by John on August 3, 2009
A short while ago I was in the market for a good Mac based SEO/SEM software. I had recently switched from a PC to a Mac and so I needed to find software to replace what I had on the PC. Now I do have a virtual PC installed in which I could install PC based software on my Mac, but I really only want to use that for cross browser testing and old software that I switch to the Mac.
While searching online for good ranking software, I came across a few applications that run on Mac that seemed to be the main contenders for SEO/SEM ranking software. I tested Advanced Web Ranking, a website ranking software by Caphyon. Of all the software I tested, this application seemed to stand out the most. To start off, while many of the competitor software restricted features in their limited trial, AWR (Advance Web Ranking) gives you full access to everything!
Features:
Advance Web Ranking does not fall short of features, and while you can see list of the features on the web ranking software site, I will try to pick out some favorites of mine that stand above the rest.
Search Engine Reporting
One of the more important features to me was the ability to create white labeled reports for clients. AWR is awesome when it comes to reporting. You can use the default template setup to create a report or create a template that matches your companies branding so that your delivering a complete self branded package to your SEM clients. Reporting has every just about every which way to deliver the report to you and/or your client; Email, Export PDFs, Export Excel, Export Html, and upload to FTP. I personlly email to clients and upload reports to a client section via FTP.
You have a few reports you can do and also you can personalize your reports to a pretty good depth. The main reporting capability is current site rank, keyword rank, overview,top sites report, and visibility reports. These go a long way to providing your clients with an in depth view of sites progress and ranking trends. Reports can be done on site level, keyword levels, and search engine level. As well as, outputting specific search engines and/or keywords only.
Search Engines
As expected Advanced Web Ranking covers all search engines and even is already showing Microsoft’s Bing results. All the big boys are available and countless small search engines. AWR also covers individual Google data center rankings if you want get that detailed in your reporting. On top of that, AWR is constantly keeping updated with the SEs, so you don’t have to.
Ranking Evolutions
Ranking Evolutions in time is a feature that I use to track my personal progress of my work. It’s a great benchmark to tell if your link building campaigns are successful or not. You can track the ranking trends for the website or for keywords. If you are working with a client on brand management this is a good way to track positive and negative trends on your clients brand.
See What They See
One thing that can be a bit of frustration is when search results differ based on users geographic location. Advanced Web Rankings has that covered for you. You can add proxy settings to your clients location to see what your clients are seeing. There is nothing more embarrassing that telling your client their site is ranking in a certain position when they see it differently.
Keys, API’s, and More
When your doing the research of finding site rankings for search engines, you often have to use API keys to access detailed and extensive search data. AWR has you covered on this too. Not only does it allow you to plug in your Google & Yahoo API’s but also stack them, so that when one API limit is up, AWR will automatically move to the next API.
Keyword Research
So keyword research can be a pain in the rear. Advanced Web Ranking also features the ability to research keywords using the Keyword Research Tool. AWR has an interface to plug into Google’s keyword research tool, word tracker, and more. I find personally that this is best used for finding what keywords to search for ranking with. Having all the keyword sources in one location helps quite a bit in my organization of sometimes millions of keyword phrases.
Interface
The AWR interface was fairly easy to use and comprehend. It seems to be based on a windows GUI so that probably helped me with knowing where to look for things, but long time Mac users shouldn’t have any problems adjusting to it. Short cuts to the actions most needed and used are always available on the left side, and sectional help is ready to go on the right. Speaking of help, I was able to get up to speed quickly with the getting started tutorial that comes ready to go when you start the application. It will help you get going quickly.
Overall Impression
First of all, I want to be completely honest with you. AWR does offer a free copy to those who review their software. That being said, we liked this application so much we have bought an enterprise copy for the office and I decided to review it. I personally would have written this review whether or not there is a reward because I am sold. Advanced Web Ranking is easy to use, loaded with more features than everyone else out there, and allows me to look great for my clients too! I would recommend this application for anyone who needs to track their web rankings.
You can download a 30 days trial of the web site ranking software and get more information about it from their website.
PS
Have you tried AWR? What is your thoughts of the application?
