Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
Want to sell your website and get the most money for it? Or maybe you would like to augment your website’s income by selling advertising on it? Or you just want to get a good feel for how well your search engine optimization efforts are working. Then you need to know about Alexa Rankings.
Like it or not (and many people are highly critical of the Rankings), Alexa Rankings are the most frequently used statistic to evaluate a site’s popularity and traffic. Unlike Google’s Page Rank, which only evaluates specific webpages, Alexa Traffic Rankings apply to an entire website.
Alexa’s Traffic Rankings come as a function of what Alexa calls “reach”, as well as their calculated “page views”. Both statistics come from data supplied by users who have the Alexa Toolbar installed. Alexa indicates that over 10 Million people have downloaded their toolbar. Downloading the Alexa Toolbar has appeal since it includes a popup blocker (long before the major browsers did) as well as a search engine entry box, links to both Amazon and Alexa, and the Alexa information about a site.
After the “reach” (percent of users accessing the site), and page views (number of unique pages accessed by a user during one day), the Traffic Rankings are calculated and Alexa’s list of most popular sites is created. The site with the highest ranking is listed as #1, the second highest is #2 and so on.
Criticism of the Alexa Toolbar and Alexa Rankings arise from the Toolbar’s intrusive, privacy-breaking toolbar and the Alexa Rankings’ bias. Indeed, some spyware programs flag the Toolbar as problematic.
Bias of the Rankings comes from the fact that the data only comes from users of the Toolbar. While the Toolbar exists for the Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Netscape browsers, and for users of Windows, Macintosh and Linux, some notable Internet users are not — such as users of the AOL/Netscape browser.
It’s commonly, but incorrectly, thought that bias occurs because the Toolbar is only available for Internet Explorer. Even before Alexa came out with their own Toolbar for Firefox, other Firefox extensions existed that provided the same data collection function.
However, it’s unknown how many people actually use the Toolbar. The Wikipedia article on the Alexa Toolbar references a 2003 forum posting estimating the actual number of Toolbar users at 180,000.
While some have talked about the Alexa Rankings being a statistical sampling like TV’s Nielsen Ratings, perhaps the only thing they have in common is that they are both samplings, and larger estimations of popularity are based upon those samplings. Nielsen, in the finest tradition of polling and statistical sampling, carefully selects their “Neilson homes”. Alexa not only does not do this, the users self-select themselves.
Additionally, Alexa indicates that any Alexa Ranking below 100,000 is unreliable, as is any site with fewer than 1000 visitors per month. According to Alexa, “the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes.”
Ken Evoy, founder of the website building and company Site Build It!, extols the virtues of Alexa Rankings, in spite of admitting that there is a great deal of “scatter”. That is, it’s quite possible that a site with only 20 visitors a day might have an Alexa Ranking of 150,000, and a site with 5000 visitors a day with a Ranking of 500,000. He bases his appreciation on the Alexa Rankings that 62% of his customers have been able to achieve traffic rankings within the top 3%.
So, how can you increase your Alexa Traffic Rank? Most obviously, get more traffic. This can be done by search engine optimization (SEO) efforts as well as by a myriad of other traffic-generating strategies.
However, you can also bump your Ranking by taking advantage of Alexa Ranking weaknesses. For instance, encourage all your website visitors to download and install the Alexa Toolbar. Visit your own website! Alexa doesn’t know it’s your website, so has no way of eliminating this bias. There are also a number of software tools and scripts that can be used, ranging from $49 to free (Alexa Booster is a popular one), to code written into forum postings.
While Alexa is facing competitors such as Compete.com and Quantcast, its Rankings are well-entrenched in the industry. While there may be reasonable questions about their validity, if you need to impress someone with the popularity and traffic of your site, paying attention to Alexa Rankings still is important. The best way to increase your Alexa Ranking is by simply getting more traffic. However, other means of increasing your Alexa Ranking should not be ignored.
http://www.alexa-secrets.com
SEO Products & Webtools
Tags: 10 Million, About, Alexa, Alexa Toolbar, Amazon, Aol Netscape, Bia, Google, Internet Explorer, Internet Users, Know, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Browser, Netscape Browsers, Page Rank, Page Views, Popup Blocker, Rankings., Search Engine Entry, Search Engine Optimization, Selling Advertising, Should, Spyware Programs, Statistic, Traffic Rankings
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Saturday, October 24th, 2009
Google Snatch is an new Clickbank ebook which promises to teach you how to get quality pay per click style traffic without spending a dime on expensive pay per click campaigns. Latif, the author, claims that you can even compete even compete in highly competitive niches such as golf without spending a dime on pay per click traffic. He proposes that only 30% of pay per click traffic are real buyers. The rest are competitors or just tire kickers. Latif claims that he makes a 7 figure income from his techniques. Well, I am not too sure about that. His site has an Alexa of 44,000 which is excellent. I have two sites in this range
and they are both money makers. My guess is 6 figures not seven.
