Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Website Rankings and Why You Should Care #social_media #business #development #marketing


Most of us artistic people probably haven’t given much thought to web page rankings and search statistics. But once we start promoting we should realize that not all web sites and pages are equal. This is especially true if they are asking money from you to promote on their page.

Do you know what you’re paying for? Site A asks for $50 for a banner ad for a day. Site B asks for the same $50. But are they equal? Suppose Site A gets ten times the traffic that Site B does. All other things being equal, where would you place your hard earned bucks?

The same thing holds true with guest posts and interviews. Do you spend hours preparing a guest post on a site with two visitors? How do you decide where to spend your time on a blog tour?

The following is a short primer on how to measure websites. Many tools exist that will install in your browser as a plug-in. The one I use is WebQuantified. It summarizes all the major measurements in one convenient popup that resides in your browser’s toolbar.




Quick and Dirty Guide to Website Rankings

Google Pagerank: 0 to 10, with 10 being the best. Pagerank is a determination of how likely a page is to be hit, calculated by the quantity and quality of incoming links minus leakage from outgoing links. In plain English, how likely a person will arrive and stay on the page. Pagerank 10 is rare (Twitter is one). Even Google.com is only a 9. Pagerank moves on a logarithmic scale like the Richter scale. In simple terms, it is easiest to move from 0 to 1, much harder to move from 6 to 7 and progressively harder as you move up the scale. If you include lots of links leaving your page, you reduce your page rank score. Think of it as water flowing through links. The more links coming in, versus links leaving, the higher your water level.

Alexa Rank: Lower number is better. Alexa is owned by Amazon and its website rank is like Amazon book rank. The number 1 site is the most visited site on the Internet. No surprise, it is Google.com. It is determined like Nielsen ratings for TV. Users with the Alexa toolbar in their browsers are counted. Those without the toolbar are not counted. You should run out right now and install the Alexa toolbar in your browser so your browsing habits are counted and your favorite sites rise in rankings.


Compete Rank: Lower number is better. Compete works like Alexa except it extends data gathering from outside sources besides the Compete toolbar users. Compete focuses solely on the United States and provides additional data, such as Unique Visitors graph.

Pages Indexed: # of pages indexed by search engine. The more the better

Backlinks: # of sites that link to this site. The more the better

Traffic Graphs: self-explanatory, many to select from Compete and Alexa

Sociometer: # of times a page has been shared, liked, tweeted, stumbled, plussed, dug, eaten.

Download a WebQuantified Chrome Extension and you don’t even have to leave the page to see its Statistics. http://bit.ly/K39GxY

Download an Alexa toolbar here. http://www.alexa.com/

4 comments:

  1. Great info Rachelle! I just gave Alexa a try, but it's telling me it doesn't support my browser (Safari) :( I'll be trying some of the others. Thanks!

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  2. Awesome post! I downloaded Alexa. I need to work on my ranking!! :-)

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  3. Thanks for stopping by. I googled "Alexa safari extension" and it seems they have one, but of course I never tried it. You're welcome, Moody and Victoria. Glad that my explanations helped you.

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