I recently moved from a PC to a mac and I am looking for good SEO software that will help me track and report on different client websites. I use SEOMoz.com for alot of research but I want something that is more white label so I can send reports to clients. SEOMoz Pro tools are great but are not really made for this kind of thing. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Just though I would post this for anyone to use. I often search for snippets of html to speed up the hand coding process.
States with values abbreviated
<select name="State">
<option selected="selected">Select a State</option>
<option value="AL">Alabama</option>
<option value="AK">Alaska</option>
<option value="AZ">Arizona</option>
<option value="AR">Arkansas</option>
<option value="CA">California</option>
<option value="CO">Colorado</option>
<option value="CT">Connecticut</option>
<option value="DE">Delaware</option>
<option value="DC">District Of Columbia</option>
<option value="FL">Florida</option>
<option value="GA">Georgia</option>
<option value="HI">Hawaii</option>
<option value="ID">Idaho</option>
<option value="IL">Illinois</option>
<option value="IN">Indiana</option>
<option value="IA">Iowa</option>
<option value="KS">Kansas</option>
<option value="KY">Kentucky</option>
<option value="LA">Louisiana</option>
<option value="ME">Maine</option>
<option value="MD">Maryland</option>
<option value="MA">Massachusetts</option>
<option value="MI">Michigan</option>
<option value="MN">Minnesota</option>
<option value="MS">Mississippi</option>
<option value="MO">Missouri</option>
<option value="MT">Montana</option>
<option value="NE">Nebraska</option>
<option value="NV">Nevada</option>
<option value="NH">New Hampshire</option>
<option value="NJ">New Jersey</option>
<option value="NM">New Mexico</option>
<option value="NY">New York</option>
<option value="NC">North Carolina</option>
<option value="ND">North Dakota</option>
<option value="OH">Ohio</option>
<option value="OK">Oklahoma</option>
<option value="OR">Oregon</option>
<option value="PA">Pennsylvania</option>
<option value="RI">Rhode Island</option>
<option value="SC">South Carolina</option>
<option value="SD">South Dakota</option>
<option value="TN">Tennessee</option>
<option value="TX">Texas</option>
<option value="UT">Utah</option>
<option value="VT">Vermont</option>
<option value="VA">Virginia</option>
<option value="WA">Washington</option>
<option value="WV">West Virginia</option>
<option value="WI">Wisconsin</option>
<option value="WY">Wyoming</option>
</select>States with State Name as Values
<select name="State">
<option selected="selected">Select a State</option>
<option value="Alabama">Alabama</option>
<option value="Alaska">Alaska</option>
<option value="Arizona">Arizona</option>
<option value="Arkansas">Arkansas</option>
<option value="California">California</option>
<option value="Colorado">Colorado</option>
<option value="Connecticut">Connecticut</option>
<option value="Delaware">Delaware</option>
<option value="District Of Columbia">District Of Columbia</option>
<option value="Florida">Florida</option>
<option value="Georgia">Georgia</option>
<option value="Hawaii">Hawaii</option>
<option value="Idaho">Idaho</option>
<option value="Illinois">Illinois</option>
<option value="Indiana">Indiana</option>
<option value="Iowa">Iowa</option>
<option value="Kansas">Kansas</option>
<option value="Kentucky">Kentucky</option>
<option value="Louisiana">Louisiana</option>
<option value="Maine">Maine</option>
<option value="Maryland">Maryland</option>
<option value="Massachusetts">Massachusetts</option>
<option value="Michigan">Michigan</option>
<option value="Minnesota">Minnesota</option>
<option value="Mississippi">Mississippi</option>
<option value="Missouri">Missouri</option>
<option value="Montana">Montana</option>
<option value="Nebraska">Nebraska</option>
<option value="Nevada">Nevada</option>
<option value="New Hampshire">New Hampshire</option>
<option value="New Jersey">New Jersey</option>
<option value="New Mexico">New Mexico</option>
<option value="New York">New York</option>
<option value="North Carolina">North Carolina</option>
<option value="North Dakota">North Dakota</option>
<option value="Ohio">Ohio</option>
<option value="Oklahoma">Oklahoma</option>
<option value="Oregon">Oregon</option>
<option value="Pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</option>
<option value="Rhode Island">Rhode Island</option>
<option value="South Carolina">South Carolina</option>
<option value="South Dakota">South Dakota</option>
<option value="Tennessee">Tennessee</option>
<option value="Texas">Texas</option>
<option value="Utah">Utah</option>
<option value="Vermont">Vermont</option>
<option value="Virginia">Virginia</option>
<option value="Washington">Washington</option>
<option value="West Virginia">West Virginia</option>
<option value="Wisconsin">Wisconsin</option>
<option value="Wyoming">Wyoming</option>
</select>State Snippet with Canada Too!
