There are a number of different ways you can go about increasing your Alexa rank, but I have noticed significant changes by doing one of a few things. Alexa rank, among a few other things, is one of the more important tools when determining the traffic of a blog. I have read a variety of different things as to how the Alexa rank is determined, and I can personally comment on what I believe is true. Like PageRank, Alexa is a great way to increase the exposure and traffic to your blog.

How Do You Do It?

If you have not yet noticed, I placed a little Alexa widget in the footer of my blog.

As I explained earlier, one of the ways that Alexa rank is determined (and increased), is by the number of Alexa toolbar users who view the webpage per day. Like the widget, the toolbar actively shows you the rank of a webpage you are on. As you visit different webpages, the ranking updates and you can see how popular each page is.

Why Use The Widget?

As I said, the rank is determined by the number of visitors who visit your page each, while using the toolbar. However, if you place the widget somewhere within your blog, Alexa believes that every single person visiting your webpage has the toolbar running. By doing this, you are increasing your ranking exponentially at the beginning.

When I first added the widget a few weeks ago, my ranking was near 800,000. Now, it is less than half of that! Of course the “growth” (shrinkage if you are going by numbers) will flatten off until your traffic increases, but beyond that, it is a great way to get a boost to your Alexa ranking.

Additional Tidbits

Even if you do not care about increasing your rank, it is very interesting to see the ranks of other webpages. What the number generally means, is that there are (insert rank of page) websites that receive more traffic each day than the current one.

For instance, my rank of about 370,000 means that each day there are 369,999 webpages that receive more traffic than me. However, if you look at Google, there is only one page that has more traffic: Yahoo. John Chow is in the top 3000 trafficked websites, and even if you do not care about increasing your rank, the toolbar is a great way to quickly tell how much traffic a website actually does get.

If you notice someone claiming they get XX amount of traffic each day, but see their Alexa ranking up in the 1,000,000 plus range, I would definitely seek more information about their traffic reports. Use of the toolbar extends beyond the basic spectating of ranks, but can be used as a valuable tool to help benefit you as a consumer.

I have read this a few times as over my blogging career, and it wasn’t until the other day that I actually realized how beneficial it is and how much it actually works. Understandably so, if you leave a substantial amount of comments on a big time blogger’s blog, you are much more apt to reap the benefits of additional traffic than those who leave an occasional comment here and there. What am I talking about? I did a very small study, but it has been proven in more depth elsewhere.

Where’s The Evidence?

I decided to leave a few comments on John Chow’s blog, and I was lucky enough to have one of the top commentator spots on a couple of his newer posts. If somebody is getting substantial traffic, and you are lucky enough to be around when a new post is published, seize that opportunity and leave a comment.

I’m sure you are thinking: WOW! 4 visitors! What you need to understand, is that this traffic was over the course of about 30 minutes, and it came from leaving 2 comments. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that it takes 1 minute to leave a comment, and that I got 1 visitor every 15 minutes per each comment.

1 comment = 1 minute
1 visitor = 15 minutes
4 visitors per hour per comment

What this all boils down to is this: If you were to comment for 15 minutes, leaving 15 comments, you would average about 60 additional visitors per hour. Of course this number would taper off eventually, given the fact that the post is not a popular one. However, if you are fortunate enough to leave any number of comments on a popular post, you could be reaping traffic benefits for days, weeks, months to come.

Keep in mind this is a very basic example and used only for the sake of argument. Your results are probably substantially different. The point I am trying to make is this: Commenting takes very little work, but can potentially earn huge benefits. Another thing you can do is diversify your comments. Spending 15 minutes on four different blogs would mean you can leave approximately 60 comments. From those 60 comments, you could potentially generate an additional 240 visitors each hour. It may not seem like a lot, but it adds up.

We all know it takes less than one minute per comment, so work to double your comment output and effectively double your visitor output.

Additional Math Problem

For another sake of argument, let’s assume you can comment at a rate of 2 comments per minute. Let us also assume that in the course of 1 hour, you will gain 500 visitors. Assuming your visitor number will taper off eventually, let us decrease that number by 50% each hour.

Hour 1: 500 visitors
Hour 2: 250 visitors
Hour 3: 125 visitors
Hour 4: 62 visitors
Hour 5: 31 visitors
Hour 6: 15 visitors
Hour 7: 8 visitors
Hour 8: 4 visitors

For 1 hour of “work” commenting, you can increase your traffic by 1000 visitors. I’ll take an additional 30k unique visitors per month for an accumulated 30 hours of work.

