Software Promotion & SEOThis blog covers a range of topics concerning the SoftTester Shareware/ Software Download site. Topics include software product releases as well as SEO and software development information and tips.

A few days ago Jules made a post asking if there was any software available to track/ graph the position of domains and URLs in Google SERPs for specific keywords.

I wasn’t aware of any at the time so I did a bit of Googling and found a tool called WebPosition Gold (WPG). Problem is that Google’s terms of service specifically say that that using WPG or any similar program is deeply frowned upon. In the past I think 10s of 1000s of webmasters have used tools like WPG to track URLs and have placed a significant overload on Google. There are stories that running such tools causing the searcher’s IP address to be banned by Google.

At one time Google used to provide a SOAP search API that could be used to run Google searches programmatically via a web service. You had to register for an API key with Google. About 2 or so years ago Google stopped issuing new API keys although they preserved the service for existing keys. WPG requires an API key to work. Apparently people who had purchased WPG (for about $150) are now finding that Google is blocking searches made by WPG using the old API keys so it sounds like the tool is dead in the water.

It’s a  strange situation in some ways - the WPG site is PR 6 and Google shows sitelinks in the SERPS as though the site is an authority site but still specifically says in their terms of service that people shouldn’t use the tool.

by ML

The next thing to do to improve SERPS is get a better h1 and h2 tag to reinforce the new title.

The SoftTester title is now:

Free Software Downloads | Free Trial Software | Shareware Programs | Freeware Programs

So we want a h1 tag that agrees with this - to reinforce the relevancy for Googlebot. At the moment the h1 tag says Soft <br> Tester. This is telling Googlebot that the most important first topic on the page is something about “Soft” and “Tester”. So …

1. Turn the thumbs-up/ Soft Tester area into a bitmap - so it looks just the same as it does now but it’s an image not text.
2. To the right of the new bitmap (from item 1), put a good h1 tag.
3. Under the h1 tag, put a good h2 tag.
4. Define alt text for the bitmap created in item 1.

Here’s the words for the h1 tag …

Search for Free Software Downloads & Shareware Programs

… and the h2 tag …

Softtester - home of free trial software. Authors: submit your shareware and freeware programs. Get listed today and promote your software.

of course this assumes you are happy to get rid of the bit about testing each others software but the forum has now been closed so the community aspect is a bit dented anyway.

This will shift the existing advert to the right but it should still be visible - or shift it somewhere else on the page. The top of the homepage will then look something like:

On the bitmap (the bit on the left in the example above), define the alt text as:

“List Freeware programs, Shareware Programs and Free Trial Software on SoftTester.Com”

by ML