Alexa ranking back and forth

[Divinum Fiat]

I know that Alex is not all that great in some people's minds, but I do have a question. A month ago my forum ranked in the 500K range for the U.S., today it has "no regional data."

How can a site "disappear" in just 2-3 weeks' time?

What are others doing to increase their rankings and get more traffic?

 

[Adam Howard]

Alexa rating is so unimportant that I'm surprised people even use them.

Yes, Alexa can bring you to the top and drop you overnight (in their search & ratings).

How they work is usually funded... ie .... pay a little and suddenly you're doing "great" in their eyes

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thank you, Adam. If they are so unimportant, is there another system that is more important? I know my Google backlinks but besides that and my Alexa ranking and page rank I don't have much else to go by. I'm trying to gather some 'hard data' to see if I can get some advertising going for my forum.

 

[Adam Howard]

Thank you, Adam. If they are so unimportant, is there another system that is more important? I know my Google backlinks but besides that and my Alexa ranking and page rank I don't have much else to go by. I'm trying to gather some 'hard data' to see if I can get some advertising going for my forum.

Google is going to be your best options for tracking back links. Because their web bots follow everything & map out what goes where and for who & from who.

User data isn't going to be so easy as it once was...

People like me for example, don't show up on Google Analytics or Alexa because of all the 3rd party browser add-ons & security programs that block such things.

For example, my site right this moment, Google tells me no one is on my site. Well of course that's not true, I am, and so is the other members, including the one who just made a reply to my PM.

That's not to say it isn't possible to get some data. I would suggest Google overall, but for local usage, Mint Analytics is good as well.

http://www.haveamint.com/

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thank you Adam.

 

[Adam Howard]

Thank you Adam.

You're welcome.

Of course I welcome others here to chime in. I'm sure there are others here who make it their business to take in advertizement & may have a few pointers which I could easily enough over looked.

 

[intradox]

Try Quantcast as it allows you to show publicly info such as Pageviews, uniques, visitor age range, wealth, etc.

I leave mine public and notify potential advertisers that the info is public and available for them. I use buysellads.com to sell ads but a similar and less exclusive option is passionfruiteads

I only use Alexa for a rough estimate of my sites ranking. Quantcast and compete also offer site rankings.

Seomoz is pretty good to see for yourself how your back links and see are doing. Pagerank does not matter tbh. I have a PR of 5 and it won't help me sell more ads.

Happy to recommend other services depending on what you need.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Awesome, thank you Adam and Intradox! Getting on it right away. Really appreciate you both.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Actually, I do have a question, if I may. Not sure I should create a new post though.

Right now I have some affiliate banners on the xenporta front page but that's as far as they go. As soon as they are in the forum or on an individual post, there's nothing there. How do I get these banners into or underneath each post without using them in my signature (since I want to use different banners for different products for each post)? Or creating separate sidebars for each post? (sidebars would have to change for each post, not sure that's doable)

 

[Adam Howard]

Actually, I do have a question, if I may. Not sure I should create a new post though.

Right now I have some affiliate banners on the xenporta front page but that's as far as they go. As soon as they are in the forum or on an individual post, there's nothing there. How do I get these banners into or underneath each post without using them in my signature (since I want to use different banners for different products for each post)? Or creating separate sidebars for each post? (sidebars would have to change for each post, not sure that's doable)

There's an app for that

( always wanted to say that and mean it. lol )

There's actually 2 apps that come to mind

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/digital-point-ad-positioning.232/
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/ad-manager.294/

There is also a helpful guide for you if you want to do things a little more manually with what is already inside XenForo

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/visual-list-of-ad-locations.1383/

 

[Divinum Fiat]

These are great, thank you! I'm not sure I'm technical enough for 1 and 2 but will see. The third one doesn't seem to be anything downloadable, even though it's in the resources section. Will keep you posted.

 

[Adam Howard]

These are great, thank you! I'm not sure I'm technical enough for 1 and 2 but will see. The third one doesn't seem to be anything downloadable, even though it's in the resources section. Will keep you posted.

The 3rd one isn't downloadable, no.

It's simply a visual guide of where you can put ads using the default options within XenForo.. ie ... XenForo supports ad placement, but not everyone understands where those ads go using the descriptions provided (and the name of the templates to edit to fit your needs).

Outside of this though, if you need more help on adding or editing those ads for XenForo, we really should continue this in support

(Not in off topic forum)

 

[Korean Cowboy]

Hi B4L, what are you using to track your metrics now?

Unfortunately, we're still using the Googles for work, but my own personal projects, I use Statcounter. LOVE it! The best part is that I can see where each click is coming from, including their IP address!

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Hi KB, I think I used statcounter in the past, will have to check on my old laptop. I remember that the site was having way too many pageloads for the free version and it was too expensive at that time for a non-revenue generating site to use their paid services. I will double check their services again and see if it might be time to sign up again. Thank you!

 

[Korean Cowboy]

You're welcome! You're right, I didn't even think about upgrading to the free version...although I do have a couple of sites that get over 1K hits/day, and SC doesn't seem to mind that I'm getting them.

As of right now, including my own personal sites and my company's (separate from the forum that I run as my 9-to-5 gig), I have nearly 90 sites on Statcounter. Thankfully, most of those are for sale.

It's all about what I can manage during my busy day! LOL