Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Advantages Of The Alexa Tool bar

Advantages Of The Alexa Tool bar
Copyright Francina Smit

http://www.InHouseDollars.com

The Alexa tool bar is a free plug-in that you can easily install onto your browser and use when you surf the Internet. Well over 10 million surfers use the Alexa browser tool bar, which comes in two versions, one for Internet Explorer and one (called "Sparky") for Firefox.

Mainly because it has various functional features which make your browser a more versatile data-gathering tool that concentrates your searches on the best quality sites, so if you search the Internet for information (and who doesn't?) you will instantly benefit from having the Alexa tool bar installed on your browser.

Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy with the Alexa tool bar:

Alexa's tool bar offers a faster surfing experience because it includes an integrated Google search feature which allows you to search Google by typing your search phrase directly into the tool bar without having to make a separate visit Google.com.

When you land on a website you will instantly be able to see that site's Alexa Traffic Rank listed in the bottom right corner of your browser.

Alongside the traffic rank you will see a line that charts the traffic volume for the website over the previous few months. Next to that there is also an "Internet Reach" meter that gauges the percentage of Internet users that have visited the website.

You can also check out similar sites to the one you have been surfing by clicking the "related links" button. A drop-down menu appears with several related sites listed; it is a great little tool for researching a range of websites quickly and easily.

You can also make use of Alexa's "Wayback Machine" to "go back in time" and check out how a website used to look and track the changes the website owner has made to the design and layout over time.

The tool bar also has a built in link to Amazon.com (which now owns Alexa) which makes your online shopping even more handy!

The Alexa tool bar can be downloaded from this site:
http://www.alexa.com/site/download

Labels: Alexa tool bar

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Monday, December 8, 2008

10 Free Ways To Improve Your Legitimate Online Business Alexa Rating

10 Free Ways To Improve Your Legitimate Online Business Alexa Rating
Copyright Francina Smit

http://www.InHouseDollars.com

Alexa, which is owned by Amazon.com, gives away a free tool bar that you can download and install in your browser. It is then able to keep track of the sites you visit and compute the Alexa rating of websites for legitimate online businesses, with a rank of "1" being the assigned to the most visited site.

If you want a more technical definition, Alexa explains it like this:

"The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Tool bar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rating is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users)."

(http://www.alexa.com/site/help/traffic_learn_more)

In April 2008 Alexa revised its methodology so as to "aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users". (http://awis.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html)

How accurately this method reflects the actual surfing patterns of all Internet users is open to question. However, if you bear in mind that by the end of 2005 the toolbar has been downloaded well over 10 million times you will realize why many people still think that Alexa offers one of the best approximations that we have of legitimate online business website ranking, especially for the top 100,000 or so websites.

That is why Alexa remains an important measure of a website's status and is used as a quick way to assess the popularity of a website by advertisers looking for the maximum exposure for the their money. Websites with a higher Alexa rating also tend to be trusted more than those with a low ranking, so it is in the interest of website owners to get their sites ranked as highly as possible with Alexa.

Here are some quick and easy tips to help you do that without spending a single dollar!

1. Install the Alexa tool bar and set your website as your homepage.

2. Copy and paste an Alexa rating widget onto your website. You can get the widget code at http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup. As well as informing your visitors about your Alexa rank, it will also keep Alexa updated about the number of unique visitors surfing your site.

3. Create a customized version of the Alexa tool bar, Then place a link on your site to the download page and invite your visitors to download it. You will also earn Amazon commissions every time a user shops on Amazon via the tool bar link.

4. If you have a Wordpress blog there is a plug-in for Alexa Rating (wp-Alexa-redirect-0.3plug-in) that you can use.

5. Submit your site to web directories. Although a lot of directories charge a registration fee, you can still find many that are willing to list your site free of charge or in exchange for a reciprocal link. A lot of the webmasters who browse web directories have the Alexa tool bar installed, so if they click your link it will help your Alexa traffic rating.

6. Become an active participant on Internet marketing and SEO forums. Again, a lot of those forum participants are already webmasters and a high percentage will use the Alexa tool bar when they surf. Place a link to your site in your signature and your rank will improve when any of those people click through.

7. A lot of Asian and Australian websites feature in the Alexa top 100,000 and you can bet that a lot of website owners will have the Alexa tool bar installed, so it makes sense to join social networking sites that are popular in those regions, such as:

* http://www.orkut.com - Orkut is owned by Google and is the second most visited site in India.

