Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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Alexa Data

The Alexa database, located at

www.alexa.com

, provides interesting tidbits of info

about websites: a screen shot of the home page, traffic data, inbound links, site owner

contact information, related links, and even a link to old versions of the website on the

Internet Archive (aka the Wayback Machine). Most addictive of all, Alexa estimates

your website’s traffic rank among all sites on the Web.

Many in the SEO community have serious doubts about the accuracy of Alexa’s

numbers and believe that Alexa’s stats are easy to manipulate, so take them with a

grain of salt. But if you are looking for quick answers to general questions about a

website (Is this some crazy spammer or a legit business?), Alexa might be a good place

to start.

To see a website’s details, search for the full URL in Alexa’s search box. If you

fall in love with Alexa, you can even download an Alexa toolbar to add to your

browser, similar to the Google Toolbar.

Wednesday: Assess On-Page Factors

Today, you’re going to look inside your competitors’ sites to determine whether there is

any evidence of SEO. You’ll be researching the following elements:

• Targeted keywords

• Basic optimization

• General characteristics of the site

In the following sections, we’ll go into the finer points:

Targ et ed Key wor ds

First, try to determine what, if any, keywords your Big Five competitors are targeting.

Sometimes a competitor’s targeted keywords will make themselves clear if you

simply review the text on their site. It’s a fair bet that your competitors are targeting

many of the same keywords that you are, so you can glance through their page con-

tent and look for those terms or for similar terms that you may have considered for

your own site.

But are they actually targeting these terms for SEO, or did their copywriter just

get lucky with word choice? The quickest way to get a read on a competitor’s SEO

Now:

Go to

www.alexa.com

and search for your own website URL. See what comes up!

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