I’ve been spending some quality time actually reading and researching on the internet. It’s amazing what you end up doing when your server takes a hard dump.
For me, I was surprised how mellow (A peer called it shell shock) I was when my site went down the weekend before this article. I just said “Huh?” I took a bit of a break (IE: Got some sleep.) and then started some research. That’s when I came across this info about Alexa.
Alexa is a site that gives out info on traffic information for websites.
First, an Alexa traffic rank is a bit skewed. To be ranked in Alexa, your site needs to be visited by those with the Alexa toolbar installed. More than likely, that will be webmasters. Regular web surfers don’t have need for the Alexa toolbar.
But the Alexa ranking is still important. Especially to potential advertisers who may use the ranking to weight their own risk at advertising on your site.
Then there are tricks or practices you can employ to help your Alexa ranking increase. Some seem simple and obvious and others are a bit insightful. Below are the steps I would take. There were some I didn’t like so I didn’t post them.
1) Installing the Alexa Toolbar
2) Setting your own blog as your homepage. (In conjunction with installing the Alexa Toolbar.)
3) Add an Alexa rank widget… if you’re brave enough. (This can help get clicks counted by those who don’t have an Alexa toolbar installed.)
4) Ask friends to review your site. (One of the shameless plugs, but my friends think the internet is from another planet and have no clue about these things so I’m kind of on my own in that regard.)
5) There’s the obvious: Write content related to something a webmaster would like to look over. (Share your experiences.)
6) Write the content necessary to get Dugg or Stumbled… but remember that these events are stand alone and only about 1% of any traffic spike you get from these will stick around as a repeat visitor.
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It’s hard to generate traffic. I hit on a really weird fluke with Stuff on Brusimm when I moved all my content to this one site.
I also try to just create content that I like writing about, enjoy sharing my opinion on and hopefully, entertain people into wanting to stay and read my site.
I do a few things to help with traffic, but I’ll get into that at a later time, in another post.
For now, that’s what I got on Alexa for you! At least the bits that I would use.
Are these and other manifestations of internet SEO the end all? No. They’re part of an overall scheme or collection of practices, that if you consistently deploy, will pay off. The biggest trick, I think, is patience.
There’s much more to this at the inspiring article that I’ve used as a source, Dosh Dosh. Alexa.
