Interested in having PR firms and Google Love You?

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Many of you already know this, both of these guys check out your Alexa Ranking when deciding whether or not to give you a 2nd look.

I know it’s an old topic, but i’m bringing it up since a few fellow bloggers have asked if Alexa matters anymore and because Mayura did a little poll on twitter a week or so ago about alexa ranking.

I’ve also got an inside scoop for you. Something I’ve known about the Alexa Rank System, but didn’t really think about it.
Don’t you hate that? You know it, it’s been there all along, but it seemed like such a little thing in the face of bigger things that you just didn’t bother to really look at it?

And many of you probably know this and pay attention to it, many of you probably know this but didn’t actually realize it like i did, and many of you just don’t give a shit. Which is fine.

This post is for

Those who want warm fuzzies from PR firms and Google

So…let’s get to it and start with a recap.

What is an Alexa Rank?

The Alexa traffic rank is based on how many people have visited your site and how many pages each have viewed over the past 3 months. Though your rank can change day by day, it is based on the traffic you received in the last 3 months from that day.

What are the advantages of having a lower rank?

#One, if you have a lower rank, it means you have good traffic. So you’re either a social maven or you kick ass at seo.

#Two, to advertisers and PR firms, you having #One means they can buy exposure through you.

#Three, Google takes this rank into consideration when ranking you in search engines. It’s not the only thing they look at, but it influences their decision. It gives you a bit of search engine ranking oomph.

Why does this piss me off?

Remember that old saying, you’ve got to have money to make money.
Well, as far as google goes, you’ve got to have traffic, to rank in google, to get traffic.
:-/

So…How do you better your alexa?

Get more traffic.
How do you get more traffic?
Social Media and Search Engine Marketing.

I’m not going to break down the social media part, cause really, I’m no maven.

Butt I kick ass at SEM, so here’s what I can tell you.

Search Engine Optimize Your Site.

1. Install an seo plugin: All-in-One SEO or WordPress SEO from Yoast. (I switched to the WP SEO a few months ago)
2. When writing a post where you’re reviewing or just want to rank for a hot topic, search out your keywords. Find those that have the least amount of compettion and use them in your post and in your seo plugin. Don’t go crazy, Google will bitch slap you for it.
3. Write engaging content for those keywords. They need to be enjoyed by readers, not just a bunch of words for the search engines.

Do this daily.
Seriously.

Before I let you in on the inside scoop on Alexa, I’d like to share a success story with you about a Mom Blogger who Kickes Ass and has Google loving her to bits and pieces.

 Success Story

Pragmaticmom.com

Pragmaticmom is a KidLit blogger and Random House community leader.
On Pragmaticmom.com she shares motherhood, book review posts and educational activities that your kids will find fun while learning.
She’s one smart chic, she blogs about her passion – her children and children’s lit – while being an affiliate. Her sound reviews, ability to relate to other moms’ needs to help their kids prosper and eagerness to help moms help their kids, has made her quite the success.

Backstory
She was hit hard in Late March during the very last Panda update when she decided to change her permalinks at the same time.
You can read about it here.
Google practically deindexed her.
Poof! Gone! She previously had hundreds of pages indexed by Google and now she couldn’t find her site in the search results if she Googled her blog name.
She hired me to get her blog back into the search engines and fix her crawl errors caused by the permalink change.
1000 crawl errors, a few changes on her blog’s backend and within a couple of days we could find her again.
While fixing every single link, I couldn’t ignore some of the things she should be doing seo wise and some she shouldn’t.
After a few emails, she ordered the Google Luv Report. It’s a customized seo report and it’s main goal is bringing you targeted traffic from Google.

Now
It’s been three months. Pragmaticmom now has better, targeted traffic (meaning visitors who stay and view several posts),
an increase in affiliate link clicks,
her bounce rate went from 80% to 8% (the gurus say 50% is average, 80% is bad),
her alexa has dropped from 480k+ to 152K. Hell, it’s better than mine.
She really took what I taught her and ran with it and Kicked Ass in the space of less than 3 months.

The Inside Scoop on Alexa

So here’s that thing that I know, but didn’t give much attention or credit. I really didn’t think about it until I was on a skype call with a fellow colleague and he mentioned it. Then I felt like a dummy for knowing it and not mentioning it first.

Let’s say this week, you received 3500 visits.
If you received 500 visits per day for seven days, your Alexa Rank will better.
If you received 3500 visits in one day, or 2000 one day and 1500 another day, your Alexa Rank will worsen.
Same 3500 visits, but Alexa likes consistency.

What do you do about this?

You do the same thing I asked Pragmaticmom to do.
You blog every day. You SEO all your posts. Even if it’s about your kids, make sure it’s search engine optimized so you get the right kind of traffic.
I don’t care if your traffic is coming via Search Engine Marketing, Social Media or both – blog everyday.
(warning: the length of your posts will affect the outcome too, it’s dependent on your topics and the structure of your site)

This is why Pragmaticmom’s Alexa is kicking the crap out of mine.  And I’m wicked proud of her.

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