More Baseline.
Yesterday I did a Google search for "search engine optimum" and checked if this blog was in the first three pages. As expected, it wasn't. I've just checked again and it still isn't, but again that's expected. Rome wasn't built in a day. SEO is something that really needs to be worked at for months in order to show good results, and besides there's hardly been any SEO here yet. All I've done so far is uploaded a couple of posts here and mentioned them on Twitter and Google Plus.
Anyway, checking for mentions on Google and other search engines is just part of establishing a baseline. If we want to know exactly where we are starting from, there are a few other things we can check, things like Alexa ranking. We can also use analytics, such as those provided by Google, to keep track of things such as how many visitors we get, where they come from and how long they stay for.
Another thing that we can do is to install a browser add-on, such as SEOpen or Swoosty SEO tools or Chrome SEO, which will allow us to quickly and easily check things such as backlinks, Pagerank and Alexa Rank not just for our own site but for others too.
Alexa.com is a site that measures or estimates the traffic going to a site. It has no data on this blog yet. Quantcast.com provides a similar service, and there are others.
As for analytics, there are those which are provided as part of the blogger service. They tell me for instance that this blog had 16 visits yesterday, and an all-time total of 31 visits. mainly from the United States and the United Kingdom, with one from Germany. To get more details, or to get analytics on a site which isn't a blogger blog, you can use Google Analytics, google.com/analytics. I set that up for this blog a short while ago, but it hasn't had enough time to gather any data yet. Again, there are other sites that provide a similar service.
All the things I've just touched on here will be covered in more detail later. Bookmark this space|
Maybe there isn't much happening yet with regard to the ranking of this blog, but elsewhere things are definitely looking up. For instance, my peerindex has just tripled, from 1 yesterday to 3 now. How many other people can say that their peerindex has tripled overnight? Not many, I'd guess! My activity and authority are still both listed as zero, but I suppose we can't have everything.
More Fregobo: Fregobo - The Next Facebook Killer?
Yesterday I pulled the name Fregobo out of the air, and speculated about whether it could be "the next "Facebook killer". It was just a throwaway remark about a randomly chosen collection of syllables, but afterwards I though "why not start a blog about it"? You can see the result at http://fregobo.blogspot.com/2011/07/introduction-what-is-fregobo.html. If you do, please make sure you read the kicker in the sixth paragraph.
Showing posts with label PeerIndex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PeerIndex. Show all posts
Friday, 22 July 2011
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Hello World!
If you sneaked a peek at my profile, you'll have seen that I've been "On Blogger since June 2008". That's when I signed up, but I've let things languish since then. Similarly with Twitter, Facebook, and so on. I signed up, because that's what everyone else was doing, but I didn't see, for instance, how you could say anything meaningful in just 140 characters, or how you could follow what was going on in Twitter. Browsing someone's stream seemed to me like listening in on a phone conversation where you only hear half of it. As for Facebook, back then you didn't even have the fun of waiting for imaginary seeds to grow. What did people actually DO there?
Consequently, I currently have a "PeerIndex" of Zero (don't worry if that means nothing to you, I intend to cover it in a later post, and in the meantime you can head over to peerindex.net to see how you score. If you want to see how I'm progressing while you're there, I'm MTGradwell.) My score would probably be less, if peerindex.net allowed negative scores.
I still can't say that I completely "get" social media, but things are starting to fall into place. Which is just as well, because my latest job involves working for a "relationship marketing" company, one which specialises in building up corporate reputation using social sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Something tells me I'd better get up to speed on this stuff, even though my work is more on the tech side of things.
If you've arrived here because you were searching for information about SEO, you may be wondering why on Earth you should stay. Why consult a blog about which Alexa.com reports "no data", maintained by a person who, PeerIndex reliably informs me, has "Activity 0" and "Authority 0"?
There's a couple of reasons. First of all, because of all the above, you're probably a time traveller from the future, Welcome! Please comment, because as a Sci-Fi buff I've always wanted to know what the future is like.
