Alexa, which is owned by Amazon.com, gives away a free toolbar that you can download and install in your browser. Alexa is then able to keep track of the sites you visit and compute the traffic ranking of those websites, with a rank of “1″ being the assigned to the most visited site.

If you want a more technical definition, Alexa explains it like this:

“The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users).”

http://www.alexa.com/site/help/traffic_learn_more

In April 2008 Alexa revised its methodology so as to “aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users”.

http://awis.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

How accurately this method reflects the actual surfing patterns of all Internet users is open to question. However, if you bear in mind that by the end of 2005 the toolbar had been downloaded well over 10 million times you will realize why many people still think that Alexa offers one of the best approximations that we have of website ranking, especially for the top 100,000 or so websites.

That is why Alexa remains an important measure of a website’s status and is used as a quick way to assess the popularity of a website by advertisers looking for the maximum exposure for the their money. Websites with a higher Alexa ranking also tend to be trusted more than those with a low ranking, so it is in the interest of website owners to get their sites ranked as highly as possible with Alexa.

Here are some quick and easy tips to help you do that without spending a single dollar!

1. Install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as your homepage.

2. Copy and paste an Alexa rank widget onto your website. You can get the widget code at http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup. As well as informing your visitors about your Alexa rank, it will also keep Alexa updated about the number of unique visitors surfing your site.

3. Create a customized version of the Alexa tool bar, Then place a link on your site to the download page and invite your visitors to download it. You will also earn Amazon commissions every time a user shops on Amazon via the toolbar link.

4. If you have a Wordpress blog there is a plug-in for Alexa Ranking (wp-Alexa-redirect-0.3plug-in) that you can use. Editor’s Note: This plugin may no longer work.

5. Submit your site to web directories. Although a lot of directories charge a registration fee, you can still find many that are willing to líst your site free of charge or in exchange for a reciprocal link. A lot of the webmasters who browse web directories have the Alexa bar installed, so if they clíck your link it will help your Alexa traffic rank.

6. Become an active participant on Internet marketing and SEO forums. Again, a lot of those forum participants are already webmasters and a high percentage will use the Alexa toolbar when they surf. Place a link to your site in your signature and your rank will improve when any of those people clíck through.

7. A lot of Asian and Australian websites feature in the Alexa top 100,000 and you can bet that a lot of website owners will have the Alexa toolbar installed, so it makes sense to join social networking sites that are popular in those regions, such as:

http://www.orkut.com – Orkut is owned by Google and is the second most visited site in India.

http://hi5.com – Hi5 has an Alexa ranking of 17 at the time of writing this article.

8. Become an Alexa expert and post articles that discuss Alexa ranking and SEO tips. This will attract people to your site who may be interested in downloading your toolbar, or people who have already done so. Either way, it will be good for your Alexa ranking. You could even build a whole category of articles on your website devoted to this theme.

9. Set up a freebie page on your website and post a líst of useful tools to attract other website owners to your site. Include another link to your Alexa toolbar download page.

10. Get into the habit of using Stumbleupon and other bookmarking sites to spread the word whenever you post a new article on your website or blog. Set up a group of fellow website owners so that you can have run reciprocal stumbling campaigns for better results.

If you apply these ten quick and easy methods you will definitely see an improvement in your Alexa rank and you should also start to attract more traffíc to your site!

About the Author:

Darrell Howell is an Internet Marketer and Blogger. Visit his Blog at BlueRidgeMoney

GamblerMan’s Note: This is a very important article on what is going on with Google and their latest PageRank shuffle. Thanks to Jonathan Anthony and SiteProNews for posting it.

Has your website recently sunk to “Davy Google Jones Jr’s Locker”?

Webmasters and SEO gurus have been scratching our heads for a few weeks now trying to figure out what has been happening to Google’s SERP rankings. After scouring blogs and forums for the last few days, it would seem that there is no real consensus. In fact, it seems that no one is willing to even speculate much as to what is happening. To date there has not been any official word from Google. We all know that Google does not announce their algorithm updates, much to the chagrin of webmasters everywhere.

