How to you check the popularity of your website

Websites can also be categorized similarly based on popularity and reputation. Here are few methods for checking the popularity and reputation of any website.

Alexa Ranking

This is perhaps the most used and most controversial method of checking the popularity of a website. In this method, the traffic rank of a website as compared to other websites in the internet is measured. Traffic rank is an indication of the popularity of a website. For normal website, an alexa traffic rank of anything less than 500,000 is considered to be good enough. The top ten ranked sites in the world according to alexa are:

1. Google - Alexa Rank 1
2. Facebook - Alexa Rank 2
3. Youtube - Alexa Rank 3
4. Yahoo.com – Alexa Rank 4
5. Blogger.com – Alexa Rank 5
6. Baidu - Alexa Rank 6
7. Wikipedia - Alexa Rank 7
8. Windows Live – Alexa Rank 8
9. Twitter - Alexa Rank 9
10. QQ.com – Alexa Rank 10

Inbound Links

Inbound links are the links pointing to a website from other sites.  More number of inbound links from different websites indicates the reputation of the website. Although Alexa lists the number of inbound links, not all links are actually listed. It is difficult to find all the inbound links of a particular website. Different tools for checking inbound links for a particular website are available on the internet, but results vary greatly. The Quality of inbound links also matters, an inbound link from a reputed website like bbc.com is worth more than 10 inbound links from lesser known sites.

Finally, there are websites or blogs that may be popular among a local community and frequently visited by their members. So, for some websites, the popularity and reputation may be irrelevant as long as it serves the purpose of a community.

How to Make Your Blog or Website Popular

Many webmaster ask this question to SEO experts that how to make my website or blog popular quickly. For them I would say that there is no shortcut of success. All you need is to be fair in whatever you do and have patience. You will see the positive results. In this post, i will explain few points, if followed can lead your website to big success.

Unique Contents:

The first and very important step to make your website a big hit is that you should provide unique contents. Never copy the contents from popular website in a hope that you will make your website popular very soon. There are advantages of providing unique contents. All big poplar websites will link back to you if your content is unique and have some importance for their users. More and more popular websites will start linking back to you. Your authority will increase. You will receive more backlinks and hence more Google PageRank value as well as more referral traffic.

Hold Your Visitors:

This is another art you should know. You can get traffic from many sources but if your website is not able to hold this traffic, your website is not able to turn this traffic to re- visitors, your website popularity will never increase. A website is popular because of re-visitors. If users feel that your website is worth visiting again, it's your win and sign of the popularity of your website.

Here are some points on how can you hold your visitors-

• Unique content will hold visitors.
• Website navigation should be easy. User should easily get what they are looking for.
• Never try to make your users fool by providing misleading information.
• Never distract your visitor from your website contents.
• Some kind of regular visitor participation like poll, survey, contest etc.
• Keep away your website from Spamming

Provide New Contents:

Update your contents frequently. Search engines like new contents. Fresh and unique contents will keep your SERP up and high SERP will turn into high traffic and hence more chances of your website to be popular. For a single service or product provider websites, they can focus more on quality of their services. Always try to keep your website search engine friendly in order to achieve high SERP.

Active participation in Related Niche:

Active participation in related niche websites, blogs to pull traffic as well as to put our website in front of users of other websites is required. More exposure your website will get, more likely users will come back to your website. The form of participation could be blog commenting, forum posting and article submission etc.

Social Bookmarking and Social Networking:

Social Networking and Social Bookmarking can bring good amount of traffic to your website and can give exposure to your website. Your next job is to convert this traffic to your regular visitors.

Drive Traffic to Your Blog or Website with Google, Yahoo and Facebook Groups

In today's world, Social Networking plays an important role in the success and failure of any blog or website. It is as important as the content of your website. More social networking leads to more users/traffic for your website. In this article, I will explain how you can drive the traffic to your website or blog using Groups services from some of the top internet brands e.g. Google, Yahoo! and Facebook. Though there are other sites as well but we will talk about these only in this article.

Yahoo! Groups is the one who started its services a way before Google and Facebook and still the leader in its offerings. Google and Facebook groups too are trying to catch up Yahoo! very fast. For any website or blog, it is very important to interact with its users. Though the website itself provides the options like comments, ratings, poll etc. but apart from interaction in your website, you should also explore other platforms to interact with users who might be interested in your blog or website.

Yahoo! Groups: If you are a owner of a blog or website and you want to promote it and looking for more user interaction then you can start a new Yahoo! Group related to your website/blog. This group can be used to showcase the things about the topic of your website. E.g. If I own a site called nokia5800downloads.blogspot.com, i can create a Yahoo! group with name Nokia 5800 Downloads. Yahoo! Groups allows you to add new members, post articles, images, attachements, links, etc. You can create polls to interact with your group members. You can even promote your group using the tools provided by Yahoo! Groups.

Just add more and more users to your Yahoo! Group and talk about your blog/website. Yahoo! Groups is a powerful tool and it can drive good amout of traffic to your website. I have seen the groups with thousands of users. You can create a new Yahoo! Group by visiting the URL http://groups.yahoo.com/

Google Groups: Unlike Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups is very simple and offers you pretty much the same as Yahoo! Groups. You can add members, create pages, add links, photos and files. You have discussions where you can post about your website and let users of the group interact with you on the topic of discussion. The interface is very simple and it's very easy for first time users as well.

You can create a Google Group by visiting the URL http://groups.google.com/. You can add a link of your group to your website so that a visitor coming to your website can join the group and later you can keep informing him about any latest updates of your website through this group.

Facebook Groups: After Google and Yahoo!, Facebook too has Facebook Groups, a service which helps you connect and share with the people interested in your website or blog. If you have a Facebook account, creating and running a group is as easy as opening a webpage. Fill the few information like your Group name, the category it belongs to and a little description and there you go. You have your Facebook Groups created. Unlike Yahoo! and Google Groups, Facebook Groups is very advanced. You can add links, images, videos in a second with the cool interface it provides. You can set an event, start a discussion. You can even promote your Facebook Group.

You can invite people to join your group. There are plenty of ways provided in the interface to interact with the members of your group. Facebook Groups is the best offerings in terms of interface and functionalities.