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8 Ways to Use Alexa.com's Toolbar as Your Secret Traffic Weapon
by Tinu Abayomi-Paul ©Copyright 2004

By now, most web marketers know that the Alexa.com ranking of 
their site is important. It gives an independent measure of 
your monthly unique visitors and reach on the Web to potential 
advertisers.

To potential clients, it gives them a vehicle by which they can 
research your site, and if your ranking or reviews are favorable, 
an air of credibility as well.

Across the Web, a trend is growing - webmasters display their 
graphical ranking on the front pages of their sites, and there 
has been a resurgence in reviews of websites on Alexa.com by the 
average web surfer. Yes, all this is common knowledge even among 
many new to selling their wares online.

But did you know that there are other ways you can use Alexa.com 
to your advantage, specifically exploiting some of their latest 
changes to your advantage? Here are 8 of the 9 ways I've used 
Alexa as my Personal Secret Traffic Weapon in the first month of 
my latest website's life.

1. You probably already knew that Alexa Internet is owned by 
Amazon. But did you know that the reviews done on Alexa are now 
being linked to Amazon.com? Or, that the new reviews appear on 
Amazon.com as part of your Amazon profile?

To use this to your advantage, you can create a new Amazon 
profile centered around the theme of your site. You can even get 
an article printed on Amazon by filling out their "So You'd Like 
to..." guide or Listmania (visit amazon.com, then > Help 
> Friends & Services). And if your ebook/newsletter/book has an 
ISBN number, you can also partner with a webmaster in a parallel 
market and review each other's books. The possibilities are as 
endless as your current Amazon.com profile.

2. Use wordtracker to find high ranking sites for semi-popular 
   keywords.

Find sites in the top ten of those keywords that don't have 
rankings yet. Suggest your site and several others as related 
links. It looks like Alexa is changing this information for 
sites that already have links to "Sites Linking In". For now, 
the Related Links Suggestion Box is still available for every 
site by going to:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/editor?type=rl&url=http://www.yoururl.com 
- I have a feeling this may go away from the way they've started 
hiding it since yesterday, so do this step as soon as possible.

If you've done this before, try partnering up with another web 
marketer and suggesting each other's links to a pre-determined 
number of sites. Or, use your personal Amazon.com profile to 
suggest your link for other sites and your new target profile 
to suggest links for other sites.

Get a free trial of wordtracker here:
http://freetrafficdirectory.com/wordtracker

3. Find out your competitor's ranking.

If yours is higher, or at least close, proclaim yours proudly 
on your site with Alexa's free dynamic traffic graph banner, 
which you can get from this page: 
http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup?mode=graph. Another 
great thing about this is that if you have an associate ID, 
Amazon will include your ID in your link and monetize the 
banner. They also have a site stats and traffic ranking graph 
if you prefer.

4. Tell your repeat visitors about Alexa's toolbar and the fact 
   that it will now block pop-ups.

I even saw one site link to their download page as a freebie. 
And why not? It benefits you both. Your visitors can selectively 
eliminate pop-ups, and you get another Alexa user visiting your 
site, thus increasing your ranking. Guess what else?

According to this page: 
http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/promotealexa.html - any 
purchases made at Amazon using the new toolbar will earn you
commissions. (They aren't as particular as they used to be about 
new associates either. My site was approved overnight.) And if 
they have Netscape or use a Mac? There's now the Alexa snapshot, 
which doesn't require installation: 
http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/snapshot.html

5. Testimonials

When your customers give you testimonials or compliments about 
your site, offer them a free gift if they will reprint their 
testimonial at Alexa. If they can't install the toolbar, you 
can direct them to
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=yourURLhere.com

6. Hard Evidence

You can use the data as supporting evidence during a time period 
when you're testing an affiliate product that would affect your 
traffic. If your traffic went up 50% during the two week period 
when you implemented http://freetrial.sitesell.com/yourfreetraffic.html, 
use the traffic detail graphic from Alexa to show your progress.

Hard evidence = More sales.

7. Stay In The Loop

Keep up to date on Alexa's top global 500. Often these sites 
correlate closely to the top 500 Google sites - and you could 
luck out and find a rapidly rising site that will link back to 
you. It's also a good measure of upcoming trends you can arrange 
for your site to capitalize on. The top 500 Global Sites are 
available on Alexa.com's homepage.

8. Say Thank You.

Thank fellow webmasters for their assistance by doing reviews 
of their site at Alexa. Then the next time you have cause to 
email them, mention the review and give permission for them to 
use it as a testimonial. This works nicely as an ice breaker for 
a join venture and is also a good way to show that your flattery 
is sincere, and not just of the smoke-blowing, scratch-my-back-
and-I'll-scratch-yours variety so many are used to online.

This is just a short list of things I implemented as a result of 
the latest changes to Alexa. If you go by the site and do some 
exploring, I bet you'll think of dozens more. If so, I hope 
you'll drop me a line and share.

Note: Get the Alexa Toolbar here:
http://freetrafficdirectory.com/alexatoolbar

I bet you're wondering about tip number 9. It's the most 
valuable and explains how I got freetrafficdirectory.com ranked 
137,940 by Alexa by its third week of existence, garnered an 
unsolicited spider-ing by Google, and a bunch of new members, 
all for free. By the time you read this, I'll have probably have 
an update out to our newsletter audience:

mailto:ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com

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Article by Tinu Abayomi-Paul. Contact:abikuchild@writing.com
Free Traffic Directory (http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com)
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