Especially appreciate the links for getting feedback on where traffic is coming from. Thank you!

I read your newsletter with interest…keep it up.

Just one thing, you talk above of the possibility of getting good page rank with through incoming links etc. Perhaps you could give the plans a try on this site and we can watch the progress (hopefully!) of its ranking and it can be put forward as good proof of the methods.

All the best for Christmas
Tony

Great Information! But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I concur with Tony. Please show us the way on this web site
so we can see the improvements in ranking.

Merry Christmas

Rajan

Here is another good free webstat service, they also offer guest book and forum. The info is basic but well illustrated with the essential graphs.

webstats.motigo.com/

It costs nothing to try it and I am not an affiliate!!

Regards

Chris

I checked out motigo.

Do you have a link to one of their forums so that I can see what they look like?

It may be handy to have a forum set up on their servers, but I would like to see one first.

cheers
Tony

Without going into full comparison, here are the major differences that I know:

WP-Slimstat-EX:
- It’s a Wordpress plugin, easy to set up
- stats are collected on your server
- no need to insert special code on any page
- very easy to view traffic results

Statcounter:
- Need to insert Statcounter code on every page (hence providing incoming links to statcounter.com resulting in it having a perfect Pagerank 10!
- has a limit (log size), afterwhich you need to pay to upgrade
- stats are stored on their server

GA: What is GA?

Awstats:
- though graphically nice, doesn’t have as much traffic details compared to WP-Slimstat-EX
- not as easy to interpret traffic results

The thing I find most useful in Slimstat is the list of search results that visitors are finding my website. I just need to click the hyperlinks which brings me straight to the search results where I can usually find my website within the first few pages.

In this way I can monitor the keywords that I’m ranked in the first or second page.

—-

Sharon,

You’re welcome.

The detailed instructions are in the 123-Ranking report (link at the bottom of my blog post). Quite easy to follow I must say.

Hmmm….maybe I’ll do a case study and share it here.

—-

Tony and Rajan

I do incoming link building mainly for my money-making niche sites, not this site which I reserve specially for my subscribers.

Reason is it’s so much easier to rank well for sites which are not “Internet marketing” related, or “make-money-online” type, which are hyper competitive.

Nevertheless, I’ll consider doing a case study on a new domain, or even this site, and share the results and findings here.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Craig

Thank you for your detail explanation. That is indeed very useful.

GA means Google Analytics.

I don’t have any further info on the forum, I only use the webstas at the moment and that is very good for a quick analysis.
I did set up the guestbook but I was not so impressed with that. With the forum I would suggest you open one…it’s free….If you don’t then like it just forget about it!!

Hope that helps

Regards

Chris

I will give it a go and report back.

Merry christmas
Tony

www.healthlifestyleforever.com/salesemail

Furthermore, you cannot guarantee a PR in 5 weeks - if you knew anything about PR then you would realize that Google only updates PR every few months. Usually once per quarter.

I suggest you stop kidding yourself and really learn what SEO is about and stop foolling people simply to make a lousy affiliate commission on some dodgy ebook.

[Edit: See Craig’s response to his comment in Comment 42 below]

1. No ranking for that site despite the claims of overnight rankings?

2. No author name ( and a really crappy cover ) This may not be exactly relevent and I am the last person to demand a glosssy look if something just plain works.
But if the sales page is poor quality the chances are strong that the info will be also.

3. No guarantee policy so what are the claims worth if they aren’t backed up.
Sure it’s only $7 but surely that’s not the point.

Where is the evidence? You have to buy the report to get the evidence about the report?

Still if you have personal knowledge or intuition about its effectiveness then I would factor that into the equation, but otherwise I’m dubious.

Hope I’m wrong… but?

Anthony, have you seen my earlier response (Comment 31 on Dec 17)?

I explained that I do incoming link building mainly for my money-making niche sites, not this site. The reason is it’s so much easier to rank well for sites which are not “Internet marketing” related, or “make-money-online” type, which are hyper competitive.

It’s true this blog has a PR of 0, because I’ve spent ZERO effort in building incoming links.

Why didn’t I?

With the limited time I have, I need to do activities which bring either benefits for my subscribers, or for myself.

For this Internet marketing blog, I do not need to rely on search engine traffic as the target audience is MY SUBSCRIBERS.

Anthony, I seriously doubt you know a lot about SEO yourself, based on your shallow comment about Pagerank and hasty conclusion. So let me educate you a little.

Though you’re right that “Google only updates PR every 3 months”, did you know that it’s only for the visible PR shown on Google toolbar?

Did you also know that PR is actually being updated in real time in Google’s servers? Any new incoming links are computed and considered, which is why search engine ranking changes dynamically, and not only once every 3 months.

“Google representative Matt Cutts has publicly indicated that the Toolbar PageRank values are republished about once every three months, indicating that the Toolbar PageRank values are historical rather than real-time values.”

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

This simply means that the PR you see on the Google toolbar is old info from the last update. The real PR is real-time. It is this real-time PR that we are talking about, and it is this that matters.