Please note that these examples are complete assumptions and that the information may be vastly incorrect. I am simply making large generalizations to help illustrate the point. The point is that commenting is extremely beneficial, and I am not the only blogger who realizes this.

Chris writes in his post about increasing traffic:

Make yourself known - Fellow bloggers are your best quality source of free traffic and subscribers. … Comment.

Performancing also published a small article about using comments to increase traffic:

Comment and participate on blogs within your niche — Get to know the people around you

One of the main reasons why comments are such a great opportunity to increase traffic, is that when you comment on a blog within your niche, it will make people curious. Especially if you publish a comment that is well written, people will wonder if you can produce the same quality content in your blog that you do in your comments.

Try it out. Leave comments on some of the more popular blogs and see if it increases your traffic at all. If not, I would be very interested to see the statistics you came up with and the reasons as to why you did not achieve the perceived results.

I’m not going to get into the specificity of how it is determined and the various equations associated with it, but I will provide a little insight and information I have compiled about when, if ever, the update will come. Generally, I have read that page rank (PR) is updated about every 3 months. However, it has been nearly 6 months since the last PR update. After reading an article about Page Rank, they explained a few very interesting facts.

As of October 07th, there has not been a Toolbar PR export for 160 day(s). The longest time between toolbar PR exports recorded in the below Page Rank Export List was 122 days (Oct 19/2005 to Feb 18/2006).

Intriguing? Many webmasters are baffled and some, like myself, are frustrated with this delay and/or termination of the page rank system.

Why Does This Irritate Many?

The effects page rank has on blogging go far beyond the surface. First of all, advertising is sold sometimes on the complete basis of page rank alone. If you notice, the websites making the most revenue have the highest page rank. Coincidence? Definitely not.

There is even some speculation that the page rank system and update is being terminated, or indefinitely paused. One of the most prominent reasons of this may be due to Google’s animosity towards the purchasing of text link ads to improve search results, which directly increases page rank.

Okay… When?

The sad thing is, nobody knows for sure what is going to happen yet. Until Google directly publishes information about whether or not they will update, or if there is even another update coming, it is a shot in the dark as to what is going to happen in the future. Personally, I am optimistic and hoping for a great update, as the only way to go from PR0 is up.

I wrote a post about a tool that can predict page rank, which was interesting, but I can only hope that it goes through.

Honestly, I am not very good at SEO or working to increase page rank or other statistics. However, seeing this potential new rank is very interesting, because some BIG bloggers are only at a page rank of 5 or 6.

Understandably, PR is not always the greatest indicator of how well the site is doing, so you must factor in other measuring tools as well. I will explain more about Alexa, Technorati, RSS, and more in the days to come.

In the meantime, what will your page rank be *if* it gets updated?

As some of you are reaching Online Cash Flow thanks to my advertisement on John Cow, you may wonder why I decided to make such a unique and interesting design, given my color scheme as well as the cow’s. There are a few reasons as to why I decided the colors for my advertisement (below) and I will explain to why these ideas are beneficial to you as an advertiser.

As you notice, the ad is very simple, but at the same time it is intriguing. If you landed here as a result from reading John Cow’s blog, then you can personally attest that the advertisement was attractive and something drew your attention to it.

Now, why did I choose a significantly purple ad layout when my site is mainly grey, and cow’s site is significantly green?

First you must realize the color scheme. So many advertisers fail to research and understand the importance colors place on a person’s feelings and actions. Next, you must understand the niche you are advertising within. This may seem like common sense, but many people fail to understand this simple aspect. Finally, make sure you shop around. If you notice somebody is offering advertising for $200 a month, do not assume that you will get your money’s worth. Instead, shop around and find the best offer for what you need. You may find somebody who is offering discounted advertising or has cheaper rates altogether.

1. Realize The Color Scheme

I am no artist, but I did a little research and found the color wheel. Generally speaking, colors on the opposite side of the color wheel compliment each other. For instance, red and green together, stand out as a pair. Same with blues and oranges. You guessed it, so do purples and greens.

Effectively implementing colors that compliment each other within your advertisement will make your ad that much more likely to be clicked on. In order to be clicked on you must first be noticed, and as a reader is skimming along the site, if they see an advertisement that sticks out more so than the other ones, it is that much more likely to be clicked on.

2. Know The Niche

Now that you know the color scheme to use on your advertisements, you still must know the proper website or services to advertise. You can create a very unique advertisement but if you are using a “make money online” website as a basis to gain traffic for your “health” blog, there is a good chance that the traffic you receive will not stay around long.

