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.

Tags: alexa, alexa toolbar, search engine optimisation, seo, seo thunder, tips & tricks

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.

Tags: alexa, alexa toolbar, ranking, seo thunder, useless

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!

Tags: google instant, longtail, search marketing, seo, seo thunder

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.

Tags: faster indexing, search engine optimisation, seo, syndication, twitter

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!

Tags: tld, top level domains

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).

Tags: browser, google, pagerank, seo thunder

This is probably the most simple explanation I’ve seen yet of how Google PPC bidding works & how increasing / improving certain factors within your ads to make them better for users will actually lower your overall PPC spend.

Essentially a higher quality, more targeted & more well written ad will attract a higher click through rate & therefore improve the ad rank quality score. The actual cost per click is determined by the quality score of the ad & the maximum cost per click … therefore a higher quality score means a lower cost per click and higher ad rankings. A win/win situation.

Tags: ad quality, google, google ppc, pay per click, ppc, quality score

PLR articles are private label resell articles. That means that once you purchase the article / content you are free to resell it.

A common belief in SEO / Internet marketing circles is that if you purchase PLR articles you can then spin them (reword them) and make them unique enough to promote as your own without incurring any duplicate content penalties from Google.

The main problem I have with this is: How much of a difference do you have to make to an article / page / piece of content before it becomes unique in the eyes of the search engine?

Plus, if you are only rewriting it purely to get round the duplicate content filter, surely it isn’t going to be saying much new that isn’t already available … therefore you’re unlikely to get people linking to it … and therefore unlikely to gain much benefit from it.

My other problem is probably more personal. You see, when I write an article I want it to have value and be genuinely useful to myself (as a reference) as well as a website visitor. Therefore I often find it difficult purely to switch a few words around and change a pre-written article.

Very often I’ll end up scraping it and writing my own from scratch anyway …. so there’s no huge benefit for me to buy PLR articles.

That said, I’m sure people will continue to buy them & tweak them & they will continue to evade the dup. content filter … but shame on you! Bring some value to the web & your followers and they’ll be forever greatful

Adam Gardner is a freelance SEO / Social Media Expert. Follow him on twitter @agseo or subscribe to this blog via RSS.

Tags: plr articles, search engine optimisation, seo

Google’s new Layout : How it Affects You

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Google have just roled out a new layout with more in-depth search options down the left hand side of the page. The choices in this column aren’t necessarily new, they’ve been available for some time.

Some of the options will already be familiar to users such as maps, videos, images & news since they’ve been available (and still are) along the top of the results page for a while now.

However the new additions to these search options are critical – they have been available for a while, but only if you went looking for them in the sub menus at the top of the results pages.

These new options include Blogs, Updates, and Discussions.

Blog Search

Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com) has been around for some time although people will notice it more now. If you want to find the latest blog post / opinion / review for a product or site then this is surely the easiest way to find it without specifically intending to use the blog search engine from the outset. If you needed another reason to start a business blog, surely this is it!

Updates

The updates option in the Google results pulls data from the real time search results (sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google Buzz, etc.) It’s now more important than ever to be listed in the real time search results – Get a Twitter account!

Discussions

This option returns results from the forums, Q&A sites & help sections. Helping out and answering questions in forums and message boards has always been a great way to get noticed and build a reputation in your industry, but now that there’s a dedicated search option … isn’t it essential that you encorporate it into your online marketing strategy?

It’s worth baring in mind that each of these options have sub-options to return and sort data by freshness (last 24 hours, last week etc.), length and also by location.

Therefore if you’re running a local SEO campaign this could be a potential goldmine of relevant traffic!

Tags: affects, effects, google layout