Since this is the first major upgrade to WebPosition in the past two years, there's a number of new features to review in addition to its core function of tracking and reporting page positioning within SE rankings. For starters, they've modernized and revamped the user interface. The various tool components of WebPosition are now accessed through an Outlook-style toolbar located on the left side of your screen (as seen in the screenshot below):

Revamped Interface

Another nice addition is the built-in interface to the WordTracker service, which greatly facilitates the keyword selection process. We can now import WordTracker keywords directly into the other WebPosition tools such as Reporter and Page Builder.

If you're familiar with the WordTracker website, you'll be pleased to learn that the interface remains the same even when accessed via the WebPosition client. The rest of the integration takes place seamlessly behind the scenes.

WebPosition now supports a total of 202 U.S. and International search engines. You can easily specify any of 30 international search engines for targeted reporting and submission of your pages.

WebPosition can now report on your page positions within Froogle's consumer-item price shopping engine. This is especially useful if you're tracking your page positioning for a large catalog-style site.

The Pro version of WebPosition supports the exporting of data into Excel spreadsheets for a more refined analysis of data.

Consultants can also export data to email for client reporting (and can also include a custom logo).

WebPosition comes in two editions, Standard and Professional. WP3 Gold Standard is geared for the webmaster who manages his or her own website, while Professional is targeted at webmasters or consultants who professionally manage a number of sites for various clients. Additionally, a Platinum upgrade is available for either version and includes a few more useful tools.

Here's a rundown of what's included in each of the WP versions. Note that the Pro and Platinum editions include everything offered in the Standard edition.

Mission Manager

The Mission Manager is the central location for managing all of the various missions. Since each tool has its own mission file, while each of your domains is likely to utilize a number of missions, this manager will greatly assist you in keeping your projects organized while helping to eliminate confusion.

Wordtracker Keywords

As mentioned previously, WordTracker integration is new to WebPosition 3. This feature allows direct WordTracker access through the WebPosition client. After selecting your keywords through this tool, you can import them into other parts of the program.

Worth mentioning is the fact that WordTracker integrated through WebPosition delivers 50% more keywords than what would otherwise be available through WordTracker's customary trial version.

Reporter

The Reporter tool is considered by many to be the heart of WebPosition. This tool allows you to locate and track your web site's SERP (search engine results page) position across any of over 200 search engines on an automated and scheduled basis. Once you configure the initial mission, simply schedule it to run as often as necessary. WebPosition will then automatically check your rankings and perform any number of actions you configure; from emailing you reports to exporting detailed HTML documents.

Page Builder

The Page Builder is a tool that helps with the initial page generation process. By selecting your targeted keywords and keyphrases, along with a targeted engine, Page Builder will output an HTML page containing keywords and phrases optimized for that engine. You can also create any number of templates to match the look-and-feel of your existing web site. This tool can be used to quickly build a large number of targeted information pages.

Page Critic

Backed by a continually updated "knowledgebase" maintained by the folks at WebPosition, the Page Critic can analyze your web pages and make suggestions to improve your site's SE-friendly design.

Of course, we all know about the changing nature of the engines, so that's why this feature of WebPosition needs periodic updating. Accordingly, there is a subscription fee to maintain current updates to the Page Critic knowledgebase after the first three months (price details below).

Upload Manager

Generally used after the Page Building process, the Upload Manager can upload your new pages to your server without requiring a third-party FTP program. Even if you already have a preferred FTP client you may still find this tool handy once you already have WP3 launched and running.

Submitter

When it comes to submitting pages to Google or Yahoo we've already said that it's best to build links from "known" pages so Google and Yahoo's spiders can "discover" your new pages. We stand by that recommendation. However, when it comes to getting your pages listed in the minor engines and directories, WP3's submitter is a great way to get the job done quickly and effortlessly.

WebTrends Analytics

NetIQ, the new owner of WebPosition, also makes the popular stat analyzer, WebTrends. Therefore, it's only natural that the two be integrated. So far, the integration is minimal, but we suspect the integration to improve in upcoming releases.

