Magazine
12/12/2011
Marketing your webpage is the most important part of its development. Just like in the grocery store, a product that gets lost amid all the others is doomed to failure. But, which marketing groups can you trust? You need to come to the table fully educated. It's just like buying a car. The more you know about the product, the less chance there is that you will get screwed.
I don't have to tell you that the most money made on the internet is by service providers -- those who can GUARANTEE to make you rich! People plunk down huge amounts of money in hopes that they will get the golden ticket and make millions overnight. This line of reason trickles down through the entire internet system. And big money is involved. Accredited learning institutions are pumping out degrees in web design and business with absolutely no guarantees of a job. Google makes affiliate programs that most of us try out and never make a penny on. The saturation point of practically every online institution has been researched and exceeded years ago. And the clear winners are the search providers, like Google. This should tell you something. The message is that you are supposed to be one of these service providers. You will never make money being an end user. Try as you might, your little insightful webpage will never make the charts, and you will never get rich.
So, now that you are in the mindset of being a service provider you have to think like one. What service can you offer to help that little guy get ahead in the world? What kinds of networks and associations do you have to interface with in order to generate some interest?
I have 30+ years in the computer programming industry and am a pretty good number cruncher. I am developing some data on the critical factors on how to get a service webpage to make a profit. Now, I know that I should not give away my secrets but I can give you some guidelines so that you can do your own research. I will update this as I get more information.
To start with, there is a service called Alexa which basically rates internet sites. Certain other services use Alexa to determine how many advertising dollars can be made by that site. Alexa has been designed and programmed in a particular way. You should be aware of its design. The first company on the Alexa list [http://www.alexa.com/topsites] is Google, of course. We all know why that is!!! [I would recommend you turn on your Google toolbar so that you can see your page rank and Alexa rating, at least for the length of this conversation.] Now, if you go to your Google+ blog, you will see that your page rank and Alexa rating are not unique to your page. They are the same as Google+. So, why aren't there any entries in Alexa for the individual users? Alexa must be screening them out. So, you say, who cares. It makes me feel good to have a page rank of 8 and an Alexa rating of 1 on my blog. Great! But so does everyone else and I don't think anyone will be impressed by your Google+ blog ratings, no matter how much you work on it.
Ok, so let's move on to Facebook; #2 on Alexa's list. On Facebook's Home page, it is much like Google+, in that it shows Facebook's ratings and not yours. But, when you go to your actual blog page, it will show Facebook's Alexa rating but your own personal page rank. This might make your heart sink a bit when you see your low page rank. So, you have your choice to hang out on your Home page, which can make you feel good, or your blog page, which can make you ill. Either way, the other guy will only see your blog page rank and he pretty well knows the score. You have to work, the old fashion way to get your Facebook page rank to increase. And for what? Businesses and investors are not going to invest in a company that only exists in Facebook. They will be looking for a true hosted webpage which will reflect more accurately the company’s web presence. Another thing to note before we continue is once again the individual Facebook blogs are filtered out from Alexa, so they will not come up in an Alexa search.
The next sites are mostly big companies that have established high ranking sites, like Youtube and Wikipedia. Take note that these sites gained popularity because they draw in content from end users -- for free!! This is called "value added." Most people cannot compete with a company like this and will never be able to raise their ratings on their own. Without the help of investors, their little company will be like lost fish in a big ocean. Once again the little guy has been outdone by the big fish. And this is not a small issue. Note that Alexa only lists the top 500 or so webpages and they are full of these large companies. Since these 500 or so slots are full what chance does a little guy have in getting noticed on that list. Every so often you will see a webpage from a particular individual but when you look at this page, you will see that this guy has been posting blogs for the last 20 years and has a database the size of New York. Good luck emulating him!
I will continue to go down the list. Blogspot is interesting because it is very high on the list, both in Alexa ratings and page ratings. But you should notice that the individual Blogspot pages do NOT reflect these ratings. They reflect the actual ratings, which probably means a very high Alexa rating and a very low page rating. On Blogspot (which I think is Blogger, for the most part) you will have to work really hard to build your ratings and GOOD LUCK competing with the big fish. Even with SEO marketing you will probably not be able to push these pages too far up in the ratings. Here is where you can get into spending some big money on marketing. This is probably the realm in which most marketing profits are made on the internet. For your own peace of mind, if you are going to pour a bunch of money into marketing your website, I would recommend you host your own site and don't do it on a free site. It might raise a red flag to investors.
I hope you are following me so far. Continuing down the Alexa list we see more big fish. Swim. Swim. At the top of the page is a tab called “Categories.” These categories might actually allow you to see further down the Alexa list than the top 500 on the main page. Look through these category lists and see if you can see any little guys that you can emulate. You probably won't. I looked for months. But, after much research, I have finally found what I was looking for. A data leakage. A look into the great beyond. I can tell you that just beyond the great 500 limit is a more revealing look at what is going on in the great web in the sky. I can tell you that there are free individual web pages from certain host sites that actually reflect the Alexa rating from the host, which pushes them up on the Alexa list. These pages have to earn their page rank, but they have an advantage because they already have a great Alexa rating. They are actually listed on the Alexa report, and they are nothing more than one page resumes, for example. Their owners probably don't even know about their high ranking on the Alexa list. And they probably won't even notice if someone comes along and pushes them down the list. There are other useful tidbits that you can find by looking deeper into the top 500 on the Alexa list. Marketing companies will use the Alexa list for their SEO optimization process of your webpage. Be sure that they can guarantee you an Alexa rating under 700. Otherwise, they do not know what they are doing and have not used the Alexa list optimally. Big business pays to look deeper into the list. So should your marketing company.
Next time I will talk about “backlinks” and “dofollow”. Until then, you can reach me at https://lilishane.tripod.com/