<select id="state" name="state">
<option>Select One</option>
<optgroup label="Canadian Provinces"></optgroup>
<option value="AB">Alberta</option>
<option value="BC">British Columbia</option>
<option value="MB">Manitoba</option>
<option value="NB">New Brunswick</option>
<option value="NF">Newfoundland</option>
<option value="NT">Northwest Territories</option>
<option value="NS">Nova Scotia</option>
<option value="NU">Nunavut</option>
<option value="ON">Ontario</option>
<option value="PE">Prince Edward Island</option>
<option value="QC">Quebec</option>
<option value="SK">Saskatchewan</option>
<option value="YT">Yukon Territory</option>
<optgroup label="U.S. States"></optgroup>
<option value="AK">Alaska</option>
<option value="AL">Alabama</option>
<option value="AR">Arkansas</option>
<option value="AZ">Arizona</option>
<option value="CA">California</option>
<option value="CO">Colorado</option>
<option value="CT">Connecticut</option>
<option value="DC">District of Columbia</option>
<option value="DE">Delaware</option>
<option value="FL">Florida</option>
<option value="GA">Georgia</option>
<option value="HI">Hawaii</option>
<option value="IA">Iowa</option>
<option value="ID">Idaho</option>
<option value="IL">Illinois</option>
<option value="IN">Indiana</option>
<option value="KS">Kansas</option>
<option value="KY">Kentucky</option>
<option value="LA">Louisiana</option>
<option value="MA">Massachusetts</option>
<option value="MD">Maryland</option>
<option value="ME">Maine</option>
<option value="MI">Michigan</option>
<option value="MN">Minnesota</option>
<option value="MO">Missouri</option>
<option value="MS">Mississippi</option>
<option value="MT">Montana</option>
<option value="NC">North Carolina</option>
<option value="ND">North Dakota</option>
<option value="NE">Nebraska</option>
<option value="NH">New Hampshire</option>
<option value="NJ">New Jersey</option>
<option value="NM">New Mexico</option>
<option value="NV">Nevada</option>
<option value="NY">New York</option>
<option value="OH">Ohio</option>
<option value="OK">Oklahoma</option>
<option value="OR">Oregon</option>
<option value="PA">Pennsylvania</option>
<option value="PR">Puerto Rico</option>
<option value="RI">Rhode Island</option>
<option value="SC">South Carolina</option>
<option value="SD">South Dakota</option>
<option value="TN">Tennessee</option>
<option value="TX">Texas</option>
<option value="UT">Utah</option>
<option value="VA">Virginia</option>
<option value="VT">Vermont</option>
<option value="WA">Washington</option>
<option value="WI">Wisconsin</option>
<option value="WV">West Virginia</option>
<option value="WY">Wyoming</option>
</select>
I can program in about 12 different languages and I find that I often have to look up preferred methods of doing redirects for whatever programming language that I am using at the time. So here is a list of All the different 301 Redirects that I can find in one location:
.htaccess
301 Old page to New page
Here is a few different methods:
redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.findmeingoogle.com/new.htm
redirect permanent /old.html http://www.findmeingoogle.com/new.htm
redirectpermanent /old.html http://www.findmeingoogle.com/new.htm
RewriteRule ^old-page.html$ /newpage.htm [L,R=301]
301 Non-WWW to WWW
Google still seems to have a canonicalization problem that arises when the www version of your site gets indexed along with the non-www version (i.e. http://www.findmeingoogle.com & http://findmeingoogle.com). Here is a simple .htaccess method to fix that:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^findmeingoogle.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.findmeingoogle.com/$1 [L,R=301]
301 WWW to Non-WWW
Same as above, just vice-versa:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.findmeingoogle.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://findmeingoogle.com/$1 [L,R=301]
301 Old Domain to New Domain
This method only works on apache servers with mod-rewrite enabled:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
PHP
301 Current Page To New Page
<?php Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?>
CGI PERL Redirect
301 Current Page To New Page
$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect("http://www.new-url.com/");
Ruby on Rails Redirect
301 Current Page To New Page
def old_action
headers["Status"] = "301 Moved Permanently"
redirect_to "http://www.new-url.com/"
end
JSP (Java) Redirect
301 Current Page To New Page
<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( "Location", "http://www.new-url.com/" );
response.setHeader( "Connection", "close" );
%>
ColdFusion Redirect
301 Current Page To New Page
<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com">
ASP Redirect
301 Current Page To New Page
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.new-url.com/"
%>
ASP .NET Redirect
301 Current Page To New Page
<script runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.new-url.com");
}
</script>
C# .NET
301 Current Page To New Page
<script>
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently" ;
Response.AddHeader( "Location" ,"http://www.new-url.com" );
}
</script>
IIS
301 Current Page To New Page
- In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
- Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”.
