It's very important to spend quality time creating your sponsored link as this is "online ad" that people will view in midst of search results and competing sponsored links (in some cases). You have ability to create a short headline coupled with two lines of text with approximately 35 characters per line - headline must be succinct and hard hitting and related text should backfill headline with supporting words that convey what goods or services your company provides.

Keyword selection can be most daunting task for setting up a new campaign - be prepared to spend some focused time working through multiple keywords to find those that you can afford. It typically takes 1-3 hours to find 10-20 keywords that are relatively low cost - however, if your budget is open-ended and you have sufficient marketing funds to pay $1-8. USD per keyword then it can take much less time. Your market focus is also another important variable that can impact keyword selection process - if you're in a narrow market niche with only a small number of competitors then it is much easier and faster to setup a campaign.

Finally, be aware you can find some keywords that are very inexpensive, but Google will disallow these if they don't drive a minimum clickthrough amount of roughly less than 1% - you can start off with them, but they will be turned off after 7-14 days if they aren't driving sufficient clickthrough volume.

Wordtracker Keyword Research Tool

You may want to utilize other keyword analysis tools that will give you a broader selection and help you to understand what keywords are popular and searched on, which in turn ensures keywords you do select will drive traffic and will not be disallowed by Google. Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) is an industry standard keyword analysis tool that those of us in online advertising world (and many others) have used for years to help us understand what keywords are popular - their service is very low cost and easy to utilize via their web site.

This one’s pretty redundant if you ask me.  

Scheduler Enhancements

1) Easier Interface

Well - here’s thing. WPG claim that Scheduler interface in WPG v2.0 is easier to use. But I don’t think so. Sure tabbed layout is consistent with other WPG features, but I don’t find interface any more intuitive. In fact, Scheduler v2.0 kept trying to run using an older version of WPG. After I worked out what problem was, I had to keep changing execute file in 'Program to Run' field to WPG v2.0 BETA. There doesn’t appear to be a way to choose a default program to run, unless you remove older WPG versions from your system or move them to a new folder.

2) System Tray Support  

A nice enhancement to Scheduler in v2.0 is addition of an icon in your system tray, meaning you can right click icon at any time to run Scheduler. Previously, unless you had Scheduler as a desktop shortcut, you had to open WPG and select Scheduler when you wanted to run it.

3) New Report Log   In WPG v2.0, a log file now records details of all scheduled events so you can open it and see which missions completed and which did not. A 'View Log' button has been added to Scheduler so you can see this file at any time.   4) Scheduled Uploads Supported  

WPG v2.0 now supports scheduling of Upload Manager missions in addition to Reporter and Submitter missions. So now you can schedule what time and what day you want your report files uploaded to Internet.   5) More Flexibility  

In v2.0, Scheduler includes a lot more flexibility when running missions. Now you can choose specific dates, times and/or recurring dates via a drop down list, such as every second Friday or quarterly. This is useful for my clients, because some of them like to present ranking reports at specific management meetings and often those meetings will be held at regular intervals such as third Wednesday of month. This new feature gives me ability to run and upload their reports to coincide with such meetings. 6) Easier Submission Handling  

A feature of Scheduler I’m not likely to use is submission handling. WPG v2.0 allows submission of URL’s at more defined intervals, supposedly keeping within search engine recommended per-day submission limits. However, one check box option I noticed and that caused me some concern was 'Allow Repetitive Submissions'. The explanation states:

'Once all URL’s are submitted, highlight them so that they can be re-submitted on next scheduled run'.

I’ve got to ask - why on earth would you want to regularly resubmit a URL to any search engine? If your site is linked to from other sites, most search engines will find your site on their own when they crawl web. Once you’re listed, most search engines will regularly return and spider your site for new content without any help from you. Other search engines can take months to add your URL to their index, but submitting once is enough. Depending on your site content, some search engines won’t add you at all.

Regardless, submitting on a regular basis is only going to annoy search engines and possibly get your URL banned. The only reason to resubmit is if you WERE listed and later find your listing has disappeared. Resubmitting a URL in hope of improving your ranking is just silly. If your page doesn’t get ranked well first time it gets listed in a search engine, resubmitting same page is not going to make it suddenly rank high! This submission 'enhancement' to WPG raises concern because it is open to abuse by giving people ability to resubmit their URL’s daily. This is an irresponsible and unnecessary addition to software if you ask me.

7) Handy Pop Up Calendar  

The WPG v2.0 Scheduler now includes a pop-up calendar to assist selection of scheduled dates on which to run missions. This is particularly useful for those of us running multiple missions per month. 8) Quickly Test Your Scheduled Events  

If you wanted to schedule a mission to run immediately in old version of WPG, you still had to select a future time for mission to commence. WPG v2.0 of Scheduler includes a 'Run Now' button that allows you to run any scheduled missions immediately.  

Well, that completes my review of WebPosition Gold v2.0 BETA. Keep in mind that program is still in BETA release, so items discussed above may change before full version is released. All in all, I’ve found new version to be very impressive, with plenty of worthwhile features justifying cost of an upgrade (USD 74 for Standard version and USD 174 for Pro) or a new purchase (USD 149 for Standard version and USD 349 for Pro). However, some of features provided are quite powerful and open to abuse.

If you choose to use WebPosition Gold or similar software, try to use it responsibly by scheduling your Reporter missions sporadically, not over-submitting your URL’s, avoiding creation of hundreds of content-challenged doorway pages and not running Reporter on engines known for taking an anti-querying software stand (such as Google). Because despite hype, bombarding search engines is NOT going to help you achieve high rankings.

President of FirstPlace Software, Brent Winters, responded to my review with comments addressing some of concerns I raise above. You can read Brent's comments via this link: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/Response_to_WPG_v2.0_Review.htm If you have additional questions about WebPosition Gold as a result of reading this review, please visit links below, or email WebPosition support staff via help@webposition.com. If you’d like to trial Beta version of WPG v2.0 please download it from link below. 

More: http://www.webposition.com/d2.pl?r=GCU-55EC (our affiliate link) http://www.webposition.com/wpg2upgrade.htm (outline of features in v2.0)