However, as time moves Internet users are wising up to manipulative SEO tactics such as “linkbait” and “SEO copywriting” making it more imperative that the world of SEO marketing legitimizes itself by reforming its ethics.  In order for SEO to become a recognized form of marketing, its workforce has to understand the difference between manipulating the Internet and providing marketable services.

Take for example the above-mentioned practice of linkbait.  Linkbait is a method in which large amounts of articles or comments are created with the intention of leaving as many backlinks around the internet as possible.  Often these links hold false claims to the information that the link leads you to or unrealistic promises.

For example, while surfing the Internet you may come across an article that contains linkbait that promises you will learn how to cure diabetes for free if you head to a specific URL.  However, once you click you are lead to a website that offers you the chance to purchase a guide to leaving a healthy life with diabetes, which you did not want.

Another example is an article that is written about how a certain travel site offers cheap vacations for under $100 dollars.  After reading about somebody’s great experience you fall prey to the linkbait only to end up following a link to a website that offers standard priced vacations.

It is no wonder that people are less likely to click on links now, because they have become suspicious of ulterior motives.  Thus, in order for the SEO world to continue to use link building to garnish traffic links need to offer realistic promises and information so the public becomes comfortable following links again.

Another area where the SEO world creates mistrust and misrepresentation to clients and the Internet public is SEO copywriting.  Most writers are not trained in proper SEO copywriting and thus articles are stuffed with keywords and lack little meaning.  Readers can quickly tell when they are reading a piece that has been over optimized and will quickly steer away from a website never to return.

Conversely, when a topic is addressed in a highly factual manner with excellent grammar a consumer will feel comfortable accepting the information presented on a website.  Thus, they are more likely to return and become a regular visitor.  As tempting as it may be to use keywords in an article, sacrificing the integrity of the content on your website is a manipulative practice that may give your SEO tactics an initial boost but will hurt your return in the long run.

However, despite the growing SEO demand the SEO industry is still met with as much disdain as it is with approval.  Due to the presence of black hat SEO workers and other manipulative tactics it can be a rough market to properly conduct business in.  Thus, if you want to be truly successful as an SEO provider you may want to take a minute to read the following ten tips that will help you pave the way to legitimate success.

Keep clients informed. Out of fear that clients will discover the secrets of SEO and perform SEO websites on their own without an agent many amateur SEO workers refuse to tell their clients how they intend to boost a websites SEO value.

Clients hire SEO consultants because they do not want to take the time to maintenance their websites SEO.  If they intended to perform SEO on their own, they would simply research the topic.  When you keep your clients up-to-date, they can rest assured that you are making legitimate progress, which will help you retain their business.

Set milestones. Following the same train of thought, companies want to know what you can provide them as an SEO consultant on a regular basis.  They also appreciate knowing what you cannot.

When you set milestones that can be achieved weekly a company can rest assured that you are making process.  Since it takes time for SEO results to influence website traffic this may mean the difference between maintaining their contract and losing it.

Never make a promise you cannot keep. Nobody likes to feel lied to.  The world of SEO is constantly evolving and each website is a brand new scenario.  The internet world is very much like the human population.

Just because a solution worked in one case does not mean it will in the next.  A doctor cannot guarantee that one drug will fix you because it fixed their last patient.  The best you can offer is results that show you have been effective in the past and an action plan that shows how to you plan to achieve the same results in their case.

Stay realistic. Continuing this train of thought, offer expectations that are realistic to your client.  Present reasonable timelines, not the timeline that the client wants to hear.  Being able to carry through with your word is far more important than lying initially to retain a client.  It will come back to haunt you.

Stay current. The SEO world evolves at the same rate that the Internet evolves.  Do you remember when Friendster was the top social network online? Myspace and Facebook have since left it in the dust.

The SEO world operates in the same fashion. Search engine spiders and robots change their methods and algorithms constantly and you want to make sure that you change your SEO style alongside them for success.

Do not be afraid to admit lack of knowledge.  Once again, since SEO efforts can take months to manifest themselves building a client’s trust is essential.  If you do not know something, it is in your favor to admit it to you do not know. Instead, let your client know that you need to research the matter and respond back when you have the accurate answer.  It is easy to find information online, do not let your clients trap you in a lie by providing misinformation.

