Yesterday I wrote a post about why your Alexa ranking is completely useless.

To confirm that, I’m going to show you a simple way to manipulate your Alexa ranking and drastically improve it without building a single link, creating or distributing any content whatsoever.

This trick will work to varying degrees (depending on how many computers you have access to).

How?

It’s actually very simple.

1) Install the Alexa Toolbar on as many computers as you can.

2) Set their homepage to your website URL.

3) Sit back and watch your Alexa rankings improve.

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So many people stress about their Alexa ranking. I’ve personally seen hundreds of forum threads asking how a webmaster can lower their Alexa Ranking (Holding the no. 1 Alexa ranking position supposedly means you’re the most popular site on the net. Supposedly ‘the lower the better’).

Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news but worrying about Alexa ranking (and trying to improve it) is a waste of your time.

Why is Alexa a Useless Metric?

OK, I’ve made another bold statement so let me explain:

Alexa calculate their ranking position based upon the traffic to the website. The only problem is that they only count visitors who have the Alexa toolbar installed.

Realistically the only people to have the Alexa toolbar installed are other webmasters, marketers & tech. types therefore the data will always be biased towards those sorts of websites.

Plus, would a lower (‘better’) Alexa ranking necessarily bring more traffic? Nope. Remember the ranking position is based on the traffic you already have.

In short, using the Alexa ranking as a metric is useless because it will never (unless a lot more people begin installing it) accurately reflect the web browsing population.

Concentrate on your search rankings, traffic numbers, feed subscribers or referrals – these are the things that will actually increase your bottom line.

There has been a great deal of speculation (and fear) about what the new Google SERPS (search engine results pages) layout means for SEO & online marketing in general.

In case you missed it, or are unaware: Google Instant is the new feature of the google search engine you’ve been seeing over the past week or so:

Now as you type a query the results refresh automatically as you type.

The new layout also provides users with much more specific query suggestions.

Two things jumped out at me within 30 seconds of playing with the new layout.

1) The longtail (highly specific) keyphrases are going to become more and more relevant as users become more savvy with search and become more comfortable with typing longer phrases to find the content they require.

2) Google Instant will make SEO not just highly important for your website, it effectively makes it essential.

That’s a bold claim, so I’ll explain my logic:

If a user can continue to type and the search results refresh quickly and automatically, then the ‘barrier’ that previously existed where they’d ‘make do’ with the results they were given for a relatively broad keyphrase, has gone. They can simply carry on typing / editing until they find a result they like.

Therefore I’d go as far as to say it really isn’t good enough to ‘just’ be on page one anymore – it’s now almost essential to be in the top 5 results.

It is worth taking into consideration another important factor of the new Google Instant layout: Personalisation.

Personalised Results

Personalised search results are nothing new. They have been around for a few years and longer for logged-in Google accounts holders. Basically Google take into consideration various factors such as geographic location, search history (and probably lots of other secret metrics) in an attempt to provide users with the most relevant search results.

Therefore if you search ‘car hire’ and you’re in London, you’re highly likely to see different results to someone typing the same thing when they’re in Newcastle.

Google Instant rolls this into their new Instant update so search modifiers such as location will become increasingly important.

So, what does Google Instant mean for SEO?

• As far as we’re concerned it now makes SEO an essential part of any business marketing strategy.
• It is also highly likely to shift focus away from search (slightly) and on to promotion methods such as Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. (which you should be doing already).
• Longtail (specific) keyphrases will become more important so highly relevant, useful pages & page copy will become more & more important (coupled of course with inbound links).

Would you like to know more about your website’s ranking potential? Request a free SEO site review from SEO Thunder. Contact us today!

This may be common knowledge or very rare knowledge – I have no idea! All I know is that I’ve just discovered it so thought it may give a few of you an excuse to skip work for a few moments / hours (depending on how addicted you are to snake).

To play Snake on top of any YouTube video

• Simple! Pause the video and hold the left arrow key.
• You’ll notice the snake and the “food” pop up across the top of the video.
• Enjoy!

Be careful not to hit the walls!