LinkMoney.org

Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

Alexa is owned by Amazon and they use a rating system that estimates all website traffic.  When a site is brand spanking new it starts out with an Alexa rank of several million.  In this ranking system the smaller the number that your website receives is better.

Your site will not start to show up in the Alexa charts until your site is in the top 100,000.  To tell the truth I never worried much about it and I never have worried much about the Google Page Rank score either.  In GPR your site is rated as a number from 0 to 9, or possibly 10 not sure about that.

Now lately I have had two different companies contact me out of the blue to ask for my advertising rate for inclusion of either banner ads or a simple anchor text ad.  This is about the only time that the Alexa score really counts because advertisers that are in the know do look at the Alexa number to decide whether or not to spend part of their marketing budget with you or say John Chow.  I do have a feeling that my ad rate is slightly below John Chow’s but I want to change that.

So here’s the deal.  On the next post after this one I am going to start a contest that will run until the end of the year.  My goal is to see my Alexa ranking drop to below 100,000 and so I not only will have bragging rights but that my daily chart will look real cool in the sidebar, and hopefully the advertisers will be enticed to spend a buck or two with me.

Here is where you readers come in.  I will have multiple ways that you can enter the contest.  There will be three good prizes.  “Good Prizes!” All entrants will have an equal chance in the final drawing and you will be able to increase your chances through performing multiple tasks to help this site get some recognition.  More about all of this and I will have full details in the next post.

The following are some things that I have been doing on my own to help this site and you will no doubt want to do some of these for your own site, and I encourage it.  Some of these things will be used as entrant’s requirements to enter the forthcoming contest here on Linkmoney.org.

Here is what I have been doing lately in the case of trying to improve Alexa score.
First of all it is not an exact science but if you ever intend to sell paid advertisements it is reported that advertisers look at this score as part of their evaluation of your website. Needles to say a lower Alexa score is better.

Alexa tells us that the score is developed from an average of your past three month’s traffic stream. However what some people do not realize is that it is not a fair and accurate measurement because the only traffic that counts in Alexa’s eyes is from browsers that have the Alexa toolbar installed on them.

So a deep meaning website that might be chock full of good socially beneficial content, but might be more apt to be visited by readers that do not have the toolbar installed, do not get the votes. Primarily the sites that gain the most benefit from this system would be the make money online, or Blogs about blogging, domaining, coding, and so on. In other words the majority of visitors would be propeller heads and might more likely be apt to have the Alexa toolbar installed.

So what I recommend is that everyone go to Alexa right now and install the toolbar in your browser, and then for what it is worth and I do believe it counts, set your own website up to be your computer start up homepage. That way every time you turn your computer on or page out and revisit your own site is a vote.   (In the past two days I have seen my own score drop 6,000 points and I believe it is only from performing this feature.)

Another thing I do is to grab the Alexa sidebar widget that shows your Alexa score and the number of back links that Alexa has discovered for your site. (See mine down at the lower right hand side.)  So, just slide a text box widget over to your sidebar, and insert the code and you are good to go. I also add a text title that tells the reader to “Click for Alexa Vote” (or something like it.) That way even if a reader does not have the Alexa toolbar, and they click on the widget banner, then that is a vote for your site also.

One other thing that I have just started to do is to use the Alexa site voting feature, and I give an Alexa five star rating to friends and they return the favor. So anyone that will go to Alexa and give this site a five star rating will be immediately entered into the forthcoming contest, “and” I also will return the favor, just let me know when you have posted the five star rating for Linkmoney.org.

I have not found anyone that is willing to say for sure that it helps in the overall Alexa scoring, but the way I look at it is that I suspect it does, and if not it can’t hurt anything. So it is election season, let’s all vote each other a nice easy government job. LOL

Cheers.
Rich Hill

Ps: This site uses the CommentLUV widget and also the Top Commentator widget.  So the top commentators will receive a do follow backlink.  Do not spam it or you will be deleted obliterated, and an Exocet missile will home in on your signal generating device.  Please leave as many nice comments as you want at any time, not just for a contest event.

Happy Halloween.

Update on value of increasing Alexa ranking. If you are in to List Building you will want to check out Jack Humphreys instructions on how to get more subscribers to your list.

I had the honor of being asked to do an audio interview about my experience with Internet marketing and Blogging by fellow BlogSuccess member, Beat Schindler.

So we did it last night over the telephone and Skype and Beat put the file up on his Blog this morning.  Beat is quite the interviewer and he drew out history and background and some personal information that you might find of interest.