The buzz recently on several blogs and from our own data demonstrates significant changes in PageRank and wild fluctuations in websites SERP. The last big news we did hear from Google was the June 16th 2009 announcement from Matt Cutts blog on PageRank sculpting where he discussed changes to how Google treats link juice when there are nofollow links. But that’s another blog topic altogether so if you like you can read the full post here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ so it may be that the nofollow·attribute has been rendered useless for sculpting PageRank. But then, PR sculpting was never really the intended function behind nofollow; it was merely convenient side effect.

All that Google employee, John Mu cared to say when answering a customer’s inquiry as to why his site had suddenly dropped in PR with no apparent cause was:

“Hi Radoslav

You have a nice-looking site . As far as I can tell, it looks like the change in Toolbar PageRank for your site is only due to some technical quirk and not something that you need to worry about.

Cheers
John”

Barry Schwartz (AKA “Rustybrick”) then pointedly asks:

“John, is the PR ‘Technical Quirk’ somewhat widespread?”

There was no further reply from Google. The post is available here:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=0fb59587d973cc8a&hl=en

Unfortunately, when person’s website goes south in rankings for no apparent reason, people do notice and do worry about it. So unless Google opens up a bit we are left scratching our heads as usual, trying to figure out what is going on.

The following thread gives another vote to the possibility that Google is replacing PageRank value with site trust and/or domain authority: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020335.html. This is also one of many threads where users are expressing frustration and beginning to consider trying the new alternative to Google, Bing. Watch your back Google.

There have been some major experiments this year form Google that were relatively short lived and those are fine. We all expect to see the occasional wild results for a weekend every few months along with quarterly PageRank updates. The June PR update was enough of a surprise coming so close on the heels of an update late in May: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020273.html. The update itself is not too shocking. What is interesting is that this is happening so soon after Google’s last update and the fact that garbage results and rapid ranking changes have been coming steadily for weeks now. It’s about time Google lets things settle down before more people get the bright idea to give Bing a try.

Here are some direct comments from the forum members at webmasterworld.com:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3943981-4-30.htm

“It has been my observation “followgreg” (a username) when the SERP’s get like what you describe above this is what [Google] wants to happen so the Review team and Matt’s team can put the necessary data in place that will deal with what your describing. It is easier to review a site when they are on page 1 verses page 200 and [Google] knows what filters were relaxed that would allow for the “New” 1st page ranking to pop up. I myself don’t see the polluted SERP’s as your describing but then again I am not in every sector and can only look at the nitches I am working under.”

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3943981-2-30.htm

“and right now it looks like all sets of the results include some trivial and penalized and junk .edu pages rising into the top 50, along with some long-neglected good ones. This used to happen all the time with updates — shuffle things up, the poop rises, then it gets flushed, and things settle down. we haven’t had an update in that format in a long time, but it seems clear we are in the middle of whatever is changing and not the end.”

We can analyze the SERP’s, collect all the data we can find, and listen to all of the “buzz” we like, but at the end of the day we are still at the mercy of the “Big G”. It is not unusual for Google to conduct their more aggressive algorithm changes at this time of year but it is unusual to see so much experimentation so close together taking so long. With there being no official word coming from Google it’s hard to do more than speculate on the changes that we can observe. We all certainly hope that things stabilize soon and we’ll continue monitoring changes in the rankings.

But until Google decides to straighten things out can anyone say “Pay-per-click”? I knew you could…

So how does the widely varied public opinion on the matter line up with search results?

I am willing to make an educated guess that Google is experimenting with website trust and authority in their algorithm (and perhaps plenty more) however as complaints from the forums echo Googles search results seem to be rather bi-polar these last few weeks.

We have well established sites being outranked by new sites, and by sites with very few backlinks. Also by sites using black hat techniques and unfortunately we see some established and often very trustworthy white hat websites simply dissappearing from the rankings altogether. At the same time we have literally day old Craigslist posts ranking in the top results. Some .edu and .gov sites have flown to the top while others have plummetted.

