Evaluate Information for SEO Enhancement

Checking your Alexa ranking

Origins of collected data

Before we get back to our alexa data, let's take a couple of minutes and have a quick look at how it came to be that we are able to evaluate this useful information for SEO enhancement in the first place.

We find it's that age old adagium (adage) on the relationship between knowledge and power. And it follows that if knowledge is power, then secret knowledge is secret power. And the best way to acquire useful knowledge is to gainfully accumulate (by access to), and then harvest (evaluate) as much information as is possible under the laws of the land. Whether it is obtained overtly or covertly is not to be questioned.

And what better way to amass such a resource than to have a bunch of computers that share your network (the internet) that have but one dedicated purpose: to track, record, evaluate and predict your personal browsing activities and habits into one gargantuan yet indexable database. Why? Well, why anything? Why could even be "because". After all crazy is as crazy does.

Bunk

But before you dismiss this as total bunk, i'll let you in on an early Seo tip that's not commonly known: You will find publicly stated on nearly every corporate website, a privacy page which includes a privacy statement (interesting that the politics of differing countries are not unanimous on the degree of honesty companies need to declare). The privacy statement informs the visitor on how the corporate uses data you input, or they obtain from you through various types of cookies and other information packets exchanged between your computer and their computer while you visit their site. Google have a great example of a correctly formatted privacy page on their home page.

nineteen eightyfour

And so we find ourselves smack bang up against Orwell's nineteen eightyfour where the all seeing eye of big brother watch and record the citizen's every move. Except it is not just governments that are able to collate data in such a way as to create a fantastic and specific record of millions upon millions of individual users.

Each record may or may not be designated with a birth record, but that's just a question of nuance. And, like it or not, there are a few organizations that believe this adagium on knowledge and power and they do exactly that (If it bothers you that special cookies can and still do track and record your internet habits over years and years, then read our article on cookies and LSO cookies).

You will soon find out much more about stat tracking as you learn how to install and use it yourself as a tool in the next module. And so, before you get too alarmed, know that the vast majority of websites that use statistics for their own site alone are not able to keep any sort of decent record.

Welcome to the world of business. Do you want to play?

Amazon, Beencounter, Quantcast et al.

But some organizations have a deeper reach and they recycle some of their collected information for public use. Amazon, Beencounter, Quantcast... there are others. Most repackage the data for sale to organizations and individuals through various means.

However, it is amazon that has the interesting tool that all webmasters can freely use. You are more than welcome to explore the paid services of these Behavioral Targeting specialist sites.

Amazon also owns the website known as alexa which, as you have now seen from the previous article, re-interprets some of their collected information into a relative array of statistics which can help you to better understand how your website performs in relation to millions of other websites on the internet.

The free information tends to be somewhat slightly out-dated but is still an excellent indicator of your website in the overall online landscape.

And even though this is not a true (exact) representation of where your website stands today, it is our number one tool you can use to assess how well your DIY SEO efforts are faring.