Do you spend an excessive amount of time checking your Alexa rank?
Do you often wonder how long it will take your PageRank to go up to the next number?
Are you stuck in the site brainstorming phase until you find the the perfect supply/demand combination in the AdWords Keyword Tool and WordTracker?
If you can relate to any of the above activities, chances are you may be expending a lot of energy in the wrong places and not focusing on what really matters.
Alexa
I remember when I first learned about Alexa. I was fascinated that it displayed my site’s ranking and I could compare my site to other competitors. I watched webmasters proudly display their Alexa widgets and badges to let people know their site was in the top 1%.
Even though Alexa has improved their ranking algorithm, you still have to remember it’s largely based upon people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser. This opens the door for a lot of skewed data.
I’ve watched my site’s Alexa ranks go up and down like a yo yo, but the most important thing is my traffic has steadily increased. And in my opinion, THAT is what counts more than anything.
PageRank
Ahhh yes… Google’s measurement of your site’s quality backlinks. This pesky little green bar has caused more frustration, exhilaration and confusion over the years, leaving people obsessed with their own PR and how to improve it.
Many people are stuck on the idea that improving their PR is the best way to get more traffic from Google. What they don’t realize is that your PR is more reflective of the traffic and quality backlinks you already have. So it’s more of a reaction to your site’s existing activity.
So rather than worrying about what it takes to improve this number, work on producing a quality site and delivering solid information, features or products to your target audience. Your PR will take care of itself.
PR seems to have little or no impact on your traffic potential from Google. I watched my PR drop from a 5 to a 4, yet my traffic from Google doubled since that time.
Keyword Tools
While tools like The Adwords Keyword Tool and WordTracker can be quite useful to help you determine your niche, focus, keywords to bid on for PPC, etc., they can also overwhelm you if you let them.
The Internet is saturated with blogs and websites on thousands of different topics. It’s going to be insanely difficult to find the perfect topic with high demand (number of monthly searches) and low supply (existing competition).
So when you’re using these tools, you should definitely take the supply and demand into consideration, but if that’s the only thing you look at, you may find yourself spinning your wheels and never making a decision.
I’ve noticed that Site Build It! customers often suffer from decision paralysis because of the brainstorming phase. Don’t get me wrong, SBI! probably has one of the most comprehensive brainstorming tools available, but that also makes it easy to get stuck.
Take the numbers into consideration, but also do your homework. Don’t let these tools do all the work for you. Physically research your competition by typing in the keywords you want to target. Look at the quality of sites that show up.
If they are sub-par then that may leave the door open for you to compete in this niche — especially if you work on developing a good spin on the topic.
So it’s important to look at the overall picture — the supply, demand, your passion, topic interest, and potential competition before making a decision on your topic.
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There will always be tools available for you to compare, monitor and gawk over. But don’t let them paralyze you and cause you to lose focus. Tools may develop, change and evolve, but one thing has always remained the same…
People who succeed online produce quality work that meets the needs and desires of a specific audience. When you do this well, it will be hard to lose, no matter what the measuring and ranking tools say about your site.
we, the small but able staff of LeapBrowser.com wish to thank Lisa for all her great sites and information.
No one does it better. I read your site weekly and have printed out sections that i call my short bible.
thanks
Hi Lisa,
I’ve been reading and following your advises on your sites and vids. You’ve got great info on your site. I’m just starting up my blog site and in my research for optimizing my site for search engines, I stumble across “robot” in Google. Google tools advises to put a “robot.txt” file in the root folder of my site so that site crawlers know what to look at and what not to look at when on my site. I was just wondering, what are the pros and cons of such a file?
Cheers,
Wil
i have never cared at all about those rankings… sometimes i feel so strange that many ppl are so addicted about these rankings..
as yahoo is implementing site explorers and my sites tools as well as webmaster.live.com from MSN seems very similar to google webmaster tools.. I am sure people will be driven crazier than ever.
As google is not longer giving credits to directory submit, I hope to see more quality backlinks in google and hope more unique content based people will have excellent ranking better than before..
but it’s true, it’s time people stop worry about ranking, especially alexa which could be biased and man-based… because of toolbar…
It’s time people care how to generate more traffic than ranking 🙂
nice article..
Nice article. I’ve seen people become almost obsessive-compulsive over their PageRank or Alexa rating. But I think more important than that is (like you state in your article) providing quality content to your visitors. Even if a site has a horrible PageRank, people will still go to it if it has quality content (word of mouth marketing by your own visitors often results from quality content!).
Your post is so true Lisa,
I’m to the point where I’m just posting to my blogs and not worrying about any of those things. I find I’m getting more done and will be more successful in the end. I think thats the key-get something done everyday.
Jerryl
Hey – Great Post – Most of my clients are obsessed with google pagerank. They would spend a ton of money on statistics – I think that you are right, don’t obsess with rank – build a website that users need/enjoy – and you will get traffic – don’t lose focus.
Thanks, Lisa! I have the Google toolbar on my browser now and it is somewhat discouraging to see the page rank of each site I visit and realize mine is so low in comparison. My Alexa score has also been dropping, even though my traffic is going up. It is a relief to know I don’t have to spend much time focusing on these numbers.
Thank you about this article. I think this information is very important.
I was paralysed for about two weeks using different free internet tools. The problem was that they showed different results and there were so many keywords to consider. I lost faith in my personal theme and couldn’t find another niche at all.
My personal theme where I feel strongly about, seemed to be saturated , but I had a lot of doubts if this really is the case at all, as there was not much qualified competition really, when I checked various high ranking websites on my theme.
But I finally reached the point where I believed that no niche exist anymore at all for myself, because my theme seemed saturated and I lacked the skills to use other themes.
But after a lot of confusion I finally returned to my personal theme and I think about buying SBI now and try to make the best I can to bring up a quality website on a subject where I feel strong about.