How often do you see day old pages rank near the top for competitive search terms? If “trust” has that much of an affect on a new pages rankings it’s likely that “trusted” sites will dominate the rankings with every new page of content flooding out the competition and reducing their ability to gain trust. I hope the minds at Google have their sober thinking caps on and not their beer hats. But so far there seems to be little consistant rhyme or reason since we have some trusted sites dissappearing and others dominating in the SERP’s.

Luckily we had some old SERP analysis notes from June where we had a close look at one of our clients top 5 competitors for their targeted search term on Google. We decided to compare each against the current search results since Google’s latest “technical quirk”. Here’s the rundown according to Yahoo’s api and our analysis:

Former #1 website – PR 4 landing page, PR 5 root domain.

Former #2 website – PR 6 landing page, PR 7 root domain.

Former #3 website – PR 4 landing page, PR 7 root domain.

Former #4 website – PR 4 root domain

Former #5 website – PR 4 root domain

New #1 website – PR 6 landing page, PR 9 root domain, .gov site

New #3 website – PR 4 landing page, PR 5 root domain

New #4 website – PR 5 landing page, PR 8 root domain.

The results show a polarized contradiction of trusted sites being brought to the top and others being shot to the bottom while sites with minimal links and reputation seem to be beating out well established competitors for their rankings. Black hat sites are seeing the same polarized change as the trusted sites with some jumping to the top and others being sent to Google’s version of Davy Jones locker.

And on that note I have to ask the same question I asked during Pirates of the Carribean III At Worlds End… “When will this end?” And when will our plunder be kindly returned from “Davy Google Jones Jr’s Locker”?

——————————————————————————–
Jonathan Anthony and Kyle Krenbrink work for Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization, Inc. Beanstalk offers performance-based SEO services and provides up-to-date information on the SEO realm through their SEO blog and articles.

Let’s face it, anyone can build a website. There are countless companies out there offering a vast array of web building solutions, some good, some great, and some quite frankly are a complete waste of time! But throwing together a website is really only part of the story, only part of the process. There are literally, hundreds of thousands of web pages, that won’t ever be viewed and therefore stand no chance of commercial success. Some of those sites are relatively good; unfortunately their owners have misunderstood the process and have the cart before the horse…

In the online world no one just happens by your website, credít card in hand! If you’ve yet to build your website, or about to create a new site, stop! consider first exactly what you wish to achieve with that site, before you start. “Creating a website should follow a process proven to deliver a commercial end result… or run the risk of ending up, just another pretty picture in cyberspace!”

Fortunately there is a process, and I highly recommend you take a look at it… perhaps you already know it…

Content > Traffic > Pre-sell > Monetize

A time tested, 4 step process, proven to produce websites that deliver… commercially! Ok so, let’s now look briefly at each step and why they work in this particular order.

1. Numoro Uno, as always. Content.

Very, very important. Building information-rich sites is crucial. You must have high quality, unique, relevant content on your site, A; because you want to attract visitors in the first place and B; to generate long term, search engine based free traffic.

Online, people are looking for solutions, for information that leads to solutions. They use the search engines to hunt for the most relevant facts to reach this end goal solution. Your job is therefore easy… give it to them… but don’t just plonk down any old garbage and hope for the best… take your time, put in the effort, provide good quality information that will over-deliver and keep your visitor interested, satisfy her need and you will be rewarded. Over time, gradually add new fresh, useful content and you will be creating web pages valued by humans and search engines alike. On the internet, high value content is king!

2. Traffic… Ahh! The Holy Grail…

Much has been written on the subject, and many are making a good living providing (?) this elusive element.

Truth is, (excluding social media) there are but two ways to get it – you either pay for it, or you optimize for it. If you take the time to understand the basics, you can easily do both.

Paid search, (PPC) such as Google Adwords has its place, and can provide an immediate stream of targeted visitors to your website; however it is a study of its own and can, if not understood, be very costly very quickly! If you want to go that route learn with small amounts (of money) and don’t be tempted to throw good after bad… owch! been there!

