Review - Web CEO

Description

Web CEO is a software package of ten main tools that help you to promote your site in search engines, analyze your visitors, and easily maintain your Website(s) at optimal quality.

Want to cut to the chase?

If you're a Website owner or a web developer, stop reading this review of Web CEO right now. Head over to www.webceo.com and buy it. Don't say I don't give you good advice!

If you're still not sure, read on and I'll give you the lowdown on a piece of software that, if I was smart enough, I'd have purchased years ago -- and saved myself thousands of dollars and thousands of hours.

So, you've decided to read on? Okay, I'll start at the start.

Features

Web CEO is packed with features, including:

• Keyword research tool: find the right keywords for your site.
• Search engine optimization tool: compare your Website optimization readiness against the top ranked sites.
• Simple editor: access, view and edit the various parts of your HTML page.
• Search engine submission tool: automatically (or manually) submit your site to the search engines. Contains notes on each individual search engine with space for your own specific comments.
• Check your rankings: a huge timesaver for search engine specialists and Website owners who need relevant data.
• Link checker: quickly and easily check who's linking to you, who's linked to your competitors, and much more.
• Website quality assurance: comprehensive review of all site components with detailed analytical reports. Quickly find and repair any damaged files or pages.
• FTP uploader: quickly upload files without leaving the software.
• Always know the status of your site: real time monitoring keeps tabs on your site even when you're not there (and you can be emailed or telephoned the results).
• Comprehensive site reports: includes hundreds of detailed reports to enable you to make the right decision every time!

Sound good? I thought you'd like it. Here are the software specs:

Cost

Web CEO comes in a few flavours, each at a different price point:

• Web CEO Free: FREE
• Web CEO Startup: $19
• Web CEO SmallBiz: $295
• Web CEO Professional: $495

But wait! That's not all!

Web CEO charges an ongoing fee for optional components of the software. This is and will continue to be the secret (aside from the brilliant software!) to their success.

• For example, HitLens (the traffic analysis component) is priced at 59 cents per 1,000 page views for "Power Reporting" or 79 cents per 1,000 page views for "eCommerce Reporting".
• Site monitoring costs between $0 and 41.80 per day.
• Access to the downloadable Knowledge Base updates costs a little more.

Now, many of us balk at ongoing fees like this. But, be realistic: the provision of the analysis and monitoring services, and keeping the knowledge fresh, takes time, money and significant resources. The guys at Web CEO aren't about to compromise the success of the sites that use their product by scrimping to save the customer a few cents here and there.

You want the best quality software with ongoing quality service? Of course there needs to be an ongoing fee. To ask for anything less would compromise the quality of the ongoing service, and very quickly diminish the value of the software to customers like you and I.

It's a great strategy that's of great benefit to the customer.

...Sound Like Anyone You Know?

Once upon a time there was a handsome man. Let's call him Brendon. Brendon was handsome and charming… in equal parts! Brendon owned a few ecommerce businesses, and he also ran a busy little Web development firm that did quite a lot of search engine work.

Brendon was going along very nicely and all was good in his world.

"I'm so very clever, I surprise even my handsome self," he would often be heard to say. "Here I am, making quite a bit of money from my Websites," he said gaily one day.

"Sure, it takes a while to manually check everything I need to check, and I'm not 100% sure of my search engine strategies, and I certainly won't ever know what my competitors are doing -- that would be far too difficult to figure out. And, although I've spent thousands of hours and dollars on my site management systems, I'm quite, quite sure no-one would have as much information on their site as I do! I'm so very clever… Let's go find a mirror for me to look into…." And off he skipped.

I confess: I'm "Brendon". I'm not very handsome. And I'm certainly not charming. But most of all, I'm not smart. What I've seen Web CEO achieve means I'm pretty much a moron.

If I was smart, I'd have purchased Web CEO as soon as I laid eyes on it. Why? Well, it's time to get down to the nitty gritty and find out.

Web CEO has 3 main parts. Let's take each in turn.

Part 1: Promote Your Site

This section of the software contains the following tools.

Research Keywords

Keywords are King. Find the right keywords to target and you can move your Website from struggle to success. It's worth spending a lot of time analyzing keyword data in that search for the golden nugget!

Web CEO searches from 16 meta search engines to obtain the keywords for which users search. I've compared these results against the returns from Word Tracker and the Overture Suggestion Tool, and they're pretty good.

Coming from different data sources, they'll be different from the totals identified by individual engines, of course, but this tool provides the same sort of range of keywords.

From the same interface, you can view the very cool 'KEI'. The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) was developed by search engine guru Sumantra Roy. The KEI index "compares the daily searches with the number of competing Web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are good enough so you can use them while optimizing your site.

"Keywords with the highest KEI combine attractive popularity and less competition. It means there are all chances you will get a high ranking if you use these keywords for optimizations."
That's pretty smart -- it provides a good starting point for optimizing your pages.

Another nifty little feature is the 'Analyze competition' tab, from which you can assess the link numbers, traffic ranks, and pay-per-click bids for that key word, along with a range of other useful information. It's very easy to use, and great data to have.

Get Optimization Advice

Simply hit a button here and the software reviews your page with an eye on the last known requirements of the search engine for which you've optimized the page. Having spent 10 hours a day for the past few years on search engine optimization, I'm happy to report that the information Web CEO provides is very solid indeed.

With knowledge base updates every 2-3 days, the Web CEO team obviously keeps abreast of what's happening and you, as the user, avoid the late nights trying to keep up with the last search engine strategies.

The software compares your pages with the top ranked pages for the keyword you're targeting, analyzes off-page factors (very important these days), and provides the results in very easy-to-read formats.

Just hit one button, and you'll know what you need to do to improve your site for higher search engine rankings.

(Search engine optimizers can place their own logos on the reports in the Pro version – a great way to make you look good to your clients!)

Edit Web Pages

Although I didn't use this feature extensively, it was handy for making small adjustments as I went along. It's not built for major work, but is suited more to doing little jobs that crop up as you work through the software.

Again, the time and effort that has gone into creating an incredibly easy user interface pays off -- you can do plenty with minimal time and effort.

Submit URLs

I've never been a big fan of submitting URLs to search engines using automated software (because some of them tell you to avoid automated submissions). So I didn't use this particular feature extensively with the bigger engines. Despite my reluctance, I did use the software to submit the site automatically to the many smaller search engines that I'd never heard of.

The software provides a list of search engines that require manual submissions, along with a comment on which other sites that search engine is affiliated with, and the best way to approach them.

There's even a space in which you can add your own search engine-specific comments.