GMChost.com Webmaster Guide

Practical Tips for Using WebPosition Gold 2:
E-Mailing Reports Directly to Yourself or to Clients
By Robin Nobles

The more I use my new copy of WebPosition Gold 2, the more time-saving features I discover buried beneath its tabs and screens. One such feature I came across recently is WebPosition's new automated e-mail feature. If you're a professional SEO with a lot of clients, or even a busy Webmaster who is responsible for many domains, it's easy to forget to keep your clients or bosses informed of their latest rankings in the engines. In addition, I would sometimes run reports at night and then forget to view them the next day. At other times, I'd be traveling when they ran and consequently unable to access them.

So, why not let Gold 2's Professional Version e-mail the reports to you automatically! If you're like me, you may not even have been aware of the feature that was added in July to version 2 (actually the third generation of the well-known product). In fact, after using version 2 over the past few months for myself and for my clients, I asked Brent Winters if he'd be willing to let me write a series of articles about the tool. I explained how I'd like to share the experiences and tips about the software that I've gained from the standpoint of an end-user. Brent agreed that it sounded like a great idea. So it's my hope to share many insights into getting the most out of WebPosition over the coming months. If you were to try to find fault with WebPosition Gold 2, it might be that it can do so many tasks, that it's quite possible to overlook some of its timesaving features.

To use the new e-mail option, simply click the File Menu, select New Mission or Open Mission, and then choose the Reporter. Click the Options tab. You'll then see three sub-tabs. Choose the third one called "Upload/E-mail Reports." Check the box called "When mission completes, send E-mail to the specified recipients." I then recommend you select "Attach Concise Report" and "Include Visibility Statistics," because those stats provide valuable, and impressive information that you'll want to see.

Next, enter the e-mail addresses of your client or boss, as well as your own e-mail address in the "E-mail To" section. Be sure to press ENTER after each address to place it on its own line in the box. I also like to choose "Zip the attachment," which is a handy feature, compressing the HTML report to reduce its download size. This is most useful if you or your recipient is on a slow dial up connection. In addition, if your report size is more than one or two megabytes without zipping it, it can exceed the size limitations of some lower-end e-mail services. You and the people you e-mail the report to will of course need to have a copy of WinZip or a similar decompression utility to view your report from a zip file. If you're unable to open a zipped file, simply download a zip utility for free from www.download.com.

You can also use WebPosition's Scheduler to set up each of your ranking reports to run during non-business hours, out of respect for the engines. Even though WebPosition does a nice job of multi-tasking, running reports at night avoids devoting any of your own computer, or Internet resources while you work during the day. When you get to the office the next morning, you'll have a copy of your ranking report waiting for you in your In Box, and so will your client or boss!

Robin Nobles is the Director of Training for OnlineWebTraining.com, which teaches online training in search engine marketing. Please visit our site for more information about online training and other resources.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.