A Simple Metric to Gauge Your Web Site’s Popularity

So tell me… how exactly do you know whether or not your web site is working for you? Is it making you money? Is it increasing your visibility with your target market? Is it broadening your reach within your target market? And what about your credibility, is it establishing and continually reaffirming it with your target market?

For most types of businesses, unless your web site serves as an e-commerce site directly selling your products and services to your customers, it is very difficult to establish and track whether or not your web site is actually making you money.

However with minimal effort, you can easily track and measure whether your web site is increasing your visibility, broadening your reach, and establishing your credibility with your target market… three very important reasons for marketing… with one simple metric. Here’s how it works.

From your Internet browser go to the popular search engine Google’s web site www.google.com and type in the search box the word “links”, a colon, a space, and then your web site’s domain name minus the typical “http://www.” part. So for example, for my web site, I would type: “links: OnlineMarketingMuscle.com” and hit either the “Enter” key or click the “Google Search” button.

The result that Google will return is any and all Internet URLs that it knows about that have linked to my web site. And in the eyes of the search engines, typically the more links the better. Yes, the quality of who’s linking to you does factor in to how you’re perceived by the search engines as well, but that’s a conversation for another day. So unless a large majority of your inbound links are coming from offensive, less than desirable sites, it’s hard to argue with the power of sheer volume -- it speaks volumes about your popularity across the web.

Now to take the usefulness of that data up a notch, run this metric once a month and record the results in a spreadsheet. Then from the spreadsheet you can easily produce a graph showing your increasing web popularity over time.

That’s it… it’s that simple.

So in closing, it’s nearly impossible to know whether or not your web site is working for you if you don’t maintain and analyze some sort of metrics. The one we’ve discussed here is just one in a series of simple, yet critical ones that everyone using the web as a marketing medium should have in their arsenal. The key here though, is not just collecting the data but how you leverage that data to enable you to make better marketing and business decisions.

© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your newsletter, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? -- Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog 'The Motivational Marketer’s Journal'. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter the 'Marketing Minute', -- a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.

Technorati Tags: Dean Mercdo, Online Marketing Muscle, metrics, web site, target market, marketing, search engines, Google

Secrets of the Internet Marketing Experts Series: 2 Keys to Higher Organic Search Engine Rankings

By Dean Mercado

I believe it’s safe to say that regardless of the type of web site you own, drawing the continual attention and favor of the major search engines is very important to your effectiveness on the Internet.

And since it’s never wise for a businessperson to leave their fate in someone else’s hands, it’s imperative that you continually take strides to improve yours.

Think of the Internet as a treadmill running at high speed, stand still and you will actually move backwards as your competitors who are willing to run, pass you by. To play the search engine marketing game, you need to keep your feet moving forward… not just enough to stay in the same place, but fast enough to keep you competitive by propelling you forward ahead of the pack.

That being said, it’s important to understand the motivation behind how the search engines work. Essentially, search engines are judged by you, the user, by their ability to bring you the best matches to whatever it is you’re searching for online -- their inability to do this effectively not only hurts their bottom line but also hurts the usability of the Internet in general.

So it makes a lot of sense that the search engines would take great care in ensuring they are doing the best job they possibly can to help you find what you’re looking for.

I have to say, they certainly have their work cut out for them though. There are tons of very smart people out there continually looking for and exploiting any and all loopholes in an attempt to slant the playing field in their favor. The search engines have essentially assumed the role of policing this activity in order to give all web sites an equal chance at achieving higher rankings. This is why top search engines like Google change their algorithms constantly -- if someone does manage to find and exploit a loophole, it won’t be available for very long. So unless you’ve got nothing better to do, trying to cheat the system is just not cost effective -- I highly recommend that you stick to the tried and true tactics.

What I’m about to share with you, are what I and many other Internet marketing experts consider the 2 most important keys to organically improving your search engine raking. Now are these the only things that the search engines take into consideration when ranking your site? -- Absolutely not! However, these two appear to be the main ones whose importance hasn’t waned over time. So here goes:

1. Fresh, Unique, Relevant Content

Ahh… how the search engines love this… that’s one reason they are so enamored with blogs… because blog content tends to be unique, focused on a specific topic, and updated frequently.

So whether though the posting of your e-zine issues to your web site, posting one-of-a-kind relevant articles, or hosting a discussion forum, just to name a few different things you can do, get into the rhythm and habit of adding in-demand content regularly – I’d recommend at least weekly.

2. Lots of One-Way, Incoming Links from Other High Ranked Sites

This is essentially social proof to the search engines that your web site is important -- and as we stated earlier, this is exactly what the search engines want -- they want to bring their target market the best matches available on the Internet.

Now for the most part, the more web sites that are linked to you, the better! Want to take it up a notch? Don’t just go for quantity, go for quality as well -- Get linked to by other relevant web sites. Want to take it up another notch? Get linked to by web sites that are ranked higher than you. Want to take it even further, have those web sites linking to you use keywords from your destination page as anchor text to represent your link… cool stuff here!

It also important to note that while one-way inbound links appear to be the best kind… this doesn’t mean not to do reciprocal links with other relevant sites… those are good too… they just may not be weighed as heavily as the one-way inbound ones.

So in closing, I’d like to leave you with the notion that if you want to get the most value out of your web site, it’s imperative that you put into place, and take consistent action on, both content and linking tactics for your web site immediately.

© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your newsletter, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? -- Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog 'The Motivational Marketer’s Journal'. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter the 'Marketing Minute', -- a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.

Technorati Tags: Dean Mercado, Online Marketing Muscle, web sites, blogs, search engines, target market