Although the notion of Web Presence is very abstract, there are a number of metrics available that can give you a very good idea of your site - or any site's - web presence. We will go through some of the following in posts all to themselves later in this series, but for now:
- Google Page Rank - Unless your selling porn or BNP merchandise your website's Google Page Rank, or PR is, I think, the most important metric for web presence. Page Rank is a number between 1 and 10, simply put: the higher a site's PR the more important Google thinks that site is.
- Alexa rank - Alexia is a subsidiary of Amazon and - for the last decade or so - it has been monitoring web traffic via its toolbar and other means. New sites wont have an Alexa rank but as a guide line, our www.tomeraider.com has a rank under half a million, Yahoo is 1 and Google is 3.
- Backlinks - Backlinks are links from websites to your website. The quality of these links is important as if they come from "bad" sites then your site may be penalized in SEO terms.
- Other Search Engines - Like it or hate it, right now Google is by far the most important search engine for UK websites and web users. Nonetheless, its always worth increasing your web presences by having your site optimized for other search engines.
- Sundries - There are a bunch of other factors, like mentions in the blogosphere, forums, Usenet, email lists..... All of these factors can add, or detract in some cases, from a site's web presence. Some sundries, like getting a mention on a social news site such as digg.com can be worth an absolute fortune in terms relative value.
If you or your company owns a website, any website, then you need to get clued up with the website's web presence. It will take you 2 mins a week to do and is invaluable in so many ways. Its also totally non-teccy (Unlike, say webstats or Google Analytics) - my mum could find out this information - and make sense of it - whenever she wanted.
Know your Web Presence
There are a zillion tools and websites available to monitor all kinds of things to do with web site metrics. But lets start simple and use the free Tool Url at http://www.toolurl.com/
Visit this site, enter your website address in the box provided. You will instantly be told:
- The Site's Google Page Rank
- The Site's Alexa Rank
- The quantity and source of Backlinks from varied search engines
If I was you I would date and write down these numbers (If your site is very new you might not have much to write down). And get into the habit of checking them regularly as they are so so important if you are serious and professional about your website.
Not knowing them is like being a stock broker who never checks the stock market.
SEO Primer 3: Traffic, will be published shortly.
