There is a correlation between Alexa Rank and sites who appear in search results often.  Alexa measures and monitors a site’s popularity based on traffic.  If you are in the top 100,000 sites, you are considered to be a popular, trusted site with a diverse amount of traffic.

Generally speaking, if you are a top rated site with Alexa, you should be doing well with your SEO efforts.  Your site is probably ranking well for competitive terms, you have a steady stream of fresh content, as well as a diverse amount of visitors from all over the world.

There isn’t much you can do to affect your Alexa ranking, except continue to build good content and valuable links.  If you do something very viral, Alexa will show the results pretty quickly, as their rankings change daily.  This means on one viral video posted on your website, you could go from greater than 1 million rank, to within the top 100,000 in one day.

Writing a good meta description involves a bit of skill.  This is where the “art” part of SEO comes into play.

A meta description should primarily be written for humans, and secondarily for search engines.  The title tag and meta description tag are the two things people will read to decide if they should click on the #1 or the #2, or even the #6 spot.  Even though the #1 listed page may be more relevant according to search engines, if I don’t connect well with the meta description and what it says, I will click on a link further down.

A meta description should be no more than 150 characters, and be a relevant summary of the page itself.  Think of it like what you would say in one tweet about the page.  If you can repeat the description somewhere on the page, that’s good too.

Recently, Google has been creating the meta descriptions for websites automatically if they are missing, or if they simply think they can do a better job.  Either way, you don’t want Google writing your meta descriptions for you, so try to come up with something relevant, and worthy of a click at the same time.

If you were a search engine, you would probably want to show pages in your results that were built with the proper protocols for the Internet.

Sites that are riddled with countless HTML and/or CSS validation errors will likely not appear as frequently in the search results as would pages that follow the proper syntax and validation protocols.  Even so, the effect is probably somewhat negligible when you consider the more than 200 indicators Google uses for ranking websites.

Content Management System Effect

Sometimes we see that the CMS is responsible for the invalid HTML or CSS, and that the problem can not be solved unless the entire theme, or design is changed.  This is where you would need to balance the time/cost benefit of fixing these errors, versus just leaving them until the site is fully overhauled.

SiteJuice uses the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to look for errors on your page based on the DOCTYPE specified.

The age of a domain name can add significant SEO value to your website. The age of a domain can indicate a certain level of trust and even authority with the search engines. This generally means that search engines will display older websites with established trust and authority, before brand new websites.

The Sandbox
Many speculate weather Google has what is referred to as the “sandbox effect,” which temporarily reduces the PageRank for new domains to prevent manipulation from optimizers; i.e. making it more difficult for new websites to rank well in the search results. Speculators say that the “sandbox effect” could last as long as 12 months.

There is also thought to be a “reverse sandbox effect,” where new websites without any inbound links would get a temporary increase in PageRank, sort of like a “New Release” to help give the new site more attention temporarily.

Buying a Used Domain
If you are thinking of buying a domain that has been around for many years as a way to thwart this so-called “sandbox effect,” you can expect to see a drop in PageRank while Google figures out how the new site compares to the old site for this domain.

If the new website has generally the same content and relevancy, the PageRank should go back to where it was and keep the link juice from all of the existing inbound links.

However, if the new site is NOT the same content (i.e. went from a jewelry site to a real estate site), the PageRank drop may be permanent, and it would be similar to starting with a brand new domain, and hence the “age” of the domain will essentially start over in the eyes of a search engine.

Meta keywords are one of three tags related to search engine optimization located in the section of the page of a website.

Over the years, the meta keyword tag has become fairly worthless, particularly with Google, Yahoo and Bing. Other smaller search engines may still be using the meta keyword tag as an indicator of what the page is about.

When search engines first came on the scene, they would use the meta keyword tag to determine, in part, what the content on the page was about. Website owners (and SEO’s) began “stuffing” the page with lots of keywords, most of which were not even relevant to the content on the page, but as a way to attract search engines to list their page.

We still see websites today that have 20 or more keywords in the meta keyword tag, which indicates the site was probably part of this trend 10 years ago. If your website does not have a meta keyword tag, that is OK too. We use it to see how relevant the words you put there are to the content on the page. If you do have the tag and plan on keeping it, limit it to 5-10 words max.

If you have a blog, you can repeat the words you have as tags in the post to the meta keyword tag. Blog tags are essentially a modern version of meta keyword tags, except they force you to list words that are relevant to the post.

