For you that don’t already know and have spent the last few years in a nuclear fallout shelter, Alexa is a company that measures web traffic. They run www.alexa.com which is becoming more and more visible to web users.

I have always been taught and read many blogs that you should never judge a websites traffic performance based on the data collected by Alexa. Why? Well Alexa only registers traffic that has downloaded and used their very own toolbar. So in theory the data collected should only be a portion of your websites real traffic as the majority of “normal” web users have no need or really understand what it’s used for.

So as I performed my daily task of looking at websites information, looking for possible link opportunities I quickly noticed a trend in the data. It goes without saying that most web savvy people do use Alexa, if for anything an indication of possible traffic.

So what’s your point Matt?

Well my point is that if you are in the SE/SEM/SEO industry and you are specifically looking to target webmasters and like minded people then the Alexa data is spot on. You know if an seo website says they are performing well, then in fact they are listed at 2 million there are some white lies being told.

I still believe that Alexa is not a worthy tool of measuring non-internet related websites, simply because more people don’t have the toolbar installed than people that do. I did a small test to show these results. I looked at well known www.seomoz.org our website, www.seounique.com and a very popular gadget website in the UK www.firebox.com. In terms of traffic, reach and page views I would have said that Firebox would have been top, followed by Seomoz and last but by no means least my website.

The results clearly show Seomoz miles above the rest, and at the beginning of September Seounique was very close to beating Firebox. Now I’m not going to lie about my traffic, it’s regular and ranges from 5000 unique visits per month down to 1000 per month, it really depends how I promote the site in that particular month. However I can guarantee you that Firebox will almost certainly have three or four times more traffic than I have in a good month at their lowest point. Seomoz is so far ahead because the traffic that flows to their site will be almost all webmaster based.

What’s your final thought on this Matt?

Well my feelings on this subject have slightly changed. I still advise people not to look at Alexa data on non-seo/sem/se websites because it’s still not accurate by any means. However if you are looking to reach the webmasters out there then Alexa should be used and the data collected analyzed.

I know this sounds like a silly question but over the last 6 months I’ve seen more and more people in forums and social media sites give people advice which is just plain wrong!

I personally believe that webmasters who know very little or nothing of what seo is are picking up bits of advice from various blog sources and suddenly believing that they know seo. I’ve worked with seo for just over 2 years now so I know I’m no “Guru” but I understand the basics well and my day job is seo for a digital marketing agency in London. I understand that there are hundreds of factors to take into account when developing seo for a website, its not a case of creating 100 strong PR 7 links and waiting for the cash to come in, it takes time and effort.

I feel very strongly when I see “seo” companies selling strategies for £5000 + and in the list of “services” you see “1000 search engine submissions” – alarm bells should be ringing when they have set prices people! A small list below just to look out for when considering creating an seo campaign.

1. The company guarantees a top Google position – this is impossible to guarantee before you even know what the keyword is.
2. A full site analysis – This comes standard, someone that advertises this is obviously trying to fill up a list.
3. No mention of site architecture – site architecture is very important in seo, you don’t want to stop those spiders moving around your site do you?
4. The company says it will only take 30 - 60 days – listen folks seo demands a continuous strategy to be effective, you should have an on going plan and budget set aside.
5. They promise you 5000 links instantly – this is a sure way to get banned from Google, don’t do it, it won’t help you SERPS anyway.
6. They don’t ask for access to your server – they should be looking at the code and source files and be installing some kind of analytics program to monitor traffic.
7. They don’t know what web 2.0 is – if they don’t know what web 2.0 is then move on quickly!
8. They think Google is the only search engine to use – I hear this so many times these days and although I do believe it’s one of the best ways to find out queries its by no means the only search engine that will provide you with good quality traffic – broaden the mind!
9. When “experts” on forums just dismiss your ideas – if you post something you believe to be true, a good seo worker will investigate, test and comment. If you see a so called “expert” putting down everyone’s ideas without consideration they obviously don’t understand that seo is constantly changing and that they will die in this industry.
10. They believe page rank is important in rankings – this is inaccurate, page rank is useful when selling links but in terms of SERP positions it really doesn’t matter.

Well I feel like I’ve had a good rant about this, I could go on forever but I’ll keep it short, well ish anyway!

I have been aware of a website called killerstartups.com for just under a year now, I came across it one day as I checked my analytics program and saw a spike in traffic from this unknown site. As I viewed the source of the referral I was pleasantly surprised as to what I found.

The website is designed to make users aware of new websites and to learn about what they are and what they do. I was lucky enough to get a small interview with the CEO of www.killerstartups.com Gonzalo Arzuaga who took time out of his busy schedule to help us understand what they hope to achieve:

MR: Could you tell us briefly what Killerstartups.com is for the people who have not come across the site and what position you hold at the company?