Seriously, this message is being written on the 20th of July 2011, but the chance that you're reading it on that date is negligible. And if my guess is right then, depending on when you are reading it, my PeerIndex should be significantly greater than zero, and this blog should be at least a blip and hopefully much more than that on traffic ranking sites such as Alexa. If you think about it, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, for most readers if not for all. The vast majority of people who see this post must necessarily do so when the blog is at the peak of its popularity, whatever and whenever that might be. And unless I close it down tomorrow, that peak is bound to be higher than the current ranking.
Of course, my ambition is not merely to do better than a zero. I see this blog as an interesting experiment. "White Hat" SEO (again, more about that later, and about "Black Hat" too) is about growing a site organically. What better way can there be to test it out than starting from scratch, with an empty site and no online reputation to speak of?
I'm aware that links can be bought, Twitter followers can be bought, almost anything can be bought. But Wikipedia's definition of SEO begins with 'Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.' I agree with that. There'll be no buying of anything here, because that would skew the results and spoil the experiment. Besides, "almost anything" isn't the same as "anything". I think the Beatles got it right with "Can't Buy Me Love", for instance.
The first rule of getting "natural" results must surely be "be natural yourself"; and that's my plan here. That's not to say that there aren't any useful tricks or tips to be found and passed on. If there weren't, then this would be a very short lived blog. Maybe it will be anyway. Want to find out? Bookmark this space.
Martin Gradwell.
Consequently, I currently have a "PeerIndex" of Zero (don't worry if that means nothing to you, I intend to cover it in a later post, and in the meantime you can head over to peerindex.net to see how you score. If you want to see how I'm progressing while you're there, I'm MTGradwell.) My score would probably be less, if peerindex.net allowed negative scores.
I still can't say that I completely "get" social media, but things are starting to fall into place. Which is just as well, because my latest job involves working for a "relationship marketing" company, one which specialises in building up corporate reputation using social sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Something tells me I'd better get up to speed on this stuff, even though my work is more on the tech side of things.
If you've arrived here because you were searching for information about SEO, you may be wondering why on Earth you should stay. Why consult a blog about which Alexa.com reports "no data", maintained by a person who, PeerIndex reliably informs me, has "Activity 0" and "Authority 0"?
There's a couple of reasons. First of all, because of all the above, you're probably a time traveller from the future, Welcome! Please comment, because as a Sci-Fi buff I've always wanted to know what the future is like.
Seriously, this message is being written on the 20th of July 2011, but the chance that you're reading it on that date is negligible. And if my guess is right then, depending on when you are reading it, my PeerIndex should be significantly greater than zero, and this blog should be at least a blip and hopefully much more than that on traffic ranking sites such as Alexa. If you think about it, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, for most readers if not for all. The vast majority of people who see this post must necessarily do so when the blog is at the peak of its popularity, whatever and whenever that might be. And unless I close it down tomorrow, that peak is bound to be higher than the current ranking.
Of course, my ambition is not merely to do better than a zero. I see this blog as an interesting experiment. "White Hat" SEO (again, more about that later, and about "Black Hat" too) is about growing a site organically. What better way can there be to test it out than starting from scratch, with an empty site and no online reputation to speak of?
I'm aware that links can be bought, Twitter followers can be bought, almost anything can be bought. But Wikipedia's definition of SEO begins with 'Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.' I agree with that. There'll be no buying of anything here, because that would skew the results and spoil the experiment. Besides, "almost anything" isn't the same as "anything". I think the Beatles got it right with "Can't Buy Me Love", for instance.
The first rule of getting "natural" results must surely be "be natural yourself"; and that's my plan here. That's not to say that there aren't any useful tricks or tips to be found and passed on. If there weren't, then this would be a very short lived blog. Maybe it will be anyway. Want to find out? Bookmark this space.
Martin Gradwell.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)