WebPosition was pretty great until Infospace bought them in 2009. Then came the outages. What was once a wonderfully supported suite of SEO SERP tools turned into a nightmare. The newly released Webposition is a web-only interface (vs. software you install on your computer.) Whereas you used to pay a few hundred bucks to own the program outright you now have to pay WebPosition a steep monthly fee to use this website.
What’s wrong with the new WebPosition?
It’s costly. $499 per year.
Poor security. Because it’s online-only, all of your clients’ campaign data is on their servers. No doubt they’re selling it to somebody.
Missing features. And more! My friend reports that he’s…
having trouble exporting their reports into excel.
They don’t give any details on how many keywords
rank #1, 2-10, 11-20, etc (only shows a bar graph)
There’s no report email function, and I don’t see an option to FTP/upload reports.
The reports look really sloppy compared to the WP4 reports.
WP support is still no good.
WebPosition Alternatives
Advanced Web Ranking
That same friend and fellow SEO says,
I’m trying AWR because I’ve heard a lot of good
things from prominent SEOs and larger agencies who use it.
AWR has custom reports and lots of bells and whistles.
I couldn’t get anyone to answer their customer service line…I believe the
company is in another country… I never tried emailing them.
So far Advanced Web Ranking is at the top of my list to try. It’s $399 to buy and then $119 per year after the first 12 months.
Web CEO
I’m on the advisory board for the e-business program at a college. They use Web CEO for their SEO classes. So it’s number two on my list. WebCEO costs $389.
Addweb
Costs $299 but their website is an unholy mess. I can only imagine how terrible their program’s usability is.
SEOmoz
$79 per MONTH ?! Wow. My friend says,
Seomoz’s rank tracker isn’t very robust and you need to enter each keyword
and URL individually. Lame.
Wikipedia’s List of Web Ranking Software
As if this wasn’t already complex and challenging, Wikipedia offers a longer list of SERP software options. And dmoz has a category full of website promotion possibilities.
SEO Software Help
As you can see, this blog post isn’t informative as much as it’s a cry for help. If you have a non-shill comment on your experience with SEO ranking software, please comment. Here are the most important criteria
- >20 sites
- sftp upload of reports
- brandable/customizable reports
- data export (csv or ods or xls)
- easy backup AND restore from backup
- easy revert (e.g. if my evdo internet connection dies during querying and I need to re-run a report.)
- imports WP4 campaigns (this might be a pipe dream)
- no monthly fee
- no sensitive data stored on third-party servers
- etc.
What do you think?
Dan Dreifort whines about SEO, efficiency and usability on this blog and IRL.
Dan Dreifort 
do you know of a replacement that has a tool like “page critic’ on wp4?
I am desperate!!!! Much thanks Lew
I don’t use the page critic, so I can’t help you there. But I can tell you that I’m almost certainly going to use Advanced Web Ranking instead of WP4. I don’t love it, but I might grow to. Can you tell me what it is you get from page critic? I might be able to point you to other tools. My hunch is that you can get the same functionality free of charge, but with less convenience. Also, if you switch to AWR, mention that you read on Dan Dreifort’s blog about getting a 50% discount for switching from WP4 and… you’ll get half off. Nutty, I know.
Update: Still saying I’ll likely pull the trigger on AWR, but with reservations.
1) Their support hours and response time leave me wanting, seriously.
2) The Advanced Web Ranking interface is a complete mess.
3) The AWR reports, though customizable, are similarly a complete mess.
4) Mandatory annual fee.
What are the high points of AWR?
1) Easy import of WebPosition data.
2) 50% discount when switching from WP if you mention you read it on my blog.
3) I’m sure there are more, but I’m still dreading the process.
Switching to a new SEO software suite is a pain. Avoid it 😉
I am in the same position looking for a SEO tool to replace Web Position. I have been using it for over 8 years.
The main issue is the Page Critic. All of the other features that are on Web Position can be found in other suites but without Page Critic or similar you would have to be a genius to spot the subtle tweaks to on page optimisation.
Thought about Web CEO but to be honest the ‘page advice’ section is woefully inadequate. Really need a solution soon.
Will watch this space and also post if my team find a solution!
