There are several software programs out there that will check your
rankings, and do an excellent job of it. However, those programs can
take up processing power and large amounts of hard disk space, especially
if you are checking large numbers of search phrases, have quite a few
clients or both.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an online service to generate
ranking reports that didn’t use your computer’s processing
resources and hard drive space? There is now…
Introducing WebRank by Kowabunga
Technologies. Launched November 1, 2001, WebRank is a new online ranking
service that is an alternative to traditional software such as WebPosition
Gold and Top Dog.
WebRank offers a useful set of tools including:
- Administration/Summary Report
- Nine Default Reports and Custom Reports
- Weekly, Monthly or On Demand Reports
- Page Watch Tool
- Domain Research Tool
- Keyword Suggestion Tool
- Email Reports and Alerts
Let’s take a more detailed look at these features.
Administration/Summary Report
The administration page also contains a summary of all of the domains
you have designated for monitoring, keywords you have selected, custom
reports you have created and more. It’s very nicely laid out and
easy to get an overall picture of your rankings. There are links to
all of your reports, snapshots, or zooms, of specific rankings, raw
logs, your account and profile information and more.
Default and Custom Reports
WebRank gives you nine default reports: three each based on keywords,
domains and search engines. Each report gives you a slightly different
look at your rankings. This is especially helpful as you add more keywords
and domains, and is definitely an interesting and unique feature that
both its online and offline competitors don’t offer.
In addition to the nine default reports, WebRank also allows you to
create an unlimited number of custom reports so that you can get a broad
view of everything, or focus in on specific data or domains. Again,
the reports are well laid out and very easy to read. The multiple report
views allow you to compare rankings from multiple domains in a variety
of ways for better analysis.
Report Frequency
When you set up your account, it is set up for weekly or monthly reporting.
When I set up my account during the beta test phase, there was no way
for me to specify which I preferred. My account was set up with weekly
reporting. It’s my guess that WebRank will allow you to choose
your reporting frequency during account creation once the beta test
is complete and their billing software is added. Currently, you must
call the WebRank office to change your reporting frequency, but Todd
Farmer of WebRank has said that this functionality will be built into
the billing system at a later date. Nevertheless, at this time, you
can run reports on demand. You’ll get a status report letting you
know how many reports are in the queue before yours will run, and an
e-mail notifying you when your report is finished.
Page Watch Tool
This tool essentially reports rankings only for pages that you specify.
While you might not optimize every page on a site, such as contact forms,
this tool is especially useful to track those pages that you have optimized,
or perhaps to track rankings on your affiliate pages that you have optimized.
The pages that you are watching show up on the administration/summary
page with links to more detailed ranking information. This tool is in
addition to the default and custom reports, and is just one more way
to review your ranking information.
Domain Research Tool
This is one of the best features in WebRank. This tool will search for
similar domains based on the keywords you have entered into the system.
After the report has generated, WebRank will have a list of domains
for you to look at and add to your reports. You can also add domains
manually. When you add a domain, you can specify that the domain is
a competitor’s domain, an industry domain, an affiliate domain,
or a prospective affiliate domain.
This tool allows you to keep tabs on your competitors and make adjustments
to your pages when they jump ahead of you. With the industry domains,
you are able to compare your domain with your industry’s best-known
and most popular web sites. Assigning domains as affiliates allows you
to keep an eye on the rankings of members of your affiliate program.
Finally, you can see how well a domain that has applied to your affiliate
program ranks and if it is worth accepting into your affiliate program.
Keyword Suggestion Tool
The keyword suggestion tool takes the keywords you manually input and
runs a report to give you more keyword suggestions. In my opinion, this
is probably the least useful tool that WebRank offers. Savvy search
engine optimization experts already know what keywords they are targeting
and have done keyword research with far superior tools such as WordTracker
and referrer logs. Still it is a nice little addition that you can use
to see if there are any keywords that you are ranking for and haven’t
previously considered.
E-mail Reports and Alerts
WebRank will e-mail your reports to you if you wish. You can have an
unlimited number of reports e-mailed to you. These reports can be the
nine default reports or the custom reports you designed. While not a
great feature, the value lies in the fact that you can forward these
reports to your clients.
You are allowed to set up an unlimited number of e-mail rules, such
as when a page increases or decreases in rank, or shows up in a specific
ranking range for the first time. When the conditions you specify are
met, you receive an e-mail notifying you of the change. This is a handy
little feature for those times when you don’t have the time to
check the full report, or don’t want to check your report unless
there has been a change since the last one.
Pricing
Todd reported that WebRank is priced aggressively. I concur. The Basic
Membership monthly reporting option is $9.95 per month and for weekly
reporting it is $29.95 per month. You can also pay annually and save
$19.45 on the monthly option and $89.90 on the weekly option. At this
price, he says that you will have the ability to add plenty of keywords
and domains, and send plenty of custom reports and alerts via e-mail.
Other factors that will influence pricing are reporting frequency, the
number of keywords, domains, custom reports, e-mail reports and alerts.
The Good and Bad
The best feature I found in WebRank was the domain search tool. Letting
WebRank find competitor sites for you is definitely a time saver. The
one minor complaint I have with the domain search tool is that it returns
a lot of not-so-useful sites, such as Yahoo!, eBay, etc. However it’s
a minor inconvenience to delete them.
As I mentioned previously, the least useful tool is the keyword search
tool. An experienced optimizer already knows what keywords are targeted
and uses more comprehensive keyword research resources such as WordTracker
and WordSpot.
Unfortunately, there currently is no way to export the reports into
a spreadsheet or html editor for e-mailing a clean and easy to read
report to clients or for posting on the web for them. However, I did
suggest this to Mr. Farmer. He liked the idea and has added it to the
upgrade list.
Lastly, the e-mail reports and alerts are sent in plain text with no
option to have them sent as html. In present form, they aren’t
really something that I would want to send to clients without major
modification in html editing, spreadsheet or word processing software.
Final Look
Overall, there is little not to like about WebRank. The reports are
easy to read and present ranking information in a variety of ways for
analysis. Virtually every feature is useful and fairly easy to use.
WebRank is attractively priced and offers a lot for the money. In the
future, WebRank plans to offer Partner Accounts for search engine optimization
firms so that they can manage reporting for a number of clients from
a single administration page, rather than having to set up separate
accounts for each client. Finally, they are offering a free trial period
to coincide with the launch date. I enthusiastically recommend that
you take advantage of the free trial and see what WebRank
has to offer for yourself. I think you will be pleased with what you
find.
Thanks to Todd Farmer of WebRank for allowing me full access to WebRank
at no cost, and for answering all my questions fully and quickly.
Next month I’ll be taking a look at Zeus, The Internet Marketing
Robot by Cyber-Robotics.com, which is a tool to help you find web sites
suitable for reciprocal linking and to build your reciprocal link directory.
***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.
