Blogging, SEO & Online Marketing Tips

How is Your Site Ranked? Part 2

marijan — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:41:31 +0000

This is a sequel on our previous post “How is Your Site Ranked?“. WE hoped that our previous post had somewhat been useful.

We have mentioned Google Page Rank on our previous post about how is your site ranked by these ranking tools and where do we get free Page Rank Checker Tools. This time we will be talking about Alexa Rank. Alexa Rank, as displayed is quite different than PR. PR uses weighted integer values ranging from 1 to 10. On the other hand, Alexa Rank uses graphs in viewing your ranking stats.

Alexa Traffic Rank is a Trademark of Alexa Internet, Inc. (an Amazom.com Company). Alexa.com defines Alexa Rank as:

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users 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 the geometric mean of 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).

Other people might be somewhat not familiar with the Alexa Ranking System, but webmasters and specially bloggers are quite dedicated to earn high Alexa Ranking. Though displays are graphed Alexa Ranking System also uses weighted numbers in rating a site. The smaller your rank number is the better. It just means that your getting huge number of hits and reach. Also, you’ll be able to get higher advertising rates since Alexa popularity now becomes the standard in getting the great advertising rates from prospect advertisers.

How do you get started with Alexa? Download the Alexa toolbar “Sparky”. It features:

Related Links. Find sites that are similar to the one you are currently visiting.

Traffic Trend. A sparkline showing Reach over the last six months.

Reach Meter. A neat little indicator that shows the site’s Reach.

Enhanced Search. Shows Alexa Rank Indicator next to search results on Google, Ask, and Yahoo.

Traffic Rank. Shows the current site’s Alexa Traffic Rank.

Also, add up the SearchStatus extension which displays your Alexa Rank and Page Rank as well.

Are you wondering why do we bother on knowing our Alexa Rank and even work out on getting a smaller rank number? We’ve mentioned earlier about getting higher advertising rates when we get smaller rank number. Well then, that is because advertisers, ad networks and even webmasters use your rank in weighing the value of a link in your website. Most of the bloggers depend their means of monetization on links and site selling. And, if you are one of them, then you definitely want to increase yur Alexa Rank. Some of the networks which base your ad selling strength on your Alexa Rank includes ReviewMe and Text Link Ads.

It is definitely quite worthy to check our site rankings once in a while. It helps us know our worth on the web.

Similar Posts:

How is Your Site Ranked? Part 1

marijan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:21:46 +0000

Ranking your web is a very important statistical analysis. The higher your rank is the better. What really are these website ranking tools? Basically, as what the name says, these tools rank your site as to how important your site is into the web. How do you know your stats? Well, there are a lot of tools on the web developed for ranking your site. Two most popular ones are Google™ PageRank (PR) and Alexa Rank.

We will be tackling these tools one by one starting with the Google™ PageRank, and then we will proceed to the other tools on our next post.

Google™ PageRank, a website ranking tool named after Larry Page the co-founder of Google, Inc. PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by Google Internet search engine. It assigns a weighted numerical value to your site and even a specified page on your site. Its purpose is to measure how important your site is into the web. As defined by Google,

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.”

That is, Google counts every hyperlink of a page to the other page as a vote of support for the other page and the more votes the page gets the more important the page becomes into the web. Although it is not the only factor the Google uses in ranking pages, it still is an important factor you should be aware of.

Aside from Google, some websites had also developed the PR tool for you to check out. Here are some of the sites offering a PR checker tool:

Some of these sites offer the PR Checker tool to be added on your site easily. Yu may want to add the tool. And well, it doesn’t hurt just to visit these sites and check out their offers. Some of them even offers a tool not just for PR but also for the other Website rank checkers as well.

Similar Posts:

5 Webmaster Tools Provider for your Site

marijan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:00:42 +0000

When starting to blog, we always think of how do we improve traffic into our site so that our site becomes popular and thus attract more money. Yes, in our time now, we blog to attract money, well mostly. But how do we do this? Webmasters may know the answer, but how about the newbies? So I made up a list of 5 websites offering a these webmasters’ resources for newbies and even those webmasters to check out.

Google Webmaster Central.