I also gave some good tips on how to get started Blogging and gave some of the Blogging Make Money ideas that have worked for me, and was also allowed to talk about my favorite business venture, 3rd Party Blog.

What many business owners do not realize yet is that there are services such as ours that will take over the whole Blogging program for your company, from start to finish.

3rd Party Blog is not just an article writing service.  We do the whole thing, we come up with an appropriate Blog name, we procure the hosting for you, we install the WordPress Blog, and we install all of the plugins and gadgets that will make your Blog shine really bright in the eyes of the robots that spider your website.

Our team also does the market research, competition research, and keyword reasearch to get your new company Blog noticed by the search engines.  Our writers are expert at writing keyword emphasized Blog posts that will bring your site right up closer to the front of the pack.

Go ahead and listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link below, and if you have any questions please contact me.

Zigzag Chats: Rich Hill

Update 9/23/09

Beat sent me a copy of the audio file directly to include on this website.

The audio was run through a filter to clean up the noise a little.

You may listen to the interview here:

Here is a new social networking site, Echodemic dot com, that allows you to cross-post your Blog articles and have them voted (echoed) on.

Echodemic dot com is in Beta and by the number of Blog posts it must have just started recently. It is sort of a DIGG like experience except that you post your whole article on their site and their readers and members get to read it and give it an “Echo” vote.

The articles that receive the most echoes move to the front page of Echodemic and you will get interested parties coming back to your website to see what else you have to offer.

This could be a great free traffic generator and will bring the type of visitor that is interested in what you have to say.

I just posted my first article and it does not have any echoes yet, but it should be fairly easy to move to the front page because it is so new that the highest echo count for most of the “best of” are only around seven (now 15) echoes or so.

I would really appreciate it if you readers of this Blog would go there and check it out. Click on the tab for “Most recent” posts and find mine that is titled “The Niche Doctor Cures WordPress Code,” and give it an “Echo.” I did alter the text a tiny bit from my Blog post of the same subject, but I don’t know if that is really necessary or not.

If you want to keep track of my posts, my user name is “linkmoneydotorg.”

Thanks much and you will no doubt want to register and become an Echodemic.com member also.

Everything is FREE of course.

I’m Rich !

ps:  This is an addition to this post.  I am asking three things of you readers.

1st – Please subscribe to this Blog with either the RSS or Email buttons.  (For six months I had them set up wrong and am just now rebuilding my subscriber base.)

2nd – Please give this post a thumbs up Stumble.  (I am not a big fan of StumbleUpon but did recieve a ton of new traffic from there today.)

3rd – Please visit Echodemic and give my post an echo (vote)  Only six more echoes needed to be in 1st place!  Thank you all so much.
http://www.echodemic.com/index.php?q=node/1357

I’m Rich !

You use keyword linkbait in comments and in Blog posts to encourage the search engines to keep moving you to the front to the pack, right?

You hear about keyword search tools and they do work, but then you hear where the Big G is going to punish users of these special tools. I personally think most of the scuttlebut is all crap, but here is a way to search for your keywords or keyword phrases to see where they rank in the serps without using any special tools, just the Google search box.

[ SERPS = Search Engine Results Page (s) ]

I use Firefox, but this probably works with any type of browser.

1 – Go to the Google search page and click on “preferences.” Change the number of search returns from 10 to 100.

2 – Search for your keywords or phrase.

3 – On the first 100 returns, go to the top of the Firefox tool bar and click on “Edit,” then “Find in this Page,” and type in your url that you are hoping to gain search rank for, or enough of the url line so that it would be a unique word.

4 – If your url is within the first 100 pages, the search will take you right to the serps listing. Just count your position number, log it and then re-check it once a week or so.

5 – If it does not show up in the first 100 returns, then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen and click on the next group of 100. You will have to click on the “Find again” tab to see if it pops up there or not. If not, continue to the next 100. I never bother to go beyond 500 because you just don’t exist at that point.

Once you know your number you can then work on promoting it with other means and keep checking later.

I have seen several of my own keyword phrases start out in the high 300′s and eventually work their way up to the first page, and even have a few that are now on page 1, number 1, so it pays to promote your keywords!

This post was inspired by a similar one on Jarret Cade dot net .

I’m Rich

Read our previous most popular Blog Post: How to Make a 125X125 Banner Ad.

There, I’ve said it. No apologies.