Scheduler

The Scheduler is used to manage all of your scheduled Reporter and Submission missions. Typically, we'll set this to monitor and report our positioning based on how often each engine updates their index.

For instance, in the case of Google, we'll run this function about once or twice a month, depending on the nature of the site and the competitiveness of the keywords being monitored.

The Professional edition of WebPosition is geared towards SEOs who manage more than five sites. As such, it has these additional features and capabilities:

• Support for unlimited domains (whereas the Standard edition is limited to only five domains)
• Branding of all reports with your custom logos and company information.
• Schedule automatic email reports sent to clients or company executives.
• Enhanced export capabilities that allow you to look at your data in a spreadsheet.

The Platinum Tools are a set of optional upgrades for WebPosition. While not absolutely essential to the SEO process, these tools can greatly minimize the tedium of maintaining large sites.

Meta Manager

Meta Manager is a tool that helps you manage meta keywords, meta descriptions, and title tags within your HTML documents. Meta Manager can update any number of pages at once. If your task is to change the meta tags on a few hundred pages, Meta Manager is perfect. It also keeps track of the total number of words, keywords, and characters as you work.

Link Defender

Link Defender locates broken internal and external links on entire websites. Once broken links have been found, it will generate reports, and even email them to your clients if you desire, or give you the option to fix them as you work.

Code Defender

Code Defender makes it slightly more difficult for your competition to view the source of your web pages. It does this by removing all line breaks and white space which effectively scrunches all the code into one single line.

Of course, this makes no difference to a search engine spider but the casual source code pirate will have to work a little harder to see, and steal, your work. Bear in mind, however, that since the code isn't encrypted, it won't stop a determined person from viewing your code. But, it may dissuade the casual copier (FYI, actual encryption would prevent the SE spider from indexing your page thereby defeating your optimization efforts).

A common concern for potential users of WebPosition has been Google's negative view of automated query programs. The short answer is no, you will not get banned when using WebPosition in a non-abusive manner. We are not aware of anyone who has been banned by Google for using WebPosition in the manner it is intended to be used.

The slightly longer answer is, if you use WebPosition to run massive amounts of Reporter queries on a search engine for an extended period of time (like daily), the engine will take notice and potentially move to ban access to their engine from your IP address. However, you'll have to really abuse an engine for them to take such a drastic step – and, quite honestly, you would deserve it.

In addition, even if you did get carried away, WebPosition does not pass along any information to the engine that might help it identify your website. The only identifiable information sent is the IP address of your connection to the internet. This is typically the IP address of the ISP that you connect through and is not the IP address of your website!

What Google and other engines really object to is the abuse of their resources. Over the years there have been a few overzealous webmasters who have run hundreds or thousands of keyword queries multiple times a day for weeks on end – thereby prompting Google's ire. But, due to Google's tendency to update their index only about once a month, running queries more often than monthly or bi-monthly is pointless.

For more information on this topic, see this article:
Dispelling the Myths - Will WebPosition Get My Site Banned from Google?

Minimum System Requirements

Windows 95 or newer Pentium 400 MHz or greater 64MB of RAM or more, depending on O/S 10MB of hard disk space, plus space for downloaded files Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher

As I said above, WebPosition is available in different flavors geared towards different tastes, so you can rest assured that there's a WebPosition for you. Here's a recap of each edition along with recommendations based on anticipated needs:

• WebPosition Standard Edition – $149
  
  For webmasters managing up to 5 websites who don't need private labeled reports, this is a solid, economical choice.
• WebPosition Professional Edition – $349
  
  For professional SEOs and webmasters managing more than 5 domains, this is the best choice. It allows you to export everything to spread sheets and generate private labeled reports suitable for client presentation as you manage an unlimited number of domains.
• Guarantee – 30 days
  
  Last, but certainly not least, WebPosition gives you 30 days to drive it around the internet, kick the tires, and determine if it's right for your needs. In truth, you'll know within a few days how indispensable it is for even the causal webmaster – and if you decide otherwise you can get a complete refund.

For more information, to buy or to download the trial version, visit the WebPosition website.