Google does not define SEO.  Many amateur SEO consultants mistakenly focus on simply increasing Google PageRank.  While Google is the most popular search engine online, several other search engines also experience high volumes of traffic such as Yahoo and AOL.  Ignoring these search engine spiders means depriving your customers of customers that may result in your contract renewal.

Play it safe. There is a large gray area in between black hat and white hat SEO and your idea of legitimacy may be different from your clients.  If it seems risky to you avoid the SEO tactic altogether.

SEO is not PPC. Paid search marketing is an entirely different field then SEO marketing.  IF you do not know the difference, now is the time to look it up before a client leaves you with egg on your face.

Give references. Many clients will not ask for a reference list or actually check up on your references.  However, offering them at all times gives your work legitimacy which will always help distinguish you from other SEO consultants bidding on the same job.

Due to company’s cutting costs in order to survive, the marketing world is faced with an imminent collapse, as marketing is no longer the main concern of major corporations.  However, in the world of SEO marketing and SEM marketing the demand for trained professionals is continually rising and the salaries of those already fluent in the SEO world is approximately fifteen percent more than any other marketing field.

This is partially due to the increasing world that the Internet plays in modern society and partially due to the fact that the Internet is becoming more competitive every day.  In a race to stay the top source of information or a service online business owners and website owners are willing to pay large amounts of money to those who can help them achieve top billing on search engine results.

Hence, enter the role of a trained SEO worker.  Due to this fact, companies that have already built a reputation for providing quality SEO services are expanding rapidly and are looking for more talent to meet the rising demand.  For those who are willing to take the time to learn about SEO and become proficient in SEO tactics the payoff is large:  according to Indeed.com an average SEO worker makes $70,000 a year.

This fact cements the fact that while job availability may seem scarce in the classifieds for an office position, once one turns online the opportunities are endless.  Most trained analysts will quickly tell you that the Internet is the path of the future and according to the trends of the stock market and the current business environment, this path is being paved now.

Thus, for those who are knowledgeable in the online world or those who have a marketing degree it may be time to turn to SEO training for the future of their careers.  Demand is high and if the current trends are any indication, the number of opportunities available in the SEO world will only continue to grow as time continues to pass and the Internet continues to grow.

One of the benefits of becoming well versed in the SEO world, the Internet holds infinite possibilities and a never-ending potential for growth.  This means that SEO marketing is here to stay, and as the Internet continues to expand so will the SEO market.

The common perception of online SEO taskmasters used to be that the phrase cheap has a negative connotation and should be left out of keyword content.  Consumers may read the word cheap in relation to your product or service and think that you do not provide excellent quality.  However, in reality it is more common that most people have a positive connotation to the word cheap.  They instead perceive cheap to mean that they are receiving an excellent low cost deal on a package.

For instance, the popularity of websites such as cheaphotels.com and cheapflights.com has skyrocketed simply because people mistype their search words into an URL box and are directed straight to these domains.  It turns out that people want to read cheap on a web page, even if the deals advertised are not true.  Hence, a consumer reaches a page that advertises cheap deals whether the deal is applicable to them or not they are prone to choose a package to finish their ordeal.

Thus, in the end a website sells a high amount of their promised product or service even if the deals they offer are not really ”cheap.” The key is to draw the audience to the website and once accomplished through effective SEO the result is a sale.

Find this hard to believe?  Well, it is hard to argue with data from Google Adwords, which reports that the phrase “cheap insurance” garnishes about $673,000 searches in a month alone.  The closely associated keyword search for “cheap car” receives a million hits a month.  It turns out that the common consumer on the web wants to find everything “cheap,” and they have no qualms about searching for it in this manner.

It may be tempting to make your website sound more professional in press releases and throughout content by using phrases such as low cost, inexpensive, cost-efficient, and affordable but the reality is they cannot touch the simple power of cheap.  While the words are soothing to read once, a consumer is on a website, these adjectives are not the first things that come to a consumer’s mind when they type their query into a search engine.

Think about it, when booking a flight does the first phrase that comes to mind a “cheap flight” or a “cost efficient flight?” The answer is the explanation why sometimes it pays to keep it simple, and why it can pay out to simply say cheap even if your prices are not.