Safer and arguably better, is optimization (SEO) for the organic results, as reached via a Google or other search engine search. This is simply intelligent website construction, a process anyone can do. The important point is, the optimization should be built in during the creative process, at the time you’re constructing the site; you are literally building your website to principles that make it search engine friendly, thus leading to high natural positions in organic search results, leading to of course, significant free traffic flow to your site…

3. Don’t sell… Pre-sell.

You have created a website with value rich content, and fully optimized its pages for indexing by Google (and other search engines)… Folks are arriving at your site as directed by their search results. You are keen to have them buy your goods or services, ready with your pitch… but wait! There’s another vital step in the process of converting your visitors into customers, and you’ve done half the work already…

Pre-selling is a warming up process, whereby you develop trust and confidence in your offering… it’s already well known that people are more willing to buy from those they like, trust or respect. By over-delivering relevant high value information, without appearing to be forcing a sale you will almost by default, create an atmosphere that inevitably leads to sales. Simple!

As far as your visitor is concerned, her needs are being met, his wishes are being fulfilled, you are providing the very information that is the solution to that which they are searching for in the first place. Pre-selling creates an open-to-buy mindset that smoothly introduces your visitors to your monetization offer.

4. Monetize.

Ok thanks for sticking with me, here’s the home run… This is where you make your offering enticing by introducing and highlighting the many benefits of your product or service, and detailing exactly how it offers the solution to their predicament. You have paved the way with informative, relevant content and can now look to close with persuasive sales copy.

Your call to action should be strong and concise. Tell your prospect exactly what they need to do to order. If you have a good product, and you should, let them know exactly how they will benefit by ordering from you… Today!

So there it is… in brief… A formula simple, yet highly effective. Generate targeted free traffic via your highly optimized website, provide information packed content that offers solutions, warm up or pre-sell your visitors by over-delivering on the quality of that content, then and only then, monetize by introducing persuasive, benefit focused sales copy to convert pre-sold visitors into enthusiastic customers. For full details on how to implement each of these steps (with no technical knowledge whatsoever!) grab yourself a free 48 page e-copy of The Simple Art of e-Persuasion at the info link below… or visit my site.

About The Author
Brye Bishop is a highly successful internet entrepreneur and marketer, committed to providing quality source information and assisting others in their quest for fínancial freedom. Clickfig.com …Get your free copy of The Simple Art of e-Persuasion now, simply email “eBook offer” to info@clickfig.com

I found this excellent article by Bill Platt (Links and Traffic) and thought that it fit in very well with my previous article, and in the overall Internet Marketing niche. Please take a moment after you read this to check out his website. Enjoy!

Masters Of The Google Universe: How To Achieve Top Google Rankings

For years, it has been well known that Google’s search algorithm is driven by the number and quality of links pointing to a particular URL. And as a result, it was all the rage for some time to buy links on web pages that had a high Google PageRank (PR).

But in March of 2007, Google’s mouthpiece Matt Cutts declared that Google was going to fight back against Paid Links. Google put a shot across the bow of many online marketers, letting them know that the days of easily buying links from high PageRank pages in order to influence a website’s ranking in Google were over.

The Shot Heard Around The World

With Matt Cutts declaration, a world full of online marketers began to cry foul. It was said that “They can’t do that!”

But the truth was and is that the Google Search Algorithm is Google’s intellectual property, and therefore, Google can do anything they want within their algorithms – no matter who those changes might hurt or help.

By the end of the Summer of 2007, the people crying foul had quieted down a bit and got back to the business of trying to find new ways to manipulate their website’s rankings inside of the Google search results. That is the way it has always been and always will be.

The summer of 2007 was just such an oddity… For me, it has always been exciting to challenge the brains at Google to get my websites to rank well within Google’s search algorithms. But for some reason, at that moment in time, many of those who held the top rankings in Google felt as if it was their God-given right to be at the top of Google’s search results, and how dare Google oppose God’s decree in this matter.

Yep, I know I am going to catch flak for that statement – comparing a few webmasters to religious zealots – but that is how I roll sometimes.