Of course you will find people who share interests in weight loss and making money online, but the majority of your readers are interested in information about making money online, and not losing weight. In the image above, the Lose Weight Now link is as good as none. I would assume that I am not the only person that thinks like that, but when I see off topic links, I almost 100% of the time write them off as invisible.

3. Do Not Impulse Buy

Like anything, you should shop around before jumping into a purchase, especially if it is going to be a significant one. Realizing somebody is advertising for $200 per month is one thing, but how much traffic do they get? How much traffic would that provide to you? If somebody is selling advertising at $100 per month with only 20% less traffic, is that a better deal? These are all questions you should ask yourself before purchasing advertising.

Also, combining the aspect of niche and research are always good. If you find cheap advertising but it is outside your niche, is that really the type of traffic you are interested in achieving?

These are all things to think about when advertising. I can personally say that I did not think about color schemes and advertising before I purchased ad space myself. On the other hand, I did realize the niche and do some shopping. I would suggest that you do the same.

I received an email from Andrew of Goldigg. He explained an interesting offer to me, and it was a premier membership to his new web-business, Goldigg. It is similar to Digg in that you can submit and vote articles up to promote various works which you believe need to be seen. I decided to join because this seemed like a very interesting opportunity, and I wanted to be a part of it.

First of all, I enjoy getting in new things on ground level because that opens up a ton of opportunities for you. Also, it is a very unique idea and because it is so young, there is only one way it can go. Up.

What Is Goldigg?

If you browse the About section you will find everything you need to know:

To become a member of Goldigg.com it will cost $100. Once you are a member you can quickly gain that back by placing ads in your story submissions, by charging to submit someone’s story, having others pay you to vote, or by selling your account. Almost anything is possible to generate income for yourself.

Many people are skeptical about the startup price, but because of what he claims to do with the money, it does not seem all that bad.

I created this site so that I can earn some money to donate to a charity (Modest Needs), to pay for college, and to re-launch another venture that didn’t succeed in the past because of my limited resources.

Also, the fact that he is only allowing 5,000 members, creates a sense of urgency and importance for those who were able to and decided to join.

You can read the extensive list of terms and a small FAQ if you read the About section.

The Actual Site

They layout is very basic and extremely easy to navigate and utilize. The color scheme could use some work, but overall it has a nice feel to it.

If you have not taken a look at Goldigg yet, I recommend doing so. First of all, he is still offering a few more free memberships if you contact him in the near future. Otherwise, be prepared to pay the $100 to sign up.

The main problem with all bloggers is how to attract viewers, and once you achieve this traffic, how to maintain it. Due to this, many people seek advertising from various sources. Whether you advertise on other blogs within your niche, do PPC (pay per click) advertising with Yahoo!, MSN, or Google, or seek other methods, increasing traffic is the key. Unfortunately, if you decide to advertise using any of these previously listed methods, you will have to pay advertising expenses. Whether these expenses are fixed and a one time payment, or if you are required to pay per click, it can all add up depending on the traffic volume you are receiving. Advertising costs can become quite burdensome, and that is why many people turn to other avenues.

Where Else Can I Advertise?

Myspace

Many people seem to forget about the importance and volume that can be provided from Myspace. Not only is it 100% free traffic, but the amount of traffic Myspace as a whole receives is incredible. According to Alexa, Myspace is the 6th most viewed website in the world, and about 30% of all internet users visit Myspace every day.

In order for this method to be truly effective though, you need to be patient and smart about it. First of all, you need to build up your friends count so that you can effectively reach a wide base of people. To do this, I would not recommend spamming, but instead inviting a small amount of people each day until you have a very large group of friends. At this time you can post bulletins of affiliate links to increase exposure to your blog or links. In the end, it is a cheap and effective way to increase traffic if you do it correctly.

Facebook

Facebook has created a variety of ways to advertise now, including a few ways which are a little more shady. First off, you can create fliers which were created to generate revenue for Facebook and increase exposure for the advertisers. Another method, which is free, is to make listings in the marketplace. I have done this on a few occasions and it has provided me a decent amount of traffic.

Also, you could be more creative and make a group or develop an application, but both of these take a lot of time or work to do, and many people do not want to invest the amount of time for a potentially small or no viewer return.

Paid Methods, Explained

If you are interested in doing PPC advertising, I have come across a $75 coupon code for free advertising. This is very effective in driving traffic to your website if you create an attractive advertisement. On top of that, you are getting free traffic, and for the most part it is highly targeted traffic.

Another method you could approach is to advertise on the Million Dollar Wiki. A page can be purchased for $100, but with the current publicity it is receiving, that is a steal. Bloggers like John Chow and ShoeMoney have written about it, so it is generating some serious traffic right now.

