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If you have been a webmaster for any length of time, you most likely know all about pagerank, and have been working to get yours up. If you haven’t, here is a general description from wikipedia:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Put even simpler, we will start from the beginning. Google is the largest web search engine online today, and will always be. From junior high schools to retirement homes, the latest trend when you want a question answered is to “Google It”. This phrase has swept the nation and almost everyone currently uses it. If you’re a webmaster, you want to be on the top of the results and to do this, you need a decent Google PageRank.

Google PageRank is based on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest. Sites with PR0 have either just started, or were bought and never had any content or traffic. You should be able to attain a PR1 quite easily. Your PageRank is based on the number of links directing to your sites from other sites. The more you have, the more you will go up in rank obviously. But don’t be fooled, some sites are better to be linked from than others. Being linked to on a PR7 site will do a large amount of good compared to a PR1. PR0 links are virtually useless as they are new and have no content, so their links mean practically nothing.

PageRank does work and is efficient for getting your site into some keywords on Google’s monopoly of a search engine, but overall it is not worth the hassle and is a dead market. Google does not show results on a page solely based of PageRank as some seem to think. If you swap links with some large sites and manage to get a higher PR than that of a site that has been running for 5 years solid, they will most definately get the higher result. Why? Established sites mean everything. Google strives to link it’s users to the most relevant information and most likely the site that has been active for 5 years will have better content and more information on the subject than your 3 month old site. Inevitably, PageRank is just another tool to rank yourself against other websites of the same niché to see where you stand.

Google has opened an entirely new market by simply allowing this new feature to be used. While it is somewhat beneficial to the engine as a whole, it could simply be hidden because it is not solely relying on backlinks like everyone believes. Users are now paying up to $100+/month to have their link posted in a PR7 link directory. A link directory is a site that contains just links, and that is all, it is created solely for the use of boosting PageRank and is against Google TOS. People have literally wasted thousands of dollars getting backlinks. Sometimes it works out in the end but most often, it does not.

As stated above Google is now a monopoly online and quite literally anything they brand with their logo, they will start making millions from. There is no denying that PageRank is an excellent tool to use in their search engine, but it has started a spending spree that is leading most people nowhere.

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Are you considering purchasing traffic to boost your site a bit? Have you decided where you are purchasing the traffic, or what kind of traffic you are looking for? If you haven’t, perhaps you should consider what each different course of traffic offers. Remember, there is a difference in the traffic  you purchase.

Once you’ve decided that you want to purchase some traffic, why not look a bit deeper into what you are purchasing? Any schmuck can sell you traffic on a web forum and deliver it all to your site. But what if you are looking only for US-based users, or perhaps users wanting your specific genre, should you pay extra? No! Chances are these users are being coaxed to your site and being compensated(paid) for it. They don’t really care what genre your site is, or what your site even is altogether. They view the site solely for the purpose of getting paid to do it.

While targetting seems like a good idea, in the long run traffic is traffic. If your content is good enough, you will be able to convince them to stay. 19/20 people forced to view your site when someone purchases traffic won’t stick around on your site any longer than they are paid to do so. If you want real traffic, advertise your site, don’t purchase traffic.

When you purchase things online, you always get what you pay for. When you purchase advertising, you get advertising. When you purchase traffic, you get traffic. Make sure your site has content to keep them stuck to the page, if you rely solely on the hope that all of the traffic you purchase decides to stick around, you are going to be very distraught once your traffic flow has ended.

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Chances are if you are a part of the active internet world, you check various site’s alexa rankings from time to time. Alexa rankings show your sites traffic versus other sites all over the internet. Of course Yahoo! and Google are usually on the top, but if your site is anywhere in the top 100,000 your still getting pretty decent traffic. The lower your number the more traffic you have.

Alexa’s rankings have been questioned multiple times and several webmasters won’t even recognize Alexa as a legitimate ranking source. All of the traffic details are brought in from alexa’s toolbar and that is not a very reliable source as most people online do not use this toolbar, or have even ever heard of it.

They have recently changed their ranking system to show even better statistics. While most sites alexa ranking went down, people are still very happy with the change as it is now reflecting the correct statistics. There is still tons of controversy over this system but it is the most trusted by webmasters all over the world, and if you aren’t looking at it, you should.

Alexa has it’s ups and downs, it’s bad and good sides, but altogether it helps webmasters get a view on where their site stands. This is why we tag it “The Necessary Evil”. While not completely accurate, and sometimes just plain wrong, for the most part it gets the job done and it is the standard for all webmasters. If you don’t like it, deal with it, Alexa is here to stay.

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Generating traffic is the hardest part of making your new site or trying to stimulate your old one. There are hundreds(yes hundreds) of ways to get thousands of interested users pointed directly at your site for free. If you do it right, you can have a huge, successful online experience, if you don’t, you will be posting to yourself and going nowhere.

The first and most obvious way, join a traffic exchange. There are many people looking to show their sites on yours, and in return, you can show yours on theirs. We currently are only a part of one exchange site, and it seems to be working very very well. 125Exchange is a banner exchange mostly for bloggers, but I’m sure others work as well. To put it simply, you get a small code that shows a 125×125 image wherever you post it on your site. In return, your site is shown on other exchangers’ sites. It’s a pretty simple model, but it works very effectively. There is also EntreCard, which is basically the same principle, only a bit more interesting. For each time you “drop your entrecard” on another persons blog, you get one credit. You also earn a credit for each person who drops a card on your site. With these credits you can purchase ad space on the little banner next to the “Drop” button. This gives you exposure on other sites for absolutely no cost. If you have enough good traffic, you won’t even ever have to drop a card anywhere. Everyone can earn form each others traffic, why not help out a bit?

Use social networking to your advantage. Ever heard of MySpace? Of course you have, it is the biggest tool that anyone could ever have. How? Simple, get tons and tons of friends to fill your list, and post a bulletin every once and a while. As long as you keep your bulletin pretty straightforward and don’t make it look like spam, you’ll have tons of success! Myspace has thousands of users looking around all the time and it is never to late to take advantage of this!

Communities are another excellent source of traffic. Whether it be a forum that you use to contact other online-goers, or a video game that you play with your nerdy pals. Get to know everyone, the more they know you, the more they will want to know about you. They will ask about your hobbies and eventually they will hear of your site. They will then tell their friends “Hey! I know the guy who owns this site!” and everyone will pass it down. 95% of the world wouldn’t even know how to begin making a website. Just by having one impresses some people and those are the people you need to keep reeling in the traffic!

These are just a few ways but there are tons more. Don’t ever feel like your site will not get big! Even the most successful websites on the internet have low points, don’t give up!

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