- Enter the redirection page
- Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”
- Click on ‘Apply’
Did I leave any out?
The last company I was working at had an agent/affiliate program in which one particular agent was dominating the companies online presence. He was serious about online marketing and had hired a seo company. And after dishing out about 1600 a month for a period of years, he was pleased with his website’s success. In many keywords his site was out ranking the parent company, sales were good, and he felt he was getting his moneys worth. That is, untill I was hired by the parent company. What I had found was that the parent company had made muliple huge online mistakes in the past few years. They had used multiple domains pointing to the main site (without 301 redirects), they had redone their website many times without redirecting (causing masive floating content), and had never did basic SE optimisation. To make matters worse, when I started, the parent companies site got penalized by Google and went from page 1 of their brand to page 8 with a loss of over 90% of thier online traffic.
To outrank this site, would be the simplest of tasks. Basically the agent’s SEO company only did a few links (about 1400 over a few years), some minor page optimization, and added a blog in which they occasionally rewrote some article and posted it. This was sufficient until the parent company decided to take their online marketing efforts seriously. So when I got started, I first consolidated all the domains to one and redirected them all with a 301 redirect. Being in the disarray that this site was, it was the perfect opportunity to redesign and restructure the website. A 100% new site was designed and implemented, and with that the floating content from legacy sites was destroyed or redirected to new content. Since this site was penalized, I needed some quick link building, and so I purchased links via Text-Link-Ads.com and http://www.edutextlink.com. Now I don’t recommend this normally, because Google will penalize you if you get caught, but the site was in a bind an I felt it was a risk worth taking. Besides, in the long run, the paid link ads would be replaced with permenant links.
The result of this first effort was tremendous. The sites page rank went from a pagerank of 4 to a pagerank of 7. The site also gained the number 1 page 1 slot for a few terms and even beat out wikipedia in a few spots. The agent who was dominating so much, was blown out of the water. Thankfully we had a good relationship and we started discussing shortfalls of his marketing efforts. You see, not much was really done with the parent site to get it going. In the beginning, the agent had only done a little more SEO work than the parent site, and so it dominated. Then when the parent site did a little bit of seo work, it took off and dominated also.
So what is the takeaway with all this. Well, I find there are thousands and thousands of niches that have sites who have done little or no seo work and rank well. And with a little bit of work, you can completely dominate the niche. Is there more to the amount of work put into the parent site that I did? Certainly, but the basis was that it was all simple common SEO and that was all it took. Once you have gained some possition on the simple stuff, then you can focus on the big fish.
Oh by the way, I was given permission by the parent site to consult the agent. In doing so, I taught him enough to do what he was paying someone else to do himself. His ranking is now in the #2 spot under the parent site and we are developing a plan to take on the keywords un-tapped by the parent site’s marketing efforts.
Let me introduce myself. My name is John Hamman and I do “internet marketing” of all sorts. I started marketing online about 10 years go and am still going strong. I specialize in Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click advertising with Google Adwords, plus I am a Google Adwords Professional. Often I come across many experts in the industry who give misleading information or have no clue on how to properly market their business. I even see it quite a bit with “in house” marketing experts for companies. Because of these reasons, I have decided to start this site. My goal is to show you, the common internet users, what it takes to properly advertise your presence online, both organically and via paid advertisements. I hope you enjoy and visit often.
John Hamman