* http://hi5.com - Hi5 has an Alexa rating of 17 at the time of writing this article.

8. Become an Alexa expert and post articles that discuss Alexa rating and SEO tips. This will attract people to your legitimate online business site who may be interested in downloading your toolbar, or people who have already done so. Either way, it will be good for your Alexa rating. You could even build a whole category of articles on your website devoted to this theme.

9. Set up a freebie page on your website and post a list of useful tools to attract other website owners to your site. Include another link to your Alexa tool bar download page.

10. Get into the habit of using Stumbleupon and other bookmarking sites to spread the word whenever you post a new article on your website or blog. Set up a group of fellow website owners so that you can have run reciprocal stumbling campaigns for better results.

If you apply these ten quick and easy methods you will definitely see an improvement in your legitimate online business Alexa rating and you should also start to attract more traffic to your site!

Labels: Alexa rating, Alexa tool bar, legitimate online business

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Feature Article: Make the Leap to Home Based Business Success
Copyright © Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy
http://www.PlugInProfitSite.com/main-21256

Before you can have a successful home based business, you must first possess 3 "intangibles." These are things that must come from WITHIN you.

 ===> Intangible 1 <===

First, you must have a strong WHY.

Why MUST you have a successful home business? What is driving you? What is it that you CAN'T have in your life anymore and/or what is it that you absolutely MUST HAVE now?

For me, I couldn't stand working 12+ hours a day anymore and missing the experience of my children growing up. I also absolutely HAD TO HAVE the freedom of being able to control my life and finances through a little box (laptop computer) that I could carry with me anywhere in the world and not be tied to anyone's time pressures or demands but my own. That was my carrot and my stick. I felt a great pain deep in my gut of missing out on my children's lives and the incredible freedom that succeeding in a home based business would provide for me. I found my why. You MUST find yours.

===> Intangible 2 <===

You must BELIEVE that it is possible.

If you don't believe that it's POSSIBLE for you to have a successful home based business or make your living from home, you won't. It's that simple.

For me, figuring out that it was possible was just a matter of realizing that many other people were ALREADY making great money working from home. If they could do it, I could too. It would just be a matter of figuring out what those people were doing and then adapting it to my situation.

There is no shortage of undeniable PROOF that people (millions of them) are making money working from home. Just get online and do some research and you'll find countless testimonials and stories of REAL PEOPLE making real money on the Internet. Or head to your local bookstore and you'll find the same documented evidence of this fact. Truth is, it's getting easier and easier to make money with your own home based business.

I've always said that "affiliate marketing" (a simple way to make money from home) is the job of the future. In the "old" days, you had to go to a potential employer, apply for the position and hope for the best. Now you can simply go to any company you want, fill out their affiliate application and start work immediately. Affiliates are the new working class. In fact, making money with affiliate programs or making your living on the Internet is WAY MORE than possible. It is pretty much (or will be soon enough) unavoidable now. Affiliate marketing is the "job" of the future that's already here TODAY.

===> Intangible 3 <===

You must be willing to MAKE THE LEAP.

Ready, FIRE, then aim... This is the operating philosophy you MUST adopt to succeed with a home based business.

That's backwards for most people who like to aim before they fire. The fact is that home based business success is a moving target... The only thing constant about it is change. You need to stop analyzing the game and simply jump into it. You can't learn from the outside... You have to be IN THE RING to truly understand it.

The lesson here is that you will never really be READY to start a home based business. You simply have to start one. It's like having children... You're never really ready, but when it happens you adapt and grow. This is what I call "Making the Leap."

The good news is that the cost of failure with having your own home based business is very small. In the "brick and mortar" world you need to evaluate things very carefully before you decide to open up a business. It's almost always necessary to invest thousands of dollars to get an offline business off the ground. However, on the Internet you can often start a successful business for less than $100. The Plug-In Profit Site is a great example of this: http://www.PlugInProfitSite.com/main-21256

You simply need to get IN THE GAME... Each moment that you stay "out there," you're wasting valuable time that you could be learning and skills necessary to build a successful home based business. In fact, if you're not in the game yet, you're ALREADY behind the times. Make the leap to creating a successful home based business today!

About the Author:

Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy has helped thousands of people in over 200 countries around the world start and run a successful home business. Discover 3 easy steps to start your own home business and subscribe to The Home Biz Guy's FREE Home Business Secrets Mini-Course at: http://www.PlugInProfitSite.com/main-21256

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