They offer a one-stop shop for webmaster resources which will greatly help you with your crawling and indexing questions. They will introduce you to offerings that can improve and increase traffic into your site and connect you with your visitors. Here, you can connect with the webmaster community to fully help you with enhancing your site. You can see how users are reaching your site. You can make sure that you can make your site more search engine friendly.

WebmasterToolkit

WebmasterToolkit came into existence as a compilation of a webmaster tools developed just to assist the site owner and a few other webmaster with their daily works. After they had created a number of online tools they decided to make the site public so that other webmaster can check out their tools for free. Their collection of tools and resources freely offered continued to grow to this day. They currently have 35 free webnmaster tools available. They aim to offer useful tools for the beginners and even to the advanced webmaster.

Free-Webmaster-Tools

They offer quality tools for webmasters and to newbies alike. Over 1400 Directory is available for your website needs, and insightful articles and tips.

Some of their tools offered are the following:

Meta tag generator
Graphic navigation bar
Flash Navbar generator
Flash TopBar generator
DHTML menu generator
Drop down menu generator
Search engine keyword position analyzer (new)
WhoIs lookup
Pop-up maker tool
Graphics search
Link popularity check (new)
Google dance tool (new)

iWebTool

This site is one of the top ranking sites offering quality tools for your site. Some of their tools freely offered are the following:

Backlink Checker
Cloaking Checker
Google Pagerank Prediction
Index Checker
Keyword Density Checker
Link Popularity
Multi-Rank Checker
Spider View
Redirect Checker

AuditMyPC

Audit My PC is a website promoting security awareness and web security tools free of charge. They are a vulnerable evaluation, privacy test, and research and security information site. The site was originally started in October 2000 and been moved to AuditMyPC shortly after. The site was created due to the desire of the owner for a greater understanding of security and in-depth web based programming. The owner was also motivated by the lack of similar sites and the need to perform remote security scans without limitations, fees and long registration requirements. The information the site provides about your system is very much available in the net. The purpose of this site though is not to scare you but to inform you.

The site offers free webmaster tools to help beginners as well as the pros in improving your ranking on search engines.

The webmaster tools allow you to see your website the way search engines do and the y offer the following services:

Building sitemaps for any search engine no matter how large the site is.
Building Yahoo, Google, XML and more.
Building HTML Sitemaps for human visitors and smaller search engines.
Finding broken or missing links and pages are linking to them.
Checking the load time for each of your urls.
Viewing server headers, checking for proper redirects and more.
Viewing and analyzing page content for proper formatting.
Viewing keywords and other information used on pages.

These site are just a few of the many providers available on the net. They may be a few but I am quite sure you will go a long way from these sites.

Similar Posts:

3 Mailing List Provider for Your Blog

marijan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:35:20 +0000

As your website becomes more popular, more and more readers would want to get updated of all your posts. That’s what we, bloggers would always want after we have published our blog. We’ve always anticipated for the time that our blog be known by the public. And when that time comes we need to update our readers with everything new on the site. So what do we do? How do we update them when most of them don’t visit our site 24/7? Most of us know the answer; it’s through the aid of mailing list services. There are a lot of websites offering this service, but how do we know which one’s the best? It is either through the reviews the site is getting, by popularity of by own experience or probably some other way.

So I’ve made a list of some mailing list service provider which I have known so far and of which I think would be reliable.

Aweber.

Aweber is founded in 1998. They create email marketing software to aid small businesses in automating email follow-ups and newsletter deliveries. With Aweber, you can deliver timely email newsletters and offers with their Broadcast tools.

Their offer includes:

Creating and sending newsletters immediately or schedule them for later;
Splitting test messages to find the best offer or best subject line and tracking responses;
Tracking website clicks using own domain name without the unsightly click tracking links;
Automatically twitter your email newsletters; and
Over 100 pre-made templates to choose from, or use your own, or even create messages with their built-in editor.

They offer modest price which grows only with your success. Sign-up is only 1$ with a 30-days moneyback guarantee.

Bravenet.

