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.

Creating a link building campaign is a long on-going time consuming process but there are a few simple rules that you should always follow. I have been creating link building campaigns for various clients for years and the basics I used back then to qualify a link still remain good practice to this day.


1. Use www.whois.sc to find out some basic information on a link location, this site is great when looking for dns information.

2. Check the domain age, a lot of people believe that this carry’s no additional “weight” for a link this may or may not be true but I can assure you that have a good “trusted” domain is a good start for finding a quality link location.

3. Check page rank - and before you start crucifying me I still believe the little green bar has some value when deciding where to put a link. People have to start understanding that google has ranked these pages by its very own scoring system, however don’t think for 1 minute that just because a website is PR 7 you will see a positive effect of linking on it.

4. I always create links on relevant websites, look for content that is relevant to your brand or product, it makes sense.

5. Make good use of anchor texts on your links, have around 7-10 good relevant keywords or phrases and stick to them.

6. I always use directories when creating a backlink campaign, just treat the actual page your link will appear on as a separate website and follow all previous steps up to this point.

7. Look at the current backlinks on the proposed website, make sure they have good “trusted” links too.

8. Spread your links over the month, don’t develop 100 one day and 3 the next, a gradual increase is key.

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!

Reading on the Digital Point forums Matt Cutts recently posted:

“As far as the tool bar Page Rank, I definitely wouldn’t expect to see it in the next few days. Probably not even in the next couple weeks, if I had to guess.”


The Page Rank update is still very much on the lips of webmasters worldwide. Hang on in there guys, it will happen in all good time.

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!