The author did show that his new site went from PR0 to PR4 in 5 weeks, because he was at the right time to catch on the 3-monthly Google PR update.

Even if he didn’t, the incoming links would have a real-time equivalent of PR4 in 5 weeks, which will show visibly in Google toolbar at the next update.

And how did you know the book was “dodgy”? Did you even read the ebook?

Before you go around judging a book by its cover, let me tell you that the 123Ranking sales page is a classic lesson in “What Not to Do In Salesletter Writing”. On the other hand, I’ve seen so many attractive sales pages with crappy products.

I’d say that his 123Ranking ebook is fairly well written and concise, with plenty of screenshots and proof, though it’s hard to please everyone.

Do you really think I would risk my credibility and reputation for $7?

Oh yes, Anthony. Thank you for showing others how to get website visitors: by posting a comment intended to stir trouble, so people will go check out your website. But in this case your attempt doesn’t carry much weight as your Pagerank view is flawed, isn’t it?

—

Hmmm, maybe I’ll now consider seriously to start a new website, document everything, and see how many days I take to be on the top ten of Google. Not just to proof to you guys, but also to start another new niche to add to my stable of websites.

I don’t claim to be an SEO expert, but at least I know enough to rank well on Google Top Ten in a short time with minimal effort, using all white hat techniques.

Will keep you guys posted on the results and methods used.

I’ll end with this note of caution: Though search engine traffic sounds good, one must always build multiple sources of traffic. Over reliance on one source is never healthy.

Craig

>> 1. No ranking for that site despite the claims of overnight rankings?

A: That is the ebook selling site, not the test site. The test site was shown on the sales page.

>> 2. No author name ( and a really crappy cover ).

A: As stated in my earlier response, the 123Ranking sales page is a classic lesson in “What Not to Do In Salesletter Writing”. I’ll say that his 123Ranking ebook is well written and concise, though it’s hard to please everyone.

Some people just don’t like to see their name on sales page, I don’t know why.

>> 3. No guarantee policy so what are the claims worth if they aren’t backed up.

A: There’s no stated guarantee, but I’ll back up with my personal money-back guarantee within 60 days.

>> Where is the evidence? You have to buy the report to get the evidence about the report?

A: The sales page showed two important sites: his test site, and the site he got the links from.

Hope this helps.

Craig

These comments are certainly great.

I am a little wary of the product like some other commenters.

Its not the price…I spill more than $7 of beer on a quiet night out!! but more the time and effort when I should be getting some more social backlinks or something that I have confidence with.

Would love to be part of a case study if you do one and see results from a new site set up using those techniques in the 123 report.

If we see some scores on the board, I am sure all your readers will jump in.

happy New Year
Tony

Good advice! Thanks for the info on different
linking approaches.

I’d like to read more information on the pros
and cons of reciprocal linking?

All the best,
Laurie

In order to appreciate linking, you’d have imagine that when someone links to you, it’s kind of indicating to Google that someone has voted for you.

But if you vote for someone and that someone votes for you, it can mean 2 things. (You could either be voting for each other because both would benefit or you could vote for each other because both have really good content?)

Now, if someone vote for you without you voting back for the person, it could highly mean that your contently is really good enough that someone would bother recommending you.

Google gives more points to those that has only backlinks instead of reciprocal linking. It’s only common sense that google will think that someone with more backlinks/votes is considered more important than a website with reciprocal links.

If you can’t get one-way backlinks, reciprocal linking would still help.

CJ

A trackback is a notification when someone votes or mentions or links to any of your blog post.

This is to keep track of who is linking to you or how is mentioning about you.

What happens is when someone post on their blog that mentions about you and links to you or

when someone post a comment on other people’s blog with comments linking to your blog post,

you get notified usually on your blog comments.

Some people are using it as a way to get free reciprocal linking. In other words, if you do a trackback, you’d make a reference to another blog on your blog. Subsequently, your website link would also appear on the other blog (usually in the comments area).

but for this to work both blog must support the TrackBack protocol/function.

CJ

P.S: Below is an excerpt on trackback from wikipedia:

A Trackback is an acknowledgment. This acknowledgment is sent via a network signal (ping) from the originating site to the receiving site. The receptor often publishes a link back to the originator indicating its worthiness. Trackback requires both sites to be Trackback enabled in order to establish this communication. Trackback does not require the originating site to be physically linked to the receiving site.

Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs; if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a “TrackBack ping”; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.

Thanks for your feedback on reciprocal versus one-way linking. The way you put it does make a lot of sense. As you say, reciprocal linking still has some value — I’ll likely still exchange some links on my sites with other sites of similar content.

Your comments are much appreciated.

steve
www.powerfullistbuilder.com

As you say, to get ranked by Google is not that easy anymore.

The best was is probably as you say Blogs and Forums. the problem with forum posts is that they cannot be obvious adds, as that is against the rules.

I will try some of your tips and see what happens.

Thanks
Krystian
www.filiksco.com