For me, Matt Cutts was telling people to work harder to actually “earn” what they have been given. For me, it was a chance to re-dedicate myself to the goal of ranking well in Google for competitive keywords. I did not have to change anything I was already doing, because I have never gained a single ranking in Google by paying for a link from any web page. (wink)

Google’s Search Engineers Are Not Foolish

Matt Cutts has said time and again that Google does not want to attack any problem in their search algorithms by manually deleting any participant in the Google search ranking game.

Instead, Google in every case wants to program a solution to address a particular bad practice.

I guess it might be easier for me to understand since I am also a computer programmer. It is a hobby I really enjoy, and I exercise my mind with computer programming anytime I want to improve my own websites or to build a new website. I keep my brain sharp by solving problems in computer code.

So, whenever I see Google making moves in one direction or another, I try to visualize how I would solve their algorithm problems in computer code.

In my mind, solving the paid links issue was a super-easy solution. Just look at the pages linking to a particular website, and then do a cross-comparison of the PageRank of all of those linking pages. If all of the pages linking to a particular URL have a PageRank of Four or higher, then chances are that those links were artificially created, through some kind of paid linking system.

Let me explain this in an example, where all of the sample web pages have 100 inbound links each:

If Site A has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 4 or higher, then that is unnatural and therefore suspect.

If Site B has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 0, then those links offer no value to the Internet community as a whole, and therefore Site B should not measured as a quality search result.

If Site C has a mix of PageRank 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 links, then that is more natural in its structure and it also shows that some of the links are considered to have value in the Internet community as a whole. Therefore, Site C has proven itself worthy above Site A and Site B in Google’s search results.

This example should show in no uncertain terms how easy it was for Google to properly address the issue of paid links and to put a stop to people using paid links to manipulate their websites’ ranking in Google’s search algorithms.

Publication Standards

A couple years back, I wrote another article discussing this concept in relationship to article marketing. You can read that article with third-party commentary from Chris McElroy, aka NameCritic, on the Article Content Provider Blog.

In a nutshell, I was discussing the role of article directories in the article marketing industry. Again, this solution came to me from my programming mind. The simple way for Google to have dealt with all of the junk articles that have been written for the purpose of building links to a website is to look at the article in the context of where that article is published.

The article marketing carpet bombers send their articles to hundreds of article directories to get hundreds of links pointing to their website. But the role of the article directory has always been to be a repository where newsletter publishers and webmasters could go to find articles that they would like to reprint in their own newsletters and on their own websites.

Some article directory managers bring a commitment to providing publishers with only quality articles. Other article directory managers approve anything and everything sent to them.

Through computer programming, it is relatively easy to identify which websites are article directories and which ones are not.

If an article is of good quality, then niche website publishers will find the article and put it on their own website. If the article is a crap article, then the only websites that will accept it are those article directories that publish anything and everything given to them.

As a result, it is easy for Google to look at the Linking Portfolio (list of publishing websites) of a single article and to see which articles were considered worthy of reprint by human reviewers. If the article only exists on article directory websites, then the article must not provide any real value to other people. But if the article is of good quality, the article will be able to be located on article directories AND on niche websites.

This concept very elegantly feeds into Google’s overall strategy of determining which web pages people recommend to others. After all, if you look at Google’s PageRank, it is very simply a system which measures how many people have voted on the quality or value of a particular web page.

Expanding On Google’s PageRank Formula

Google loves any system that they can conceive to measure how much value the overall Internet community gives to a particular web page.

Google naturally treats links found in the Yahoo! Business Directory and the Open Directory as higher value links, because the search engineers at Google understand that links in these directories are all approved by a human being.

Google also gives extra value to social bookmarking websites, because the concept behind social bookmarking is that individuals “bookmark” a web page when they find that web page to offer good value to its readers.

Google openly dislikes paid links and can easily identify those paid links, without having to jump through too many hoops. (This should not be confused with paying for a service that will help you increase your rankings in Google. Paying a service provider to provide services to you is very different than just paying for links on high PageRank web pages.)

Google also appreciates reprint articles that have a Linking Portfolio beyond the article directories. Once again, Google appreciates reprint articles that are shown to provide real value to individuals in the greater Internet community.