Everyone who wants to achieve top search engine rankings is looking to receive affordable SEO services. Marketing budgets are tight these days and SEO Peace has designed packages with this in mind. Their rates are both competitive and very reasonable whilst still bearing in mind precisely the type of unique services like article marketing service, contextual link building service, and many more that you require for your website promotions.

Services at http://www.seo-peace.com/ include, but are not limited to:

* squidoo lens creation and promotion

* Contextual link building

* Easily convertible traffic

* Fast quality in-content back-links

* Improvement in search engine rankings

* Visible branding of product

* Social media marketing

* Affordability

* Ethical content (they do not support adult nor porn sites)

The professional SEO agency, SEO Peace is backed up by an in-house team of copywriters, bloggers, and webmasters and search engine consultants. These are the people who prepare your press releases, and a well crafted press release is a sure-fire way of receiving loads of free media attention. A press release will spread the news while increasing the interest of the masses in your products.

They offer a number of packages designed to suit your every need, and these include a Basic Package, an Advanced Package and the Super Package. The Basic Package suits websites which are coming up in rankings on page 4 – 6 of a search engine, while the Advanced package is more for websites that have not undergone much work and are only indexed.

If your keywords and niche are not terribly competitive, in a short while, with the use of this full service SEO package, you will expect to see you website in the top rankings. The Super Package is designed for those websites which are new and have not yet established a presence. Both on and off-site SEO is included in this package where SEO Peace takes full responsibility for the marketing of your website, without any hidden costs, and with complete transparency.

]]> http://www.thelatestone.com/seo-peacecom-offers-customized-full-service-seo-packages.html/feed 0 http://www.thelatestone.com/seo-how-to-estimate-sales-potential-by-using-keywords-and-phrases.html http://www.thelatestone.com/seo-how-to-estimate-sales-potential-by-using-keywords-and-phrases.html#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:57:28 +0000 Neha Aggarwal http://www.thelatestone.com/?p=986 It is a popular belief that search engine optimization can do wonders, but it is true that if not approached properly there are more chances of your failing in bringing forth flow of traffic and converting them into sales.  SEO can bring or divert traffic no question, but how to measure them in realistic terms?  This article is to clarify some myths about SEO and how can you make realistic estimates about growth in traffic to your site, after your efforts towards Search Engine Optimization.

The starting point is you should know before hand, how much of natural traffic and sales are materializing to your site presently.  For this the web analytic program will be handy and by going through the statistics in last month, you will know which of the keywords and phrases have driven the traffic.

For example if you are running an online site for machine tools, your web analytic form will show as follows:

Monthly Web Analytic Export

This is for a regular business where transactions occur every month.  If what you run is a seasonal business, then there will be no transactions at all in off seasons and you have to select the data from the seasonal months – two or three at best.

The above format shows the keywords and phrases, which bring you natural-search referred traffic through the search engines and the sales they turned out at your site. You have to make a comparison of available keyword market that is on those keywords and phrases what are the number of searches made in an ordinary month and for the same keywords what is your site’s score.  KeywordDiscovery.com and Google Adwords Keyword Tool can help you in this regard to determine the current rate of success your site has achieved.

Then record the total number of searches as per your keyword tool estimates for each keyword and phrase generated. Now you can make a simple calculation to know the fact – Total Searches minus your traffic /Divided by your Traffic – to know the growth opportunity percentage existing for the keywords and phrases, which are driving traffic from natural searchers. Supposing the Google search total in a month for a particular keyword phrase is 10000 and for the same keyword phrase for your site is just 1000, then you can find the percentage growth opportunity is – 10000 minus 1000 divided by 1000 = 900%.

But this is not all.  The most upside work comes really from the keywords and phrases where you are drawing blank with no traffic and sales. The next task is big in identifying the keywords and phrases that your site needs for driving natural traffic and this needs in-depth research to ascertain what additional traffic the same keywords and phrases can send in to your site. Your keyword research tools can be used to find out the most popular ways of searching for the content, after identifying the keywords for which there is relevant content at your site.

The value of keyword research depends upon two things -1) the relevance of your site’s content to the keyword and 2) the types of search terms used by real users should be fully there at your site. In this context you can refer to PJ Fusco’s keyword research primer for more details on keyword research.

As can be seen from the above table, the keyword phrases “Magnetic Drill” and “Multi Drill” are already generating traffic and sales from natural searchers, whereas there is no traffic at all for the keywords “Portable Saw”, “Portable Panel”, ”Panel Saw” and “Magnetic Screw Driver”.

Now that you have collected all the data, you can sum the “Total Monthly Search Volume” column, so as to identify the total SEO Traffic upside. It should be remembered that this number indicates theoretically 100% of the total available natural search traffic. It has been studied by researches that the No.1 position ranking in search engine listings will average about 45% of the click-through available.  As such if you rank No.1 for the keyword “Portable Saw”, which is approximately 200,010 searches per month, roughly 90,004 searchers from them which is 45%, will be clicking through Google to your site.  However, a more conservative approach for 5% click-through rate is recommended in estimating the opportunity, with your efforts in SEO can bring forth for your site.

By knowing the average revenue value each visit can make your site, you can estimate the value of optimizing your site in order to achieve those additional visits by natural searches.

Further similar spreadsheets can be prepared by the growth columns sorted so that you identify the keywords and phrases that can represent the biggest opportunities for growth and that will give you a prioritized list of content-topics to be optimized.

The foregoing is only an example of six keyword and phrases and are a fraction of the total opportunity you want to be estimated on the keyword research for your site.

You will find that the ranking data is missing from this formula. Site owners would love to focus on them, since Rankings are easy and quick snapshots of SEO progress. It is true that higher the ranking, larger the traffic will be from that particular keyword.  But rankings are notoriously unreliable to indicate SEO progress, because of personalization, blended search, vertical research, and other factors that are large in number.

For reliably setting your expectations for SEO success, you can do well to sticking to traffic, sales and keyword research as the basis of your SEO upside estimations.

As can be seen from the above table, the keyword phrases “Magnetic Drill” and “Multi Drill” are already generating traffic and sales from natural searchers, whereas there is no traffic at all for the keywords “Portable Saw”, “Portable Panel”, ”Panel Saw” and “Magnetic Screw Driver”.

Now that you have collected all the data, you can sum the “Total Monthly Search Volume” column, so as to identify the total SEO Traffic upside. It should be remembered that this number indicates theoretically 100% of the total available natural search traffic. It has been studied by researches that the No.1 position ranking in search engine listings will average about 45% of the click-through available.  As such if you rank No.1 for the keyword “Portable Saw”, which is approximately 200,010 searches per month, roughly 90,004 searchers from them which is 45%, will be clicking through Google to your site.  However, a more conservative approach for 5% click-through rate is recommended in estimating the opportunity, with your efforts in SEO can bring forth for your site.

By knowing the average revenue value each visit can make your site, you can estimate the value of optimizing your site in order to achieve those additional visits by natural searches.

Further similar spreadsheets can be prepared by the growth columns sorted so that you identify the keywords and phrases that can represent the biggest opportunities for growth and that will give you a prioritized list of content-topics to be optimized.

The foregoing is only an example of six keyword and phrases and are a fraction of the total opportunity you want to be estimated on the keyword research for your site.

You will find that the ranking data is missing from this formula. Site owners would love to focus on them, since Rankings are easy and quick snapshots of SEO progress. It is true that higher the ranking, larger the traffic will be from that particular keyword.  But rankings are notoriously unreliable to indicate SEO progress, because of personalization, blended search, vertical research, and other factors that are large in number.

For reliably setting your expectations for SEO success, you can do well to sticking to traffic, sales and keyword research as the basis of your SEO upside estimations.

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That said here is a novel way for driving traffic to your site – “Siloing”.  This process was first published by Bruce Clay years ago and is still effective. (There is another technique published last year namely Page Rank Sculpting but that is totally different from Siloing).  The technique of Siloing works this way – you create a landing page with a theme or phrase according to your needs; there should be supporting pages which link to the parent landing page or similar landing pages at your site; they will not link to other supporting pages but only link to parent landing page.

This Siloing is very effective as you are creating focused content and all of them are linked to only the parent landing page – without diverting the attention of the viewers. Before embarking on this Siloing, we can have a look at the trends and patterns for searches made and the keyword phrase. The search statistics as shown by Google Insight to Search Tool with regard to Valentine’s Day are as follows:

Top Searches

Search Volume for Valentine’s Day

Related Valentine’s Day Search Terms

From the above you can form some themes that you can use in Siloing your parent landing page.  The following are examples you can make the themes on:

• Valentine’s Day (details of history, origin and related matters for the event)
• Valentine’s Day Gifts
• Valentine’s Day Cards
• Valentine’s Day Ideas
• Valentines Day Music
• Valentine’s Day Flowers (This is where your site is coming in reckoning)

Make the Landing Page centering around Valentine’s Day theme and this page can contain only general information pertaining to Valentine’s Day and the link should lead to the supporting page, within the text of the main page.  Each supporting page should link to the other supporting pages as well as the landing page. Remember that supporting pages only link to other pages within the Silo or alternatively at the top of similar Silos.

With this base idea, you can imagine a lot of other terms and phrases to form the supporting as well as landing pages such as – Valentine’s Day history; summary; Valentine’s Day Cards; Gifts; Gifts for Men; Women; Teachers; Co-workers and so on.

You can portray beautiful pictures, run contests for viewers, give away free gifts for winners, and sky is the limit for new ideas. Actually there is no need to change your land page and only freshen it up with contents – every year or for every occasion.  Success will be yours in driving mad traffic to your site!

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2.) Unique Description: Titles are extremely relevant SEO factor. The description tag will be what your client el sees so make it pop!

3.) Writing a unique description is very important. If your content is like everyone else’s it will bore your readers and future customers.

4.) Linking Intelligence: One important step is finding sites in your niche and linking up with them. If they link you, that’s more eyes seeing your site. Another intelligent idea is find out where your competitors are linked at and try to get the sites to link you as well.  Out doing your competitors is a very vital step.

5.) Anchor Text Don’ts: Instead of using “click here” as your text, use a keyword. You will surely lose potential clients by advertising the “click here” link. Also, using it as a keyword will help your rankings.

6.) Blog It Up: Blogging about your site and what you are doing is a great and proven way to earn some traffic to your site. People spend so much time reading blogs, talking about blogs, and comparing blogs. So take advantage of that, and use a few minutes a day to post some blogs. Another great thing is to comment on other peoples blogs, related to your niche. Once done doing that, you will find opportunities to post up your link in the comments. Using these techniques can really increase your trafficking.

7.) Press Release Do’s and Don’ts: Make nice with the media when you have something real and important to share. If you have one over every little thing then people and journalists will be highly annoyed, and that is never a good thing for your business. Press release online is a great and sure fire way to generate some business.

8.)  Social Media Smarts: The best piece of advice I can give you is NEVER EVER SPAM! Spamming is a definite way to get ads removed, and get bad ratings. Yahoo answers is a good site to use to let people know what you’re all about. Photobucket or even Flickr is good to post photos on. A diverse group of people browse through those web sites daily.  Now a days, it’s even great to have a Myspace business site. With all the people on Myspace, businesses are creating Myspace web pages left and right. Myspace is a superb way to gain some more client el.

9.) Search Engine Tools: Use SET for your site, and see how they view your page. Some highest ranking sites are Yahoo and Google. Although Altavista is not widely known, it is also a very nice search engine. From there you can see where your site is ranked, and how your keywords are working out for you.

10.) Local Searching: It’s important to do a nice local search for clients around you. Some things to make sure you do are post a local ad, list your address and phone number on the sites and/or ads. Sometimes listing in your local directories can help big time, and pay off in the end.

11.) New Ways of Trafficking: If your Google or yahoo ranking starts to spiral downward, then find other Trafficking routes. Whether it‘s social networking sites, blogging on ten different web sites, or even taking out Craigslist ads. Just do what you have to do, to get more Trafficking, and never give up.

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World economic trends are going to be the topics of 2009 and with it come the stock market speculations guided by experts.  Acquisitions and mergers of business giants are on the anvil, including that of popular Search Engines and one can not foresee what is to happen in 2009.  But one thing is certain for Search Engine marketers – it is not going to be what they have been experiencing over the last decade and major changes are sure to take place in the whole system. Change as a whole: 

Marketers should get ready for three primary changes.  Integrating the search options together with planning of other media options, inasmuch as the search volume is driven by any offline event or media campaign of significance and this is essential in capturing the demand. 

Next is to achieve best results, planning well the SEO and paid search is important. It has been well proved by studies that by clubbing Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing together, great results can be achieved. 

Finally video media and transparent display of search results are going to be prominent for future searches through popular search engines and such others. Result is, simple clicks on the lists and conversions effected by them into business will not be enough, and they have to transform into meaningful engagements. Brand marketers of large volumes will be attracted by these offerings of Search Engines. In addition, the Search Engines as well as portals would like to have more up-sell options continuously, considering the effectiveness of Search Engine Marketing. In short, the way search engine result pages are shown to viewers will be changing dramatically, in view of the fact the present templates used are much older by a decade now and a change is imminent. 

Migration to new search options:

Online searches are no more the monopoly of few traditional search engines alone and this extends to newer platforms and portals as reported by the trusted sources – Ad Age and comScore. Within days of their reporting, that Yahoo is relegated to third place by YouTube as search engine, the latter announced a brand new platform for advertising.

Myspace is emerging as bigger search engine with 563 million queries from US, as reported by comScore, in 2008 October, compared to AOL with 424 million queries and Ask.com with 362 million queries. Similarly MSN.com with 1.04 million queries is almost touched by eBay, Amazon and Craiglist by handling combined queries of 980 million totally.

Marketers have a lesson or two to learn from these statistics.  Although we can not equate these queries with regular search engine enquiries, as they come from a totally different platform of video sharing site or social network site, the message is clear. The fact remains they are very great in volumes, judging by the numbers and search marketers can do well to keep an eye on these non-traditional sources of search and keep their sites positioned right there as best as possible.

SEO Models take a change:

First of all these non-traditional search platforms, where millions of viewers make their search, are having their impacts on the traditional Search Engines as well. The concept of Search Engine optimization undergoes a major change.  It is not any more that a site is getting the prominent rankings in the Search Engine Listings that could make best conversions of business.  It is how it reaches all the top listings of any given result page of the Search Engine that warrants merit.

There are consumers reaching the marketer’s site directly through Search Engines, by the prominent placement of the site in their result pages.  There are also consumers who get access to the given site through intermediaries, such as social networks, blogs, photo-sharing sites, Wikipedia, Twitter and the like. These consumers are steadily rising in numbers, with a striking popularity and the site marketers should never let go this opportunity.  What is required is the change of mindset to optimize their Web presence, rather than optimize their site concerned.

Search Engines are getting replaced by other devices:

The surest possible change in 2009 will be that consumers will be not entirely dependant on their computers alone for making searches.  Irrespective of the Search Engines, they have started using other devices – mobile phones for one. For entering their searches mobile devices like iPhone which perform the applications of a hand-held computer or Google Android SDK software stack, providing the tools and applications have emerged. The search queries raised from these devices are surprisingly large and with an array of novel features enabled by these devices, marketers should give importance to these devices.

Along with the primary task of getting top rankings in Search Engines alone, the new features of devices such as iPhone like text messaging by SMS; mobile couponing; click-to-call should be made best use of. The targeted audience should be reached through these devices to optimize their landing page and increase the opt-in traffic of consumers to the best advantage.

Again, Internet searches are extending beyond PCs to overlap other devices – for instance new TV models and set-up boxes enable searching the net through the TV screen using the remote, obviating the necessity for a computer screen.  Besides there are vehicle telematics like GPS device to make on the spot searches for locating navigation to a drug store, important tourist attraction or restaurant.  All these devices are growing wider and faster to occupy the place of computer and enhance the web experience of the consumers.

Marketers will do well to take into consideration these existing devices as also those yet to come, to play a vital role in consumer searches and be ready to modify their strategies for popularizing their web presence. 

Search Engine Optimization is the key in bringing your website, for whatever purpose it is created – business; propaganda; advice; providing information or clarification on anything – to the forefront, to be available to billions of searchers of Internet everyday the world over.  With a view to help search marketers, here is the list of Top 15 sites related with SEO, wherefrom you can get the comprehensive and complete service towards your efforts in maximizing viewing of your site through popular Search Engines of the Internet. 
In providing the list, supportive credentials, as certified by the authoritative sites like Yahoo Site finder for Inbound Links; figures of monthly visitors from Compete Site Analytics; figures of monthly visitors from US as gauged by Quantcast; Traffic Rankings as given by Alexa, (The Web Information Company) and Web Page Ranking accorded by Google Search Engine are given, with few introductory details of the site concerned.