If you are interested in advertising within the Make Money Online niche, I have purchased an ad slot on John Cow dot com. I am willing to sell that space for upwards of 3.5 weeks, and I will sell it in as small as 7 day increments if you are interested. As a side note, I have advertising slots available for the price of $5 per month for a text link ad.

Finally, if you are interested in free exposure, I am running a contest here to provide just that. A free ReviewMe review, a 2 month text link ad, and a banner/header redesign if you are interested. You can check out my newest review here, or take a look at the contest here. It is very simple to enter, and the benefits are extreme for the little work it requires.

As three of the most important factors for determining the credibility for your site are traffic, RSS, and page rank, I am often times wondering what my page rank will be after the update. I was looking around at various sites and found a couple very interesting things. First of all, page rank is not determined solely on the number of links you have. For instance, if you were to make 1,000 starter websites and put your links on them, you still wouldn’t have a great page rank. This is because the page rank is determined on a deeper level.

Another reason why page rank is so important, is because many people looking to advertise want to find a blog or website that has an established readership, and a great way to prove this is with page rank. As RSS and Alexa traffic rankings are easy to track, it is very easy to establish those figures on your site. However, since page rank is updated less frequently it is much harder to determine.

What Have I Found?

I found a site that actually predicts your page rank. Having a current page rank of 0, it is nice to see what it is predicted to be after the update. Check it out.

As you can see, it is predicted that I will be a PR4 after the update. I think that’s very exciting as that is a large jump from being PR0.

This is only a prediction though, based on my backlinks. You can also see that the estimate is using 81.1% accuracy. I’ll take a close to guaranteed PR4 when the update comes along.

Based on all of this, I would think it would be extremely difficult to pass up free exposure, especially from a PR4 website or blog. If you are interested in some free exposure from a PR4 blog, you can check it out here.

As I was reading various blogs this weekend, I noticed time and time again the amount of people emphasizing the newest blog traffic helper. I would be willing to be that you have already heard about BlogRush if not already signed up for it. If you have not yet signed up, I highly recommend this program. I will talk in more detail about it, but I would also like to address a few other tips and tricks I have learned recently. Previously I had never thought about using an email newsletter or email subscription to read my site. However, the number of people who would prefer that method is far greater than many people believe. I would rather take some time to setup an email subscription list to tend to my readers as opposed to having them stop reading my material.

Why Use BlogRush?

I would recommend the use of BlogRush for a number of reasons. To begin, it will get your name out there. Imagine publishing your blog, and within a week of being out there you are gaining some BlogRush exposure. Signing up under the same category as John Chow, ProBlogger, or ShoeMoney will definitely get you a little exposure. ShoeMoney gets 45,000 impressions a day from BlogRush. If that’s not incentive enough, I don’t know what is.

Another great reason to use this program is because as you increase your referral chain, you earn more credit and your website will be shown more often. It all boils down to increasing your traffic.

Sign Up For BlogRush

Blogging Tips

Of course everybody cares about increasing their feed count, and so many other people are unsure of how to go about this as effectively as they can. I will be honest, I was unsure of the amount of “stuff” you can actually do using FeedBurner. For instance, I never knew they offered to do email subscriptions.

However, now that I know they offer this service, and I know how effective it is, I am going to implement a way for my readers to subscribe via email. It’s that mindset where you forget to think about doing things other ways, but then after you do, you realize how many people must utilize this same function and actually prefer it above reading the blog directly, or even through the RSS reader.

As you may have noticed before getting this far, I implemented a way to receive the RSS via email.

I hope it increases the amount of people who read my feed, and I have already noticed a couple people visiting this new feature.

Along with this new email subscriber thing, I would recommend making a link after each post to your RSS feed to allow readers easy and instant access to subscribe if they enjoyed your post. I have steady increases since I implemented that feature within my blog, and I would highly encourage you to do the same.

Not even 2 weeks accepted and I have been provided with the opportunity to review a website thanks to ReviewMe. If you would like to order a review, either contact me directly or order it through ReviewMe. Bid 4 Traffic is a relatively new site, and the objective is to sell link spots to help increase traffic to your website. Because this website is so young, there is currently no page rank. However, it is predicted to be either a 4 or a 5. If that happens, the amount of traffic will definitely increase, and so too will your exposure.

What Does It Do?

Bid For Traffic is similar to many other directory websites but it has a few different functions. To begin, you can host your link within the directory for a cost of $1. However, if you want to be placed at the top of your category, you must outbid the other link submissions. It is a very neat and effective way to generate traffic and buzz as the idea is unique and breaks up the monotony of the other link submission sites.

