Read + Write + Report
Home | Start a blog | About Orble | FAQ | Sites | Writers | Advertise | My Orble | Login

Writer's Notes - By Jeanne Dininni

 
WritersNotes.Net: Helping Writers Follow Their Dreams Through Information, Inspiration, and Encouragement!

Today, I thought I would bring you this fascinating article on how to improve your Alexa ranking, compliments of Marketing Scoop. Check it out! You'll find some interesting strategies here!


7 Proven Strategies for Improving Your Alexa Ranking

By Michael Fleischner | Marketing Expert | Internet Marketing Secrets*

After spending two years building my own website, I was very disappointed that my Alexa ranking was still higher than one million. Alexa ranks each website based on the number of visitors it receives. The top ranked website, Yahoo! has an Alexa rating of 1 or 2. Less popular sites could be ranked up to 5,000,000.

In order to improve my Alexa rating, I spent about three weeks combing the web to find tips, secrets, and proven strategies for increasing my Alexa ranking. Unfortunately, many of the sites offering advice didn’t even have a high ranking themselves. Finally I discovered a number of sites ranked within the top 100,000 that were all applying the same “Alexa techniques” to improve their ranking. I’ve begun implementing a number of these techniques and have improved my Alexa ranking by 250,000 spots in just one week.

Here’s what you need to know. The basis for many of these techniques is the fact that your Alexa ranking is based reach and page views. However it only counts those who visit your site and have already downloaded the Alexa toolbar. Anyone can download the toolbar for free which is automatically added to your browser and tracks the sites you’re visiting. Increasing visits from those who do not have the Alexa toolbar installed will not help your Alexa ranking.

I’ve summarized the 7 strategies that I’ve discovered and applied to my own website to increase my Alexa ranking. Apply these strategies to your own website and see your ranking climb towards the top.

1. Download the Alexa toolbar and use it every day to visit your own website. Alexa even gives you the ability to co-brand the toolbar with your own logo and give it away. You can download the toolbar here: http://www.alexa.com/site/devcorner/associate_toolbar.

2. Use Alexa redirection whenever you can. No matter when or where you provide a link to your website, be sure to use the equivalent Alexa redirect URL. For example, when providing a link to my website, I use http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com/. If you copy this URL into your browser, it will take you to MarketingScoop.com. To use this technique, simply replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours.

3. Encourage your website visitors to add their positive testimonials on Alexa’s detailed listings page for your website. This can be done by placing a link to the appropriate Alexa page on your website and asking visitors to “Click here to rate this website”. You can find your detailed Alexa page here: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=marketingscoop.com. Again, just replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours. By clicking on the URL, visitors will be able to reach your detailed rating page and write a review using the review link located on the left hand side of the page.

4. Write your own site reviews on the top 100 rated Alexa sites and include your redirect URL. The top 500 domains, according to Alexa can be found at http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500. When you write a review, be sure to use the redirection URL we discussed in number 2 above specifically for your website [http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com].

5. Download the Alexa ranking button, traffic history graph, info links, and other traffic counters onto the page of your website that receives the most traffic. For example, at the bottom of my home page http://www.marketingscoop.com, I’ve added the Alexa ranking box. You can do the same for your own site by visiting http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup. You’ll notice that I haven’t added the traffic history graph. This is because it wouldn’t look appropriate on my home page and because Alexa is only providing detailed history on the top 100,000 sites. So if you’re not in the top 100,000, site stats would not be available.

6. Take an inexpensive advertisement out on the ExactSeek search directory for only a few dollars per month at ExactSeek.com. Search engine results are directly correlated with Alexa rankings. You’ll notice that if a website is highly ranked on ExactSeek, chances are that it will be highly ranked on Alexa.

7. Get listed on as many search engines as possible by placing a free listing in DMOZ. This is the largest human edited directory on the web and is co-branded among hundreds of thousands of sites. Be patient though, it often takes up to 5 months before you see your website listed after submission. Even though it takes longer than it should, you have little say in the matter because it’s so widely used across the Internet.

These simple Alexa strategies are easy to implement and will make a huge difference in your Alexa ranking. Ultimately you want visitors to do more than visit your home page, you want them to interact with your site. Be sure to optimize your home page for SEO purposes, ease of use, and interaction. Creating a positive user experience will get visitors to return again and again.

*Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. Visit today for free marketing information and marketing blog directory. Michael has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit his marketing blog for further details.

**************

The above article is reprinted, with permission, from the Marketing Scoop website. Hope you find it helpful!