“SEO”, or search engine optimization has a few very common stigmas.  It’s either “too technical, and I wouldn’t know where to begin”, or “there’s too many snake oil salespeople and I don’t know who to believe”, or “I need a consultant and they are too expensive for me right now”.  We’re here to tell you that SEO is not as hard as you think, and you can do a lot of it yourself.  All you need to do is follow a few simple guidelines:

1.  Make sure you have the basic technical requirements in place. Ooooh…”technical” – you just scared me. Don’t worry, our SiteJuice product will be able to tell if your site has the basic technical requirements met, and if we find an error, we tell you exactly how to fix it (if you aren’t already signed up for the SiteJuice private beta, you should go ahead and do that now).  If you are using WordPress, there are some plugins you will want to use, such as the All in One SEO Pack, the Google XML Sitemap and Redirection plugins.  Those will allow you to set your SEO tags properly, submit your sitemap to the major search engines, and permanently redirect pages so you don’t have those pesky “404″ errors anymore.

2.  Choose your keywords carefully and be methodical.  Many websites make the mistake of either a) targeting too many keywords; or b) targeting really competitive keywords.  You want to choose keywords that are not so competitive to begin with, and work your way up to more competitive terms over time.  For instance, you don’t want to target your homepage for “internet marketing” just yet if you have a brand new website.  That term gets searched over 1 million times per month, and has thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of websites competing against you.  If there were five pizza shops on the same street, would you open another pizza shop, or a mexican restaurant?  Keyword targeting is kind of similar.  Once you have a short list of 5-10 keyword, write as much as you can about them, and monitor your rankings.  Once you appear on the first page for all of them, you can pick 5-10 new words, or try to move those initial words higher.   Read this article on Keyword Research Tools.

3. Consistently write good content. This is tough for a lot of people.  I just set up my mom with a brand spankin’ new website, and asked her to blog weekly about her business, which is easily something she can talk to you for hours about.  She was reluctant because she “didn’t know how to write well enough”, or “didn’t have time”, etc.  Don’t worry about any of that – just start writing and see if you can get some new traffic to your site.  It is almost certain that over time you will find a comfortable writing style and frequency.  Our blog generates nearly 50% of our traffic, so it’s a great way to get found by searches, and people will link to you if it’s good stuff.  Remember to write about the keywords you chose in #2.

4. Build links with the right anchor text. Once you have #1, #2 and #3 going, you want to think about how you can build links (a.k.a. “inbound links” or “backlinks”) to your website.  Google is looking for a diverse group of inbound links coming from trusted sites that have been around for a while.  This is why it’s not a good idea to purchase links from random companies or anything like that, since those can easily be flagged as spam and will end up hurting your rankings.  Getting links from sites or directories that contain the keyword you would like to rank for can boost your rankings significantly, depending on the value of those sites.  Read this article on The Power of Anchor Text in SEO to get a better idea of how to do this.

5. Have patience and give it time. There is no silver bullet in SEO, and if anyone is “guaranteeing” anything, they are either lying or picking really easy stuff to rank well for.  Give yourself a year of building good content and linking, and you will see results.  Expensive SEO consultants are a good idea once you have mastered all of the above, or you simply don’t have the time to manage it all anymore.

And that’s about it!  This is going to be just fine for 98% of the site owners out there who are competing for visibility in the search engines.  If you haven’t already, sing up to our private beta of SiteJuice 2.0, which will be released shortly after the 4th of July.

Hi, everyone. You may or may not have noticed recently that our sign-up for SiteJuice has changed. In fact, you can no longer sign up for SiteJuice as it was before. Instead, you now have the option to sign up for the SiteJuice 2.0 beta in anticipation of when it launches in the coming weeks.

We know this might come as a bit of a shock, so we took the time to sit down with Pear Analytics CEO Ryan Kelly to get you some answers. We demanded satisfaction!

PABLO: What happened to SiteJuice? I tried to recommend it to a friend and when they went there it was gone. You made a monkey out of me.
RYAN KELLY: Sorry about that. I have some banana treats for you if that will make you feel better. After a year of developing SiteJuice, we decided to retool and go back to the basics. Everything is being re-engineered from the ground up as we speak, and we’re inviting folks into our private beta, which we will launch in waves after July 4th.

Probably the most burning question for anyone familiar with SiteJuice would simply be: why the change?
To be honest, the old SiteJuice sucked. It was slow, buggy, and people just didn’t understand it. We tried to build too many features instead of focusing on the great ones. Some of our coolest and most useful features were hidden. Now, you will see a simpler, faster and more actionable interface.

Give the readers a sneak preview of what they are signing up for in the new SiteJuice?
In a few weeks, we will invite you to see the analysis we did on the website you gave us when you sign up for the beta. It won’t be jam-pakced with a thousand features, but rather 15-20 really important things you should be looking at in terms of basic SEO for your website, and how to go about fixing them if they need fixing.

When will we finally get flying cars?
Everyone in the world will completely understand SEO before that happens.

How is the new SiteJuice different from all the other SEO tools out there?
Every tool out there (and we’ve used pretty much all of them) focuses on one thing or another, but none of them at the individual page level.  Our goal is to analyze every single page of your website and tell you what needs work and how to fix it in a way you can understand.  No information overload here, or tech speak – just the essentials you need to know to drive more traffic page by page.