Another unique function is the ability to be featured on the front page. Here is an excerpt from their About page:

Bid4traffic is an easy way to bid on links. Our link directory displays links in categories, and lets you bid your way to the top of the list. With a starting bid of $1, you are guaranteed a spot in our directory!

Increase your bid to take a top position on your website’s category, and not only will your link list higher in the directory, but you could join our Top 10 Link Leaders on the homepage and get massive exposure.

As you read, if you are listed as one of the Top 10 Links you will be featured on the homepage and you can effectively maximize your exposure.

Currently, the top link bid is set at $36. A pretty cheap price to be featured as the top link on a webpage that is gaining exposure exponentially.

Why Pay For A Link?

There are many benefits to increase your link exposure, and mainly it is to become known in as many places as possible. If you check out Bid4Traffic’s Features page, they list a few advantages as to why you should join their program:

Constantly Promoted
To make these links the most valuable possible, every dollar earned on bid4traffic.com is invested in getting more traffic and better rankings.

Good Ranks
Better rankings like Google pagerank, SEO MOZ Pagestrength, Alexa rankings, will provide better link juice to your website.

Good Content
By allowing to download and use free phplinkbid templates on other bidding directories, webmasters will keep visiting bid4traffic.com to increase rankings.

I’m not sure if all of the money is in fact re-invested into the company, but if that is the case it will be extremely beneficial to helping the company grow and increase their chances of obtaining new members.

What Are The Rules?

There are a list of policies that you can read here, but I will highlight a few of them.

Links are listed permanently in the directory, but position is determined by bids.

Links can be removed at any time for violating policies.

No illegal or adult site links will be allowed.

Bids are non-refundable.

It is pretty self explanatory and seems like a very easy system to use and join. Honestly, as I write more about Bid4Traffic, I am leaning further towards joining.

What Types Of Sites Can Join?

You can check out the list of directories, but here are a few of the most popular ones. Ironically, Directories has 16 submissions, Automotive has 8, Web Development, Blogs, and Games all have 5 submissions. Here is a more detailed picture of the layout.

How Easy To Use Is Bid4Traffic?

I would say that navigation and use of bid for traffic is extremely easy and the overall functionality of the site is great. The layout is sleek yet professional, easy on your eyes, and everything you need to know or find is right there in front of you.

Is There Anything Else?

That’s not all. If you are interested in creating a directory site of your own, bid for traffic makes that very easy. They provide phplinkbid templates for you to download for free.

.

They also offer blue and red templates, but I cropped them out of the image.

As explained earlier, these provide a great way for traffic retention as people who are interested in creating their own directory sites can download and use these templates for free.

Overall

All in all, bid for traffic has an effective layout, is a great business idea, and is extremely easy to use.

At the price of $1 for a link, it is an extremely low cost way to generate some extra traffic to your website.

As I mentioned before, with the new theme, I also made a few other changes. Among these changes were a huge cut in advertising costs, adding the social bookmarking compilation, and the RSS feed link in the footer of each post. I have read in various places about the benefits or harm this has provided to many bloggers. Some people explain how placing a link to their feed within their posts, or after their post, was much more beneficial and readers were more prone to click on it and subscribe because of the simplicity factor. On the other hand, bloggers also explained that it may become tedious to readers, and they will become frustrated with the link “bombing” that you are doing. I can see both sides, but if you are writing great content and place the link after your post at the extreme bottom, only those truly interested in reading that far will do so.

What Am I Talking About

As you can see, it is out of the way of the content within the post, and below the social bookmarking references. Very obsolete, and only readers truly interested will click on it.

My Results

Before adding this link to the bottom of each post, there was very little fluctuation with my RSS count. However, a few days after adding this link to each post, my RSS feed has increased by 150%. That figure is over the course of a few days, and it has been increasing steadily, until the huge increase yesterday.

Another great reason to place it after your content, is because many readers will read your content, and either leave your page, or forget to go back to the top where most people display their RSS links. If they liked your content, they can easily subscribe to your feed and go on their way, maximizing their online efficiency.

If you do not have a link to your RSS after your content based posts, I strongly suggest doing so. You will see an increase to your RSS readership if you continue producing well written content.

Test king is the world leader in conducting up-to-date testing in a lot of areas such as providing certifications in Microsoft, the tests such as 70-291 and 70-620 are offered. Certifications in Cisco are also provided at test king for instance tests like 650-173 and 642-552 is taken by the students. Another test which is of the similar field is 640-863. Test king not only believes in testing but also in imparting training sessions such as ccna and it training promise great results.