When you take a close look at the original premise of Google’s PageRank, it has always been about creating systems that measure the value of a web pages to find which web pages will best answer a searcher’s question. Rightfully so, Google believes that the best way to ensure that they are able to give their users good quality search results is to look at what web pages others have already deemed useful.

Herein rests the secret to ranking well in Google’s search results. If you can create content that people will find useful, interesting, and valuable to others, then Google’s search algorithms will look favorably upon your website.

Author’s Note – This article was originally published at: karmaseo.com

About The Author

Bill Platt has written about SEO and article marketing for a number of years. As the owner of (LinksAndTraffic.com Bill has also been providing search engine optimization services to his clients for a number of years. If you are currently spending at least $1000 per month on pay-per-click search advertising, you owe it to yourself to review and consider Bill’s Performance Based SEO Service at: linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html

There really are no mysteries on how to achieve a high ranking with the major search engines nowadays, mainly because of the amount of effective search engine optimizations available. What is search engine optimization, or SEO? Before we talk about that, you have to first understand how search engines work and give yourself a bit of know-how.

Search engines provide their users with the most relevant and current information that matches the search term that was used. They are an extremely sophisticated technology which allows users to quickly find the relevant information and websites by searching for a particular word or phrase. The results would be useless to users if the information didn’t relate to the search term, or if the results are not current. People expect the most current and the freshest information when doing a search query.

Updating your website at least once everyday and adding new material/information will help your site get noticed by the search engines. If you are going to sell any product or service online, you have to make sure you optimize your website for the search engines, which will boost traffic and sales. Because over 90% of your business will more than likely come from search engine results, you need your site optimized,  in order for you to have the best results possible.

SEO is the process wherein you or your webmaster utilizes certain techniques that enhance your website’s status. Obviously, the internet has grown vastly over the years and competition for the hottest search engine positions has created a tremendous market. Consequently, having a better understanding of the basic elements of SEO is crucial for any online business to achieve success.

When you use effective SEO techniques, it will improve the page rank of your website. While there are many tips & tricks that can be applied to increase your page rank; the most effective method, in my humble opinion, is to provide consistenly high quality content. This may seem like a simple idea at first, but there are a lot of websites that fail to provide any content that will attract visitors and that those visitors they do get, will find interesting. Sites that provide content that is interesting, well-written and updated on a regular basis, bring in visitors who are much more likely to return. So, set your website apart from the mob of boring, zombie-like sites, and you’ll bring in the traffic.

The next important factor for an effective SEO campaign, is to use keywords and phrases in your content that properly target your market. You must make sure that these keywords/phrases are the ones that your website is actually optimized for. The more keywords that you use in your content, the more likely it is that visitors will find your site when they do searches with those words. If you are consistant with these techniques, then the overall SEO will definitely increase, boosting your sites page rank.

Another method to consider is to develop a linking strategy. Not only does this provide totally free advertising for your site, it also gives the impression that your site is important and has good information because of its affiliated links. Each link pointing back to your site, is another chance for a potential customer to find you. Having more inbound links pointing to your site, means you will get ranked higher in the search engines. One thing to remember here is to gets links from sites that are related to yours. Getting a link from a baby care site to your golf instruction and apparel site will probably not get you any new visitors.

People who use search engines on the internet are looking for one thing: Information. When you provide them with quality and helpful information, the more likely you are to make a sale. Writing articles is one of the most effective ways to build up the quality content of your site. When writing these articles, make sure that you set up an easy way for your visitors to get to each article. You can do this by adding a new page for each article to your site, or by adding a specific category page where related articles can be found quickly. This allows room for more articles to be added as you write them, and it will help keep your main page clutter free. By building up an archive of articles, you bring in your visitors and give them a reason to stay on your page. The longer they stay and the more they read, the better chance you have of making a sale. You also want to make sure to include a link to these categorized articles on the main page of your site so that the search engines will crawl all your online articles.

SEO methods are important in building up your site’s rank and status. Remember, write high-quality, keyword rich content and link your site to and from a related group of other sites. In my next post, I’ll follow up with some more SEO specific strategies that are easy to implement.