For our old subscribers and clients, what do they need to know?
Anyone on the old SiteJuice can continue to use it the same way they have been. Paying subscribers will continue to get support, whereas the freeloaders will have to… well… buzz off, or sign over to SiteJuice 2.0.

–

We’d like to thank Ryan for taking the time to answer questions about SiteJuice 2.0 beta. It’s an exciting time at Pear Analytics. We hope you’re as excited as we are. Keep following our updates as we get closer to launching the beta.

Several of our users have wanted to write a review of our search engine optimization software, and so we thought we would come up with a way to reward them!  Here’s how it works:

All you have to do is write an article, review or blog post about SiteJuice and send us a link to it and we will credit your SiteJuice account with $10!  And if you use your affiliate link, you can earn even more if someone signs up as a paying subscriber.  There are just a couple of requirements though:

a) the article must be original and at least a few paragraphs long.  We want your readers to know what the product is, what it does and why you like it, and maybe they’ll come and check it out.

b) link to our site at least once with “search engine optimization software” or “SEO tool”, and be sure to use your affiliate link.

And that’s it!  Not a SiteJuice subscriber?  Sign up for free.

If you are a current SiteJuice user, and tou’ve recently received your website report by email and now you are wondering what Current Site Value and Potential Site Value are and the differences between them.  This post will help you understand how we cam up with this, what it means, and what we’re doing to improve it.  If you are not currently using SiteJuice, you can get a 30-day free trial.

Overview

What we are attempting to show you is the value of your SEO efforts compared to what it would cost you to purchase all of the search volume in a paid search environment.  Many times we are asked “how much should I spend on SEO”, or “how much market share do I have on these keywords”.

Current Site Value

This is calculated by taking all of the keywords in your SiteJuice account by domain, and adding up their cumulative value based on 1) where you rank for the word; 2) how much search volume that word gets, and how much you may get as a result of your position organically; and 3) what it would cost to buy that word in a PPC environment.

Example: your keyword has a search volume of 1,000 searches per month, you rank #2 for that word, and it costs $5 per click in PPC.

Word Value = 1,000 searches per month x 18% of traffic from a #2 position x $5 per click = $900

We know based on research and other data we have gathered, what the approximate number of clicks you may get for the first 30 positions in Google.  After position 30, the value is defaulted to “$0″.  Now we can calculate your Current Site Value by adding up the word values for all keywords and all pages.

Potential Site Value

This is calculated the same as above, except that the potential traffic percentage is a fixed 42%.  What we’re doing is assuming that you rank #1 for all of these search terms, and so this “potential” value shows you how far off you are from achieving this, and unlikely as it may be, this is meant to be a comparison measurement between where you are now, and perfection.

Flaws With This Methodology

As with any type of correlation using several data points, there are a few drawbacks to these figures.  Keep in mind that we are working on making these as relevant and insightful as possible, so we welcome any feedback you might have.

1.  You won’t rank #1 for all of the keywords you are following. This is really unlikely, and many of the keywords you are watching could be for competitors, or other industry words that may not apply directly to your website.  You may also have some very competitive search terms in your list, which are driving up the Potential Site Value number very high.  So “internet marketing” which gets searched over 1 million times per month and has a high CPC, might cause your website to get a Potential value in the million of dollars, or tens of millions of dollars.

2. Your account is not tracking enough pages or keywords. If you have a 50-page website, and are only tracking 5 pages and a handful of keywords, naturally your Current Site Value will be much lower than if you were to add all of your pages and all of the keywords you wish to track.

A Possible Remedy

One thing we are considering is integrating your Google Analytics account into SiteJuice so we can track how many actual visits you are getting from a particular keyword, if that keyword has a propensity of bouncing, or is failing to drive conversions.  We’d like to give you insight as to how well all of your keywords are performing to give you a better sense of what to focus on in your campaign.

New data is out to show that visitors want sites to load in 2 seconds or less, and Google says fast sites may get slight preference in rankings.

A new study by Akamai confirms that Internet users are as fickle as ever.  Their new study released in September this year shows that 47% of consumers expect an e-commerce website to load in 2 seconds or less.  While the study focuses on e-commerce, I can’t imagine the behavior is much different on a non-e-commerce website.

You might remember the study we did several months ago where we took the Akamai study from 2006 and developed a visitor loss curve from 0 to 30 seconds using some fancy math.  We use this data in our SiteJuice product to tell site owners how much potential visitors they could be losing based on how long their page is taking to load.  If you’re not using SiteJuice, sign up for free.  Our curve is based on a visitor patience of up to 4 seconds.

How this affects your Google rankings

Google search engineer, Matt Cutts, has mentioned twice now that Google may be giving a slight advantage to pages that load quickly, while slow loaders won’t receive a penalty on their rankings.  Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz writes about in their blog post yesterday, where “web page load times can positively influence rankings.“