I can confirm that Web Position imports well into Advanced Web Ranking but when you import them into the free 30 day trial, it immediately causes the AWR trial to expire because the start date is not your install date, but the date of your first mission… or some such nonsense like that. AWR was nice enough to give me an extended testing license though, so it only stings a little. And it’s still REALLY annoying that their support hours are so far from what’s typical where I live. Please let me know if/when you find a good replacement.
by now there has got to be a winner? what did you end up using? are you happy?
AWR is the winner. Haven’t switched yet. Waiting until WP goes 100% bust. I.e. when it can no longer accurately query the big three search engines.
Have you seen free seo toolkit? I think it provides features similiar to Page Critic.
http://www.microsoft.com/web/spotlight/seo.aspx
Only Microsoft could make something so potentially useful so difficult to use. I can’t even tell you how many steps it took to install. And then I had to search for instructions on how to start it. “To start using the Toolkit, launch the IIS Management Console first by clicking Run in the Start Menu and typing inetmgr in the Run command line. When the IIS Manager launches, you can scroll down to the Management section of the Features View and click the “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit” icon.” Microsoft SEO = Fail – I don’t care how great this tool is. Using it is a royal pain.
In fairness, after you get it setup and make a shortcut to the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, it’s a decent tool. 😉
So it’s now a year after your original thread and I need to finally migrate from WP4. Agree with all of your comments about WP4. Did you end up switching to AWR? If so, do you like it? Any other players emerge that you have checked out?
Thanks
Laura
Laura,
I switched to AWR. I do not like it, but it is the only software that meets the criteria. AWR reports are ugly and graphs are inconsistent. The UI is horribly confusing and kludgy. The scheduled events failed month after month. Etc. The most frustrating aspect of my AWR experience has been the support. They’re not unfriendly, but the fact that they’re in Romania means they start working when I’m ready for bed and they go home for the day when I’m waking up. So when I send a support email, I get a response the next day, to which I then respond, and then the next day, I get their response and on and on. This wouldn’t be THAT awful, except for the fact that they’ve repeatedly misread or only partially read my emails. I’m happy to discuss AWR in more detail if you’re in the market. It’s a necessary evil. That’s the bottom line.
-Dan
…also, the fact that I even NEED support says something. I almost never need support for software. I’m the guy OTHER people call when THEY need help with software. I don’t know if I can count the Advanced Web Ranking support incidents in my <year with them on both hands, but I'll bet I could count them if I used my toes too!
Thanks for that update which only confirmed my suspicions. I hated that program in the hour I played with it. I just could not come to like it. I actually ended up back with WP. I’d already set up a trial account months ago so it had my historical data etc. I just hated AWR. I know WP has it’s issues, I’ve hated it too. But for my needs at this moment it will probably suffice and I’ll just do the standard $29/mo which feels like a huge ripoff. You can white label it now and make a link avail to clients for updates, and schedule it so…for now I’m going to just go with it even though my annoyance at them may not be emotionally recoverable 🙂 But I hated AWR worse on first blush. SO…thank you for confirming all of that for me. Really? How can someone not have a better solution by now? They both suck as far as I can tell.
Tried various SEO tools including Advanced Web Ranking. I consider this software too large to successfully perform the required tasks. I prefer something more logical like http://link-assistant.com tools. Each of them do their own SEO job and give you the most precise information on your site.
I like AWR just enough for ranking reporting, which is all that I use it for. I have looked into link-assistant.com recently and I’m intrigued. I plan to use it and/or SEOCockpit the next time I need to do major keyword research. I’ll report back on the blog for sure! (I’m pretty much fed up and done with SEOmoz, Wordtracker and SEMRush.)
I think AWR is missing some features, such as KEI calculation, estimated visits per keyword count, etc. I myself switched to SEO PowerSuite ( http://www.seopowersuite.com/ ) and I must say I’m extremely happy with it.
I too find the AWR research tool lacking. Alas, I found every other service left me wanting too. Google keywords tool isn’t the best, but they’ve improved it, and it’s a known evil. I waste about twenty hours and a few hundred bucks researching new keyword research tools every couple years. I’m destined to use something serviceable but adequate. 😉