Almost 18 months ago I wondered how long it would take Google to pass up Yahoo! on Alexa’s rankings. Yesterday I noticed that it finally happened. Google is now the #1 most visited website in the world! (according to Alexa)
It is interesting to note that Google owns two other sites in the top-10, Youtube and Blogger.com. Pretty impressive.
For all of you guys that use SEO techniques for marketing, you may be missing out on a big money maker. Everyday I get a few dozen organic hits to a landing page that I used to use with PPC a few months ago. I did basic SEO techniques like meta tags, titles, etc. However, none of this organic traffic is coming from normal searches. All of these hits are actually coming from Google Images. And some of the traffic still converts!
The image is on a page with a couple paragraphs and a h1 title about the topic. The topic is also listed as the alt text in the image. On the websites home page, there is a link to the page.
That is the only work I did. If I search the alt text in my image, I am the third image and I get about 30-40 unique hits a day from that puppy.
So lets review…. I added some SEO techniques to a landing page, Google found my image, and now I am getting free conversions for that little work a few months ago.
If you have ever done some browsing on Alexa’s traffic rankings, you’ll notice Yahoo! is ahead of Google as the #1 most visited site in the world. For myself, I was a little shocked the first time I saw this. I rarely use Yahoo! anymore. Yahoo! used to have a big advantage of Google with services like Yahoo! Mail, but Gmail and the rest of Google Labs (Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Docs, etc.) are among the most popular internet services out there today.
How could Yahoo! still be ranked ahead of Google?
While looking at Alexa’s top-500 list, I noticed that in addition to Google.com, the list includes Google Brazil, Google Germany, Google UK and others. I took a look at the Yahoo! equivalents of these country-specific sites. Yahoo.com.br sends you to br.Yahoo.com. Yahoo.de sends you to de.Yahoo.com.
This redirect Yahoo! has set up sends most of their international traffic to a sub-domain on Yahoo.com. The Alexa ranking system does not have different rankings for each sub-domain. Alexa counts all of the redirected traffic on the Yahoo.com domain. Considering that less than 20% of internet users are in the US, that could be enough traffic to put Yahoo! over Google.
That’s better than my idea to raise Alexa rankings.
Can Google’s US traffic overcome Yahoo!?
If you take a look at Alexa’s graph of Yahoo! vs Google, Google is closing in on Yahoo!. In fact, Google recently passed MSN as the #2 site in the world. That accomplishment becomes even more impressive when you consider that nearly every PC running Windows has MSN set as the default home page on Internet Explorer.
My prediction is that we will see Google finally (and perhaps rightfully) take over Yahoo! in 2008. When do you think it will happen?
Take Advantage of Google’s Ever-Growing Popularity
Don’t miss out on Google’s eventual total-domination of the internet. There are programs out there that will help you get rich banking on Google’s success. This one offers a free trial that only requires a shipping and handling charge. You might want to give it a try.
I really love finding new keywords that my sites rankly highly for. There is something about knowing that if anyone were to type this search into Google, they would see my site in the number one spot and, more than likely, pay me a visit.
Anyway, I checked some of the text in the title of my blog. First, I took a look at “revenue earning experiment.” Sure enough, I am number one. I tried cutting down to just “earning experiment” and found that I was number one there too. Unfortunately, I am no where to be found for the term “revenue earning.”
In the past, I have talked about words that I rank for in Google searches. I noticed that after making that post, I bumped up even higher for that keyword. It is something that you may want to try on your blog. The more number one keywords you have, the more traffic you get.
Raising your Alexa ranking is all about getting more traffic. Or so you thought. There is a catch. As other bloggers have highlighted this week (John Chow and Kumiko), your rank is actually based off of the number of visitors you get that are running the Alexa toolbar.
Until recently, the tool bar was only available for Internet Explorer. If all your users were, for instance, Mac users that ran Safari. Alexa would not be counting any of your visitors. Unfortunately, the Alexa tool bar still is not available for Safari. It is, however, now available for Firefox.
Download Sparky (Alexa’s tool bar for Firefox)
Back to the point of this post… hopefully you just downloaded the Alexa tool bar. Now, when you visit my site, it will increase my Alexa ranking.
In short: The easiest way to raise your Alexa Ranking is to ask your visitors to download the Alexa tool bar.
In my last post I noted that I got some traffic for the search query “facebook azoogle” via Google. At the time of the posting, I was ranked ninth for that query. Now I am number one!
So how did I become number one for this term?
I checked my Google Analytics and I noticed I was getting organic traffic from Google from the search “facebook azoogle.” Once I had those keywords identified, I included them in my next post. This was the bump I needed to get above the fold and into the number one spot.
Now this query is probably not searched very often, but I will continue this technique and see what results it brings. This technique also gives you some material to write about if you don’t have any ideas.