A year ago you would not have been able to force any level of computer programming down my craw. That is actually still the case. I HATE programming!

I was a Blogger Blogging Blog aficionado. I owned a full featured authority website in a certain field that had been active for many years, that was built by a professional company using Joomla! I had a strong user base and still do. That site led me to wanting to be able to have a more casual connection with my fans and users, so therefore I Blogged using Google’s Blogger.

I never thought about actually being able to make money off this thing called the Internet. Man, what a mistake. I will tell you that I am not one of those Eureka Kids that made a gazillion dollars, er, not yet anyway, but there is a steady stream now that I never dreamed would happen in my life time. It can only get better.

So I forced myself to learn how to install WordPress, purchase domains and hosting and build websites. You will recall that I wrote about this previously in another post: Make Money Create Blogs for your Neighbors

Well this is an update. I have built way over a hundred websites and with each one there are new challenges and new things to learn and accomplish. It seems to me that Matt at automattic probably knew what he was doing when he unleashed this fabulous free software to the world, but I could not see it at the time. Now I get it.

The old way of creating a website page by page in an editor, then uploading and debugging it are over. This Content Management System (CMS) that is open source, (as in Free,) is something that almost anyone that can dial a telephone is able to learn a little at a time. This is causing a world changing event that is progressing even as you read this.

I still figure that it takes about 40 hours to bring a site to it’s full value with all the little features and goodies that you would want, but it actually only takes a couple of hours to install the rough content of a website that even if someone were to fall off a barstool and come up on this domain by accident, it would still look like a real web site.

I have set up sites now in fields that I know almost nothing about, but they can be populated by the new owners in just a matter of minutes, well OK hours. I have built sites in cars, sports, health, history, medicine, saw mills, machine tools, hunting, camping, scouting, sales, bargains, credit, wine, geo based (like city names,) travel, dogs, weddings, antiques, art work, collecting… Get the picture?

You can do this too. Make a few bucks setting up sites for your friends, families, neighbors, and local businesses. You can do it!

First and foremost, in my opinion, is get yourself comfortable with using an ftp program. I held out on that one, and realize that was my weak point. I had played around a little with file transfer protocol in the late 1980′s. That is when I grew to hate programming. Well the ftp programs of today are not your typical father’s ftp program. There’s dozens of them and I’m not going to try to influence you with one over the other. They all do the same thing. Join a forum. Google the Hell out of any questions you might have. The ftp program will be your new best friend.

If you are just starting, pick a domain registering hosting company, (not GoDaddy,) buy one of their cheap programs, and get started. Sure the cheap ones will have you parked on a Tinker Toy server, but you get what you pay for. You can always upgrade, which you will soon do.

I now pay for hosting with three companies, two average ones with average services and bandwidth, and one super duper one that costs more that I ever thought I would pay anyone for anything, almost. But the Damn thing works and never is down. I recently struck gold with setting up a news story related website that I was able to get in on the first floor with. As an early adopter with a keyword rich url and dozens of posts, I am on the first page of you know who in just one week. I haven’t started to monetize this site yet, but I will after a while. With any luck you will be reading future posts, say in a year or so, from the South Sea Island pictured above.

Most of all, read good Blogs in the mmo field to get the impetus to get off your butt and get going. Join some forums, take some online courses, and learn from those that have been successful. I have been doing all of the above for only eight months. Now I are not quite an expurt, but I’m gaining on it.

Here is my recommendation for one of the very best programs on the Internet, and I am not even going to use my affiliate link, I believe in this man and what he does so much that I want you all to join. Like TODAY!

Yaro Starak! What a great name! This guy is unforgettable by having a name that is so like poetry that it will make you want to change your name. But that is not the reason to remember him best by. You absolutely MUST join his Blog Mastermind program! He just started one up again a few sessions ago. You will not have missed anything because all of his mentoring sessions are recorded and downloadable to the students.

You will be tied in to a Blog Mastermind forum, where you can post questions and get real excellent answers from those that know their stuff. You will be tied into a major group with a well known company, that will give you a way to help other students with social networking and to receive the same in return. That in itself is almost worth the price of admission. You want traffic? You can’t handle traffic…! (Oh no, that was from an old movie, I think.)

How’s that for a rant?

It all starts by learning WordPress. It’s not just for Bloggers you know.

I’m Rich!

(Oh by the way, in case you were wondering, you have my permission to give this post a little Link Luv by using your social networking tool listed below.)