysis link takes you to a page where you can
see all of your pages. There are several ways to sort the page; index
value is the default. It shows the relevant keywords, index value and
word count for each page. There is a link to each page.
Each of the other pages in the analysis section shows you the titles,
meta descriptions and meta keywords that the spider found.
In the Workshop section, you’ll find each of your pages listed,
showing the URL, word count and index value. There is also a link for
each URL that takes you to a page that shows specific information for
each URL, including the index value, word count, relevant words, title,
meta description and keywords, search engines for submission, and submission
history.
On these individual URL analysis pages you can also queue the page
for submission to Inktomi through Position Technologies’ Inktomi
Search/Submit Program, as well as mark each page as optimized or not.
If you click the analyze link, a small Page Content Analysis window
pops up. In this window, you can view the score for each of the 10 keywords
that you entered previously for this URL. This can be useful as you
optimize pages.
After you further optimize the pages you have identified as having
the best potential for ranking well, queue your site to be re-crawled
by Position Pro’s spider. Then look at all of the analysis tools
again to see if your scores ended up better or worse than before. When
you are satisfied with your optimization and scores, it’s time
to submit your pages to the search engines.
Search Engine Submissions
When you are ready to have your pages submitted, go to the Utilities
section. On this page, you can set your submission status on or off,
select the search engines to which you want to submit, queue pages to
Position Technologies’ Inktomi Search/Submit Program and select
the index value range for pages to be submitted. By setting a range
for index values, you ensure only those pages with the best ranking
potential are submitted to the search engines.
In addition to the Inktomi Paid Submission Programs, Position Pro supports
the following search engines for submission: Fast, Google, Inktomi (free),
Lycos and Northern Light. Curiously, they have not yet removed Excite
from their list of supported search engines.
Position Pro’s submission service is extremely sophisticated.
It verifies every step of the submission process including whether the
search engine accepted the page or not. Position Pro follows all of
the submission guidelines set forth by each search engine. Position
Pro also keeps abreast of changes in search engine submission guidelines
and policies, so that they can make the proper adjustments in their
submission procedures. They do all this to earn your trust and confidence
and so that your site doesn’t break any search engine submission
rule.
Reports
Position Pro tells you which pages lack titles, meta description and
keyword tags, which pages are excluded from spidering activity due to
meta noindex tags or robots.txt tags, and possible link errors. In addition
to these reports, Position Pro also offers several reports in graphical
form to help you keep track of and analyze your site: rankings, index
counts, Inktomi click-through data, link popularity, and submissions.
Rankings
Position Pro does not tell you the exact ranking of your pages. You’ll
need a program such as WebPosition
Gold to tell you this information. Instead, it tells you on which
page your listing may be found. Each bar on the graph shows you how
many pages you have ranked in the top 20 for all search engines that
Position Pro supports. The detailed view breaks this down by search
engine. The ranking history report shows you how many pages you have
in the top 20 in each supported search engine over time.
Position Pro checks rankings in the following search engines: AltaVista,
AOL, Fast, Google, Hotbot, Lycos and MSN. Curiously, they still support
Excite and Webcrawler even though these search engines mirror the results
found on Overture, and Northern Light despite the recent announcement
that Northern Light has discontinued free content. You can still search
Northern Light for free, but you must pay to actually view the content.
Index Counts
This report tells you how many pages you have indexed in all of the
search engines combined. This is important because "the more pages
a site has in a Search Engine Index, the more visibility that site will
have across a range of search terms." The detailed report shows
you the number of pages you have indexed for each search engine over
time. Clicking on the text link for each search engine queries the search
engine so you can see which URLs have been indexed, titles and descriptions.
Inktomi Click-through Data
This report shows you the number of clicks you have received from Inktomi
over the past 30 days. The detailed report shows you click-through data
on a monthly and yearly basis, as well as total year-to-date clicks,
average clicks per URL and average ranking.
In addition to the above information, you can also find out which search
terms bring in traffic, and to which URLs those search terms are delivering
traffic. Finally, you can see which URLs you have subscribed to the
Inktomi Paid Submission Program.
Link Popularity
This report shows you the number of inbound links you have acquired.
The detailed report shows link popularity for AltaVista, Fast, Google
and Inktomi. Clicking on the text links for each search engine queries
the search engine so that you can see those sites that are linking to
you.
Submissions
This report shows you how many pages have been successfully submitted
to each search engine. The detailed reports show all of the URLs that
have been successfully submitted to each individual search engine and
when it was submitted.
Impressions and Comments
Available in seven languages (English, Japanese, German, Swedish, Italian,
Spanish and French), Position Pro is right on the money in its introduction:
"A powerful combination of tools providing you the ability to analyze
your website like a search engine would." With Position Pro, you
get to see how your pages look to a search engine and how they might
score. Position Pro updates its analysis algorithm regularly to stay
as current as possible with the latest search engine developments. The
tutorial and tips, written by Detlev Johnson, are well written and informative,
and updated continually. Because this service is targeted to large sites
and search engine marketing companies, you must contact a sales representative
to receive a price quote.
While Position Pro is an outstanding service, I did find a couple of
things that could use improvement:
- The scatter chart that plots your pages’ index counts against
word counts could use better explanation as to what exactly it is measuring.
- Continued support for search engines that are no longer supporting
free use or unique results. Position Technologies has had enough time
to at least remove these engines, if not substitute new engines. Format
changes for Excite and Webcrawler were announced in late November 2001,
and the policy change for Northern Light was announced in early January
2002.
Final Thoughts
Position Pro can definitely help large sites and search engine marketing
firms achieve better visibility and better rankings in the search engines.
It provides plenty of analysis and reporting options to help you identify
pages with the best ranking potential for optimization. However, Position
Pro is not for owners of smaller sites, or relative newcomers to search
engine marketing. Position Technologies is well respected in the search
engine marketing profession and services more than 9,000 domains, some
of which are highly recognized on the Internet. With its reputation
for quality service, Position Technologies’ Position Pro service
is definitely worthy of serious consideration for any search engine
marketing firm and owners of large web sites interested in achieving
the best search engine rankings and visibility possible.
Thank you to Lisa Manganiello and Jeremy Sanchez for the superb online
demo and answering all of my questions.
***About Bill Gentry:
Bill Gentry has been a professional Web designer since 1999 and a Search
Engine Optimization and Online Marketing specialist with Look Sharp
Designs since February 2000. Earning a Bachelor's of Science in Geology
and a Master's of Business Administration in addition to his employment
as an Aircraft Armament Systems Specialist for 10 years contributed
to his attention to detail.
Review may not be reprinted without permission of Look Sharp Designs.
To request permission for reprinting rights, please contact Look Sharp Designs.