This website offers a lot of web tools. They have everything you need to host, design and spice up your website. They specialize in web tools so you can offer your guests the best user experience possible. Their newest tool available for you now is the mailing list service. Their features and benefits include:

Double opt-in. Confirmed subscriber registers are more secure from spam complaints.
Email notifications. You can get notifications when there are new subscribers to your mailing list.
HTML newsletters. They offer an HTML Builder for you to be able to create and send email from your mailing list.
Subscriber search. You can easily find subscribers by name or even by date.
Multiple templates. Many pre-built HTML email templates are available for you to choose from.
Full site integration. You can completely customize the mailing list subscriber box.
Easy installation. All you have to do is just copy the code into your website.

They offer a free service so you can now maintain a distribution mailing list with ease.

Your Mailing List Provider (YMLP).

Created in 2002, YMLP is now one of the best mailing list providers. They offer both free version and Professional version for a modest price (3.75$/month) for you to choose from. They offer email newsletter builder with over 30 sample templates, newsletters are sent fast and professionally through YMLP’s mail servers.

Some of their free service includes:

Contacts of up to 1000 (professional version is unlimited)
Personalize newsletters with “mail merge”
Schedule newsletters
Unlimited image hosting
Send in any language
Redirect people back to your site
Automated list deduplication and clean-up

There are a lot more newsletter provider in the web for you to choose from. And these three I have listed are just a few. I hope even with just three of the best newsletter providers, you’ll be able to find one which would be best for you.

Similar Posts:

Styling Your Blog: Still an Essential Task

marijan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:13:11 +0000

In our previous posts, we’ve always tackled about optimizing your website. We’ve talked about link building, SEO, and the like. But there is one more piece that we dare not focus on. There may be people who think that blogging and website managing is just all about getting into the top rank of search engines through link building and all. But in my own point of view, one thing shouldn’t be left unattended or even paid the least of your attention. This last piece is the appearance of your blog. That’s right, the appearance of your blog is just as important as how you link your sites to others and how you build your site for higher percentage of getting into the top rank.

We bloggers all know that when you start blogging, your blog is in the default styles. And we often don’t want to use these default formatting. We want it to be reflective of what our personality is, or we want it to be somewhat characterizing what our blog is all ab

out.

We may always do what we want for the style of our blog, BUT we should also be sensitive of what our readers might be expecting. That is, we must be careful on how we style it. We should think that our readers have different likes and different preferences over the style they would want. So, to be on the safe side, we should have our style and formatting in a way that would blend in on some if not all preferences we may find in our readers.

And so, to guide you in choosing what style and formatting to use, here is a list of some tips I’ve found to be helpful enough:

ON THE COLORS

Sometimes, we may want to use our favorite color schemes on our website just to be reflective of our personality, BUT bear in mind that we should also reflect on what our blog’s subject is. While a black and red color scheme may be your favorite, you should consider of what your readers might be reading. Black and red color scheme may work perfectly of a Goth fashion site, but what if you have a leisure activities and fitness tips site? Would that scheme still be applicable, or would that scheme be completely out of place? Probably, it wouldn’t fit right? Similarly, pastel colors might perfectly fit on teenage fashion site, but would look totally terrible on a men’s apparel site. So to be safe, just say NO to bad color schemes. Choose those colors which would perfectly fit for all ages and all walks of life.

ON THE TEMPLATE

More often than not, we think of dumping the default template the moment we start a blog. And if we don’t want to create a template of our own, we hire or ask someone to do it for us. But why bother when there are tons of some free templates on the web. Then, adapt it a bit on your desired appearance. You may enhance the colors to what you’ve decided to employ and then add a unique banner logo.

ON THE FONTS

While you may want to see your handwriting be the font of your blog posts, consider again that it may not perfectly suit on your blog subject. Consider again and again what your readers might expect. So I have here a screenshot of font families and styles from www.w3.org which you might want to use on your blog. These font families and style though generic will surely help you be on the safe side.

(You can see more sample of these fonts on www.w3.org)

But then again and again and again I’m telling you that there are TWO things, yes only two things you should always remember on styling your blog, CONSIDER THE USER EXPERIENCE AND EXPECTATION. These two are very important things so keep them in mind.

Thanks for having a time reading this one, I hope you had somewhat been reminded to update your blog appearance into a style that would be likable enough to anyone who would be visiting your site.

Similar Posts: