Since I officially launched MomsMaterial's website in February 2009, I have had many people ask me what have we done to make it successful. How did we achieve a few internet milestones, like a Google Page Rank of 3 and an Alexa rating of 661,000 in the first few months? Listed below are some of the steps MomsMaterial.com has taken to achieve these statistics in such a short time. We expect our Google Page Rank, traffic to our site and readership to continue to increase while our Alexa rating continues to decrease.
When we first started the site, Google had MomsMaterial at a Page Rank of 0. What else could it be? Google changes page ranks for a web site about every 2-3 months. Just last month, we were assigned our first page rank of 3.
We also had a big improvement in our Alexa ranking. Alexa ranks the most visited sites on the internet. Google is #1, Yahoo #2, Facebook #3, etc. Our first Alexa ranking was 10+ million, currently we are at 661,000. Cracking the Alexa top million sites was a nice first step. Getting into the top 100,000 really establishes you as a mainstream site. This is comparing sites from all over the world.
We expect our Google PageRank to increase while the Alexa Rating decreases. Listed below are some of the steps MomsMaterial.com has made to improve our site.
1. Content – It is all about the 3 C's - Consistent, Current, Content. We post about 7-10 entries a week, which is a factor in your ranking. If you consistently post information it also attracts new visitors and subscribers.
2. Press Releases - We sent out a press release announcing the launch of MomsMaterial. We also post press releases announcing newsworthy events related to MomsMaterial. We have also sent out numerous press releases regarding author interviews/events, giveaways and contests. We consistently use PRLog, a free press release website, you may click here to see MomsMaterial's press room on their site. The press release announcing the launch of MomsMaterial was picked up by Google News.
3. Facebook – Are you on Facebook? If so, you can become a fan of MomsMaterial. We set up a MomsMaterial Page and tied our blog entries to our Facebook page. When people become a fan of MomsMaterial and I post a new article, it shows up on their home Facebook page (which reaches their friends).
4. Twitter – This is my new favorite social networking site. MomsMaterial has an account and we tweet about some of our posts, great books, parenting tips etc. Currently, I have over 500 followers and I follow over 650. The "tweets" I have come across have inspired articles and formed relationships that have prompted guest articles, reviews and giveaways.
5. Blog Directories/Listings/Catalogs – MomsMaterial.com is signed up for about a dozen blog catalogs. Some of these include BlogCatalog.com, LadiesWhoLaunch.com who look for blogs to list on their sites.
6. Article Marketing – Several of our entries make good topics for an article. With a few edits, we can make it article worthy and post it at ezinearticles.com. MomsMaterial is posted under Cammie Moise and we have over 52 articles which have resulted in over 4,000 views. Cammie recently achieved the Platinum Level Author status on their site. There are many places to submit articles, but we prefer ezinearticles.
7. Subscriptions – MomsMaterial provides an email subscription service for those that don't want to miss the most recent articles. We use Feedburner for our email subscription service, they automatically check for new articles once a day and send them out.
8. Email blast – prior to our "official" launch I sent out an email to all our friends and family to introduce them to MomsMaterial. We asked them to visit the site and to subscribe to the email updates and register on the site. We asked them to help me get the word out by emailing their friends.
9. Social Bookmarks – We have some of the best entries tagged at sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Technorati. Every time you have a tag out there is one more inbound link. Links to your site will improve your rating,
10. Trading links – several of my friends have their own websites or blogs and I post a link to their site and they post a link to MomsMaterial on their site.
11. Alexa Widget – if you look at the bottom right hand corner of the main page, you will see a widget from Alexa stating our Alexa ranking. When you have this widget on your site it also improves your own Alexa ranking.
12. Default Home Page – we have MomsMaterial.com set to our default home page on our computers. We have friends and family that have set MomsMaterial to be their default home page. Think about how many times you open up a new browser. Now multiply that by everyone you can convince to set it as their default page. Every time they open their browser, it is one more hit on your site, which helps out the Alexa ranking.
13. Forums – I participate in several forums related to topics that MomsMaterial covers. I do not spend too much time there but, I will post once or twice a week. I have set up my signature on these forums to include a link to my site. Every time I post, I put one more link out there. MomsMaterial also has a forum set up on our site.
14. Interlinking – You will notice as we add more content, we are linking related articles from MomsMaterial. This allows people to find more articles on that subject that you have written. Sometimes a visitor to your site may not find what they are looking for in the article they are reading, but the information may be in a related article and this leads them there. The longer a visitor stays on your site the better chance you have for them to subscribe or return to your site.
15. Site Map – we have put together a site map and submitted it to Google, Yahoo and MSN. This site map includes all the blog entries as a separate page. The more pages you have on your site the more content you are providing which increases your standings.
16. Google Analytics – We use Google Analytics to track the page hits. Google Analytics provides reports that inform you of the most active pages, where your links come from and what keys words are being used in the search engines to find you.
17. Keywords / Metatags – every page has a unique page description and a unique set of key words. While many pages use the same key word, no two pages have the same set. The key word list contains a long list of words related to information provided on our site. We also make a point to use the keywords in our post. This increases our keywords density. According to Google, the greater your keyword density, the more relevant you are.
18. Guest Blog - we highlight other websites, articles, products and people on MomsMaterial with our Guest Blog. This provides more content and links. This is a great way to provide our readers with access to experts in the field or wonderful products we have come across.
19. Contests – we recently began providing giveaways/contest for our readers. Typically, these result after I have reviewed a book or product on my site. Many authors or companies can highlight their books or products by providing a giveaway. These giveaways and contests provide another opportunity for a press release and links to our site.
20. Logo / Branding – we decided to relate a graphic with our website (logo) and a catch phrase (“Ideas Moms Want”). Many people have commented about the logo, they like it and it gets the message across.
21. Easy Links – we have an easy way for people to link to our site. When you click on Link To Us (bottom of site), it takes you to a page where you can grab a link (several options) with the link code to add to your website.
22. Kirtsy.com - this is a great site to find popular and relevant articles. Basically, you join kirtsy and when you find an article on the internet that you like you can share it with others. You can also add your own articles from your website. When you go to their home page you will see articles posted and in the green box, it shows you how many votes an article receives. The more votes an article gets the more popular it becomes and the more exposure it receives. One of my articles received over 130 votes in a few days. This resulted in over 120 new visitors to my site in one day. I have posted several articles and you never know which article you submit will have a huge impact. This also can be an indicator into what information others are looking for.
23. ProBlogger - this is a site I found through networking on Twitter. He consistently provides great information to help you succeed in making the most of your site. Recently, he provided a 31 day challenge - 31 days to build a better blog. Click here to find out more about this challenge.
I can't pinpoint one thing that contributed to our success so far, it is continuous daily attention to the content and finding the best sources for helping you get it out there. It is about building relationships with your readers and networking with others. We have researched these topics and are constantly looking for the best ways to get the word out and meeting our readers needs.
I plan on taking some of these topics and providing more detail on the steps I took.
What other ideas have helped you with your website or blog success?
Cammie Moise