Happy Alexa-tising!
Jeanne


Did you enjoy this post? Don't leave me lonely--Please comment!
35
Vote
   



Freelancing Journey, a blog which refers to itself as "The Road to Business Success for Writers & Bloggers," is literally loaded with info, tips, links, leads, techniques, advice, and other resources that can help you, the freelance writer, make the most of your own website or blog. Covering many different aspects of the freelance writer's creative, professional, practical, and even personal development, this site has something for everyone interested in any type of freelance writing.

One post, "Page Rank, Back Links and Blogging," posted June 22nd, 2007, explains why page rank is important and provides tips on how to obtain quality backlinks to your blog. Another, more recent post, titled "Definitive List of Paid to Blog Services," dated June 28th, 2007, links to a very comprehensive discussion of the subject found in a post on another helpful blog. In addition, Freelancing Journey's "Roll of Honour" includes a long list of links to other blogs about writing--and blogging--as well as numerous other writing resources, markets, and marketing blogs.

Freelance writers are busy people, whose time is often severely limited. But taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule today to pick up some timely tips and advantageous advice could just save you a great deal of time and trouble over the long term.

So, check out Freelancing Journey, and see if you don't agree that this blog contains some helpful literary and marketing signposts to guide you along your freelance writing travels.


Bon Voyage!
Jeanne



Did you enjoy this post? Don't leave me lonely--Please comment!




42
Vote
   



Last time, I gave you four great websites where you can get your work published: Creative-Poems.com, MoonTownCafe.com, Helium.com, and AssociatedContent.com. A few helpful hints about each of these will make your experiences with them more pleasant, more productive, and less frustrating. In this post, we'll cover some of the idiosyncracies of Creative-Poems.com.

The Creative-Poems website is a wonderful site, where you can receive recognition for your work through member comments, weekly Featured Poetry Awards, and monthly Poetry Contests. They do not pay for the poems they post, though they do offer prizes in their monthly Poetry Contest.

At Creative-Poems, non-premium (free) members--as well as trial members--are allowed to place up to five posts on their site in a 24-hour period. (Premium members are allowed eight.) This is somewhat misleading, though, and requires a bit of clarification.

At first glance, it would appear that you'd be able to post up to five--or eight--poems to the site every 24 hours--and this can, indeed, be the case, provided you are very careful not to leave any typos or other errors in your poem, which might require its modification after it's been posted! The reason for this is that, should your poem require editing after posting, you will be resubmitting it after making your corrections--just as if it were a new poem--and thus you will be using another of the finite number of posts you are allowed daily. (This can be a bit frustrating.)

If you're anything like me, you could use an infinite number of posts to edit, modify, correct, and improve your poems to your satisfaction before final submission! But, alas, this is the real world, and every website is set up differently. So, always preview your work before submitting, to be sure your formatting is the way you want it and your work contains no typos. (Occasionally, you'll miss something and need to resubmit--we're all human--but at least you'll know that you aren't wasting most of your posts simply correcting errors!)

Another important point about formatting, while we're on the subject: At Creative-Poems, the default setting--for both poetry submissions and member comments--is centered. So, if you want your poem or comment to be left-margin justified (which is generally my personal preference) you'll need to select your text--if it's already been entered--and click the appropriate icon. (You can also simply click this icon before entering your text with the same effect.) Both regular and premium members may save, for later posting, up to five drafts in addition to the five--or eight--poems they may post in a 24-hour period, in case they aren't quite ready to post their work when they must leave the site.)

With a little prior knowledge of the workings of this great site and the obstacles you might encounter there, you can be well on your way to a long and fulfilling relationship with a dedicated group of site administrators and moderators who are friendly, helpful, responsive, and eager to showcase your work!

Creative-Poems.com is a fabulous forum for your work and a great community of friendly poets, who will help encourage you along the path of self-expression through that most magical of mediums: Poetry! (A very small word with a very big meaning!)*

If you are a poet and haven't yet visited this site, I would definitely--and without reservation--recommend that you check it out!

You'll be glad you did!


Till next time,
Jeanne


*I've written a short article on exactly this subject entitled "Why is Poetry So Difficult to Define?" Why not drop by AC and take a look?



Did you enjoy this post? Don't leave me lonely--Please comment!





71
Vote
   


Moderated by Jeanne Dininni
Copyright © 2006 2007 2008 On Topic Media PTY LTD. All Rights Reserved. Design by Vimu.com.
On Topic Media ZPages: Sydney |  Melbourne |  Brisbane |  London |  Birmingham |  Leeds     [ Advertise ] [ Contact Us ] [ Privacy Policy ]