A friend of mine recently suggested that I put my higher performing websites through an Alexa Site Audit to see if there are any changes I could/should make with regards to site structure, links, meta tags, SEM, SEO, and more. I looked through the site, and it does look like the report is comprehensive, but at $199 per website, it looks like it might be a bit on the expensive side if it’s used on several websites.

I am curious to know if anyone has ever purchased a Site Audit from Alexa, and if so, was the report worth the money? Similarly, was the report actionable for you?  In other words, if you aren’t really a developer/programmer/coder, could you understand the recommendations that were made and were you able to make changes to your site to leverage those recommendations? Things like broken links should be easy to fix, but recommendations about getting more inbound links from authority websites might be more difficult and aren’t easily actionable.

Whether you have experience with this report from Alexa or not, are there other companies that offer similar reports and services that can be helpful? I am sure everyone else gets those spammy emails and form submissions that say something like this:

“I’ve helped hundreds of companies increase their traffic and I’d love to show you what my service can do for you. I don’t promise the world, I’m straight forward and to the point … I deliver rankings. My rates are completely affordable and I don’t want to oversell you either, I start small and have my clients begging for more. I won’t take on your site unless I know I can deliver rankings. Reply to this e-mail if you have the slightest interest … you’ll never see rankings the same way again.”

I’d love to know what you’ve used that actually works and has been helpful to your business. From my perspective, there are a whole lot of services offered out there promising the world, but that makes it difficult for website owners to find someone/something that can actually deliver.

As one would expect, there are many people who are buying .CO domain names with the hopes of capitalizing on typo traffic. These people are looking through Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, and other various traffic estimation tools in the hopes of purchasing .CO domain names that will get traffic intended for the .COM.

One thing people need to be cognizant of (aside from trademark issues which I am not going to discuss) is that many high traffic websites get significant search engine traffic, and there isn’t going to be leakage from that. If someone visits a website via search engine or other referral, there will be no leakage to the .CO unless the referrer makes the typo.

Yesterday evening, I was asked if I had an interest in Burbank.CO. A reader of my blog offered his position in the auction because I didn’t back order it, and I wasn’t interested. I’ve been very fortunate with SEO and referral traffic for that site, and at the present time, only about 14% of the traffic is from type-in.  Assuming 20,000 visitors per month total, that means under 3,000 are typing it in to their browser.  If .3% of this traffic typos it, that’s about 9 visitors a month that I am losing.  It just doesn’t make that much sense to pay more than $500, which is where this name ended I believe.

There are a number of .CO websites that are live, where the .COM website is also live. Sex.com/Sex.co, Porn.com/Porn.co, Porno.com/Porno.co, Hotels.com/Hotels.co, and Weather.com/Weather.co are five such comparisons you can do, as I would imagine these sites rely on significant type-in traffic, which is where the leakage would take place. Since I don’t know how long each .CO has been live, I can’t say whether it’s 100% accurate, but here are the Compete numbers and % of traffic:

• Sex.com – 135,793 | Sex.co – 393 – .CO % of .COM traffic: .23%
• Porn.com – 1,807,569 | Porn.co – 1,015 – .CO % of .COM traffic: .056%
• Porno.com – 233,909 | Porno.co – 656 – .CO % of .COM traffic: .28%
• Hotels.com – 4,822,172 | Hotels.co – 1,698 – .CO % of .COM traffic: .035%
• Weather.com – 31,992,990 | Weather.co – 29,893 – .CO % of .COM traffic: .093%

As you can see, there isn’t much leakage to the .CO, so investing a lot of money with the intent only to capitalize on typo traffic isn’t smart. Of course .CO domain owners can (and many will) develop their .CO domain names like I am doing, however, relying on revenue from typo traffic here might not be a smart play.

I generally don’t pay much attention to Alexa rankings. I write articles of interest based on what I am doing and what I see in the domain industry, and I figure people will visit if they want. I know Alexa tends to be skewed towards Internet and tech focused websites, so as much as some people use it as a means of gauging traffic, I don’t pay much attention to it.

Yesterday evening I checked out the Alexa ranking for my website and was pretty surprised to see it below 25,000. I’ve seen an uptick in traffic, but the last time I checked it was in the 30s. I wanted to check a few other domain blogs that I read to see if they’re also seeing a “better” Alexa ranking, and I was very surprised when I checked the Alexa ranking of Mike Berkens’ Blog.

Out of millions of websites tracked by Alexa, Mike’s blog (23,128) and my blog (23,121) were separated by a grand total of 7 websites. I cross checked the Compete score, and we are separated by around 200 websites. This seems pretty minuscule in the whole scheme of things, and it’s always fun to be in the good company of Mike (and Judi).

I use a variety of handy tools every day to help make smarter domain acquisition, sales, and development decisions. Many of these tools weren’t created specifically for domain investors, but they work very well for our needs. Some of the tools I use just about every day include Whois History, website archive, keyword tools, reverse IP search, Alexa, and Compete.

Every so often, I wish that a specific tool or product was created and/or was more accessible or better publicized. For instance, wish there was an intuitive tool where I could type in a keyword phrase, and the tool would spit out associated domain names, Whois results, and let me know if the domain name is a developed website. This would save time and generate domain acquisition targets more easily.

On the product-side, I wish there was much more intuitive and easy to use web development software. I would love a program where I could just drag different elements into place, and it would code everything for me. I wouldn’t want something that created websites that look like they’re from the 1990s – I am talking real deal development that looks great and allows me to create cool things.

I know there are thousands of people working to build tools and products that will help web developers and many who are looking to create something that is helpful to domain investors. I am sure a few of them read domain blogs such as this to see what people want and need – and would pay for if they knew the product existed.

So I ask you, what tools or products would help you become a better web developer or domain investor?

Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jannem/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0