Alexa Undergoes Major Overhaul, Smoother Data Aggregation

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Some caveats about Alexa. Data collected from Alexa comes from users who have the Alexa toolbar installed in their browsers.

If you’re in a tech-oriented space like online marketing or technology, you’d generally rank better than non-tech-oriented niches like scrapbooking or home repairs.

Alexa is not a comprehensive metric, but it’s useful to get a rough indication of your traffic and it’s origins.

That being said, Alexa has recently (within the last 24-48 hours) been tweaking the presentation of their traffic rankings so the information is presently in a holistic fashion.

There’s no “new” data being presented, but you can access it in a single screen now, where previously you had to flip between several screens.

Best of all, the service continues to be free.

What’re the major changes?

The “reach” has been changed to present the percentage of Internet users you’re reaching (eg. 5% of “all” Internet users), where previously it showed a reach of 100 users per million users.

alexa

In my opinion, it’s not a very useful metric.

“Traffic Rank” and “Page Views” don’t appear to have changed.

What’s interesting are 2 new metrics.

I don’t want you to get the idea that they’re “new”, but rather Alexa now aggregates the information from other screens and consolidates them on your “Traffic Ranking” page.

Here’s the first one:

alexa

Which is useful because Continue reading →

Why Does Social Traffic Bring You Instant Floods of Traffic?

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If you haven’t yet, check out: “Social Networking 101: Use the Internet 5 Exposure Strategy to Fasttrack Your Internet Marketing Credibility”

Here’s why social traffic works.

People like people. People want to belong to a group. Even if it’s a small, unknown group, it’s a group nonetheless.

People are constantly on the search for meaning. Having read “Do what you love, love what you do“, you’d know that once the physiological (food, water, sex) needs and safety needs are satisfied, all individuals would look for “love and belonging”

Even in the case of rebels, or deviants, they’re constantly seeking validation from society, that they’re being rejected. Call it building “anti belonging” if you will.

How’s this apply to Internet Marketing?

Lots actually.

If you’re a new Internet Marketer on the block, you’d want to establish yourself, build your brand, get your name out there.

You’d want to break into the inner circle of Internet Marketers.

You could participate in forums, build a high authority website. But I feel that the biggest bang for your buck will come from Continue reading →

Affiliate Marketing Social Community BumpZee turns 200! And Social Networking Tips

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Well, not exactly 200 years old, but the fledgling BumpZee affiliate marketing community launched by Scott Jangro has hit 200 members recently.

Here’s a snapshot of some member avatars:

bumpzee faces

I guess one might ask, “How’s listing yourself in the directory help generate more income?”

Continue reading →

Borat Teaches Internet Marketing!

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I don’t know how I missed this, it was a sad oversight on my part.

The guys at WickedFire mentioned that Khazakh journalist (ie from Khazakstan) Borat Sagdiyev, star of “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” was branching out into Internet Marketing.

Needless to say I was shocked.

Borat is already such a popular television personality, he is sure to raise the bar for the rest of us.

In fact, he’s already launched his first instructional clip and unleashed it on YouTube.

You can check it out Continue reading →

Reader Questions #1: How Tough Is Internet Marketing Initially?

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Reader Darren Lim Asks:

Hi Andrew,

I’m just starting to get my feet wet with internet marketing and your website was 1 of the first I had visited through a chance of luck about 2 weeks back. Since then I had hummed and hawwed, tried to focus amidst the mountains of information set upon me, setup PPC campaigns that just netted me 1 sale and I still couldn’t focus on 1 plan of action with that much options swirling around me.

Fast forward 2 weeks later and I find myself back at your blog and I decided.. why not see how you did when you first started and I went all the way back to dig your posts back in July 2006. Thats when I realised that it was all about focus and hardwork at the start which I’ve been unsuccessful in doing so far. I’d just like to ask, was it that tough for you initially?

Cheers
Darren

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The short answer is that everyone always starts out hard before it becomes easy.

This sounds counter intuitive to computer game players because we’d usually set a game to level 1 before progressing to higher levels.

But if you think about it, the most difficult part of any task is Continue reading →

Search Engine Optimization and Google PageRank Update

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This is an “after the fact update”.

A contact mentioned that Google had updated Toolbar PageRank ratings last week.

I hadn’t noticed changes on my blog, but some of my content sites have done from PR3 to PR4. Fairly decent consider that they’re a little over 6 months old.

As mentioned in previous PageRank-related posts, take note that Toolbar PageRank is different from your Live PageRank which is registered at the datacenters and determine how frequently your site is indexed by the search engine spiders.

You can find out your Toolbar PageRank by installing the Google Toolbar.

But more effective than the Toolbar PR, which some would say is ‘old PR’ is the live PR, which can be accessed through the Live PR datacenter check.

Backlinks (one way links to your blog or website) determine PageRank.

If you haven’t already, the following are Continue reading →