GA: KillerStartups.com is a blog that reviews 30+ internet startups per day. Our community of internet startups, investors, press and bloggers and the techie enthusiast in general come to our site to try to get a hint about which startup might be the next Youtube, or the next big thing online. I’m currently the CEO.

MR: As you may have noticed over the past year, social media and social book marking websites have increased in popularity. Now people like myself work in seo on a daily basis and see people dismissing “Social Bookmarking” as a phase when really they should be using it in their strategies. What would you say would be the benefits of being listed on killerstartups.com for new websites.

GA: Visibility. If you think of that, everyday we publish 30+ reviews. That’s really helpful for other bloggers who want to write about. Also killerstartups.com in 6 months became a top 5,000 site in alexa. Last month we reached 170,000 visitors according to Compete.com. That’s basically a good way for a startup to get the word out, and get some people checking their site out.

MR: The way I understand Killerstartups.com to work is that anyone can submit a “killer” new website but it does take some time to appear on the site. What is done in this period? Do you not think you are losing out to potential traffic by doing this?

GA: Our members can submit their startup for the community to vote if they think it’s a killer or not. We’re working around the clock to make our submitting process faster. We get sooo many reviews per day… We’re soon launching a feature that’s called Speedy Submission, where members can pay a fee for us to review it within 24 hours.

MR: In terms of branding and marketing yourselves what strategies have you implemented to help you compete against rivals such as Sphinn.com?

GA: We don’t see sphinn.com as competitor at all. We’re only focusing on reviewing internet startups, 30+ per day. Our goal is to be the best at it.

MR: I noticed that you are still in the beta stages on the site, do you have any idea when the finished article will be complete and will there be any new features you can give us a sneak peak at?

GA: We’re right now focusing on improving usability on our site. We expect to be in Beta for at least 6 more months. Been busy right now thinking and planning some social features, can’t tell that much, sorry

MR: On a website’s listing you have a feature that describes what the future might possibly hold for the described website, do you know if any of the predictions have been realized, if so which ones?

GA: Too early to say. We’ve been online for around 8 months. We have to give the startups some time, let say 1 more year or so.

MR: Does killerstartups.com receive any substantial traffic from similar sites such as StumbleUpon or Sphinn and have you in any way encouraged this?

GA: No. We don’t get any traffic from SU.

MR: Have you ever been offered a large amount of cash for a stake in Killerstartups.com?

GA: Nope..

MR: Do you have any more projects on the go at the moment besides Killerstartups.com?

GA: Nope. It’s hard enough with this one

MR: Thanks for answering these questions Gonzalo, is there anything you would like to say to our readers before we end this?

GA: Sure, go check it out! www.KillerStartups.com

For those of you that don’t know what Stumbleupon is all about, it’s a website where you can find new and interesting sites, rated and reviewed by web users. Signing up to Stumbleupon is a painless process which involved a short registration form and downloading a tool bar for you chosen explorer, don’t worry it’s trustworthy and doesn’t take up too much room.

Once downloaded and registered you have a profile on Stumbleupon and every time you click on the icon for a “Good Website” the page will automatically be saved on your page. You do also have the option to review a website, I personally feel it’s nice to give some kind of feedback to the webmaster, be it good or bad.


So why is Stumbleupon an untapped goldmine?

Just over a week ago I read an interesting article about social media websites, located on www.seomoz.org and they believed that good amounts of traffic could be generated, and that the traffic would be of a high quality. At first I must confess I was a little skeptical, due to the fact when using social media sites in the past the bounce rates (amount of users leaving the site immediately) would tend to be quite high.

So how do you get this high quality traffic?

There are different techniques to get the hits, the method I used was on a website well known to webmasters – Digital Point. On the forum there is a section where you can offer stumble exchanges, this is a process whereby you list your website and ask people to stumble it and in return you will stumble theirs.

In total I must have stumbled around 25 to 30 different websites for people and the same was done for one of my websites. I left it for the rest of the day and didn’t think much else about it. To my surprise the results were amazing, just look at the screen capture below:

Now the website I tested would on average receive around 20 unique visitors a day, this is mainly because no advertising has been initiated. As you can see over one evening and one night the website received 427 unique visits. Not only that but 754 page views and a bounce rate of 33%, this means the traffic generated actually looked around the website.

Now I spent roughly 1 hour stumbling websites, at the very most and this generated good quality traffic at no cost. I suggest you all do the same and take advantage of this and get something for free!

By the way feel free to stumble this page if you have signed up – thank you!

The BIGLIST of SEM and SEO Blogs has been released and is a very good resource at looking for specific SEO related blogs. The list has been compiled from 400 websites that provide comprehensive information regarding SEO and SEM.

Although our SEO Unique blog did not make the list it is hardly surprising as we have only been live for a few months.

With our readers support we hope our information will one day make the list.