Well, should you spend $97. on Google Snatch? The first question you really need to ask yourself is are you actually going to apply the techniques? The main problem with all “how to” books is that very few people actually apply the technques. Before buying promise yourself first that you will read Google Snatch and second that you will diligently apply the techniques. My experience with these type of books is that there is always something you can learn which is worth the price of admission but usually the book falls short of the hype on the sales page. This does not mean you should not buy it! If you can make your $97. back and then some it is worth it. Maybe you will learn techniques that you can apply to mulitple projects. Maybe you will get your own ideas and take off from there by reading the copy. As long as you are going to apply the techniques 9 times out of 10 you are not wasting your money. You may not find the magic formulat to make 7 figures but you should improve your bottom line. Up to you. Here is some of the material that is covered in Google Snatch:
1. What the gurus aren’t telling you about the smaller niches. The niches that have already been very profitable for them.
2. How to stop making Google rich by spending all you money on pay per click ads.
3. How being on the first page of Google does not cut it. This will really ruffle the feathers of the SEO gurus.
4. How choosing the wrong keywords is allowing your competitors to have a serious edge.
5. Why everyone is falling for the B.S. behind the low hanging, long tail keywords and leaving more room for others to cash in where the credit card buyers are
6. How certain words are getting more CTR, 65%+ (if you gain a high CTR, does that mean you are making more money or does it mean Google is cashing on YOU more?)
7. Why affiliate products are the MOST simplest venture to start with and Why the Internet is the land of opportunity, NOT the U.S.A. anymore
8. What those stupid keyword tools don’t tell YOU. This is so obvious that millions and I mean millions, including the gurus are doing this WRONG! This will distinguish if your site will have visitors, EVER!
To find out more about Google Snatch see http://www.thefreeadforum.com/googlesnatch.html
Matthew Meyer is an internet marketer who specializes in finding and reviewing free advertising methods. You can find out more about the Google Snatch Free Click Forumula at Google Snatch Free Click Forumula
Tags: 9 Times Out Of 10, Alexa, Books, Bottom Line, Campaigns, Click, Clickbank, Ebook, Formula, Free, Free Snatch, Google, Guess, Gurus, Honest, Hype, Latif, Latif's, Money Makers, Niches, Pay Per Click, Price Of Admission, Review, Snatch, Tire Kickers, Traffic, Wasting Your Money
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Thursday, October 8th, 2009
If you have been around the website and blog world for any length of time you are probably starting to realize how important quality back links are to your website, blog, ebusiness or ecommerce site. Back links are links that point back to your website or blog and will generally be the determining factor deciding if your site gets a little bit of traffic or a ton of it. We all know that without visitors a website or blog is nothing more than some pretty pictures sitting in the middle of what I like to call the Internet Graveyard!
First, you should know there are many ways to going about getting them but at this time we will discuss the most efficient ways. Begin by signing your blog or website up to social marketing websites such as Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, etc. Each of those companies rank high with Google and Alexa’s search engines. This is the easy part. Next the grunt work begins. You’ll need to begin making comments on blogs and Interent forums that are related to your sites content. Use a tool such as Comment Kahuna to determine the page rank of the blogs and whether or not they carry a nofollow policy or not. Otherwise your efforts will result in little progress. Make sure your comments are helpful to the website you are commenting on for two reasons. One is because if you just write something stupid and meaningless the administrator will disapprove the comment and second because people read comments. If you have wrote something intelligent they will click on your name and visit your website. Always make sure you enter your blog or website address when entering your comments otherwise the back link will not exist. The final thing you can do is begin writing quality articles to article directories such as this one. Each article you write will leave a back link to your website. You could also write articles and ask permission of other owners or bloggers to post them to their high ranking sites. People are always looking for good content especially when it comes to Internet Marketing.
If you really want tons of traffic it’s probably a good idea to get somewhere between 4,000 to 10,000 of them. Some people will tell you that quality is better than quantity and to a certain degree I agree, however, If you have thousands of quality back links you can’t help but having thousands of visitors stumbling over each other to get to your site. Just use a link checker to check the amount of back links your competition has. You will see some as high as 150,000 or so. If you could add 5 to 10 a day you should have a booming and very profitable website in about 7 months to a year.
If you don’t have 7 months to a year to build all these back links for yourself and you need a real alternative to generate large amounts of traffic fast then visit my website here.
Dan Waggoner is an eBay Power Seller and creator of Modern Day Peasants – A place for musicians and like minded individuals to learn to make extra money from home between gigs or as a permanent income.
Tags: Alexa, Back, Bloggers, Blogs, Directories, Facebook, Google, Grunt Work, Interent, Internet Graveyard, Kahuna, Length Of Time, Links, Little Bit, Marketing Websites, Page Rank, Pretty Pictures, Quality, Quality Articles, Search Engines, Social Marketing, Traffic, Website Marketing
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