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.

If you would like to get ahead of the competition, request a free no obligation SEO site review today. We will prepare your personal report and get back to you within 48 hours.

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!

Here’s another quick question from one of our readers:

Q:

Will syndicating a link to your posts on an established Twitter account improve how quickly those pages get indexed, and are they also more likely to be kept in Google’s main index (not in the dreaded supplemental) and therefore rank a bit better?

A:

Twitter links are no-follow which means search engines don’t follow them – therefore they have no impact on your backlink count or how quickly you get indexed.

They can indirectly generate backlinks (people find a link in a tweet they like & independently blog about it – creating a dofollow backlink).

Twitter’s main strength is as a targeted traffic driver to your website.

Missing www. in front of URL in Google Search Results. Help!

Question

If you search for my site on google (here) it’s the fourth one down.
However, the url on the bottom of it doesn’t have a www. in front of it.

Why is this and how can I fix it?

Answer

Have you set up a redirect to the non www. version via htaccess or a redirect on your server?

Sign up for a Google Webmaster account & there’s a setting within the control panel where you can specify which version Google should use.

As an aside, always set up a redirect (301, permanent) from one to the other … this prevents canonical (and potential duplicate content) issues in the search engines.

Top Level Domains (TLDs) and SEO

Question: I am aware that content is the best way to go for SEO. With content I have managed to get 1st place in google for some good keywords, even on a blogger domain.

I also am aware that the domain name can play a HUGE role in SEO, I have ranked well for certain keywords, with ok content and ok backlinks with .info domains.

My QUESTION is will it help with SEO if I get an exact keyword domain on a non tld country domain, for example insurance.se etc.

Thanks for your help.

Answer:

TLDs only play a part when it comes to targeting specific Google’s (.co.uk, .com.au, .de etc.) however with a non-specific TLD you can always tell Google which you’d like to target via Google Webmaster console … just with a country specific TLD it’s done automatically – you don’t have the choice.

In terms of TLD “power” no one TLD has any more power than another (Eg. It’s a myth that .org carries more weight simply because of the TLD).

The advantage with having a keyword included in your domain is that your keyword becomes a natural part of the link – most non-SEO people use mysite.com as their anchor text – and if your keyphrase is included by default then it’s a win-win!

Does a users choice of browser, and more specifically how compatible a site is with multiple browsers, influence Google’s PageRank algorithm (how much PageRank a website is ‘awarded’)?

The simple is no.

PageRank is based on the number of links pointing to your site & how reputable those links are (how much ‘weight’ they carry in Google’s eyes.)

In other words, PageRank is based on how many links & the quality of those links towards your website. To quote Google’s Matt Cutts “it is completely independent of the content of your site”.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t take cross-browser compatibility (ensuring your site works on multiple browsers) in to account … of course you should!

In fact I’d argue that ensuring your site is compatible in all common browsers (and all fairly new versions of those browsers) is much more important than explicitly worrying about PageRank (see my article on why PageRank doesn’t matter).

Personal details of 100 million Facebook users have been posted publically online.

The list is available as a freely downloadable file from the file sharing site Pirate Bay & has already been downloaded over 3000 times.

Facebook has responded by saying that all the information it contains is already available via publically browsing a users page or via a basic search engine search. “No private data is available or has been compromised,” Facebook said.

What makes this content truly useful though is the manner in which it is presented. It is ordered and collated in such a manner as to be useful & searchable.

So, no private data but this still highlights the amount of information that people freely (arguably unaware they’re doing so) on sites like Facebook by leaving the default privacy settings.

Zopim Chat

Zopim Chat (non affiliate link) is a live chat feature, much like Facebook chat, which allows users to quickly and easily connect with customer service, technical support or sales representatives directly from the website.

Apart from the obvious advantage of quick, instant service, the admin section of the chat provides all sorts of other useful information and features such as chat logging and live updates about which page a user is currently viewing – making technical support and sales enquiries very easy indeed as you know exactly what the customer is looking at.

Crucially live chat is a modern and informal communication method. It has none of the formality of a letter or phone call & therefore users feel instantly more relaxed & open.

Much like emails or phone calls, good solid metrics must be in place when using live chat facilities:

• How long should a customer be expected to wait?
• Is it acceptable to take a customers details and call them back, or is a live & instant response expected?
• How are more traditional metrics measured such as conversion rates?
• How do you deal with competitors / distributors looking for informaton that they may be restricted to (but can gain access by posing as a customer) ?

The answers to these questions may well vary between industries but in my opinion they are very similar to a phone call. If you don’t have enough information to hand, it’s very natural to ask for details and call them back.

Remember, this is about being open, informal & honest with visitors. Forging genuine relationships on their level and being as helpful as possible while still maintaining a business / sales related approach to the conversation (upselling should still always be encouraged).

A chat function can instantly catapult your site into the top percentile of memorable sites simply because it’s new, useful, incredibly easy to use and as yet hasn’t been widely adopted.

If you aren’t using a chat function, you certainly should be.

Oh & did we mention that installing zopim chat is as easy as embedding two lines of code on each page? No complex installs or server maintenance & great prices on upgraded accounts.

It also work on smartphones such as the iPhone & Blackberry via IM – stay in touch with your clients wherever you are!

The only issue we’ve found with Zopim is that it does seem to slow down IE6 significantly. In a perfect world no-one would still be using a browser that is almost a decade old, but we don’t live in a perfect world and there is still a small percentage of users on IE6.

Our recommendation? Check your stats before implementing this if you have a high proportion of IE6 users as you don’t want to ruin their experience because they’ll simply leave your site.

A fantastic piece of software, the free user account should be enough for many small businesses & the small upgrade fees for larger accounts more than justifies itself as a communication line to your customers.

Can be slow with IE6.

Overall – 4/5 Stars