Picking the low hanging fruit

I knew links were important for search engine rankings.  What was not apparent was just how fast they can have an effect.  I gathered a few links together from sites of friends, clients and a couple of professional communities, less than 10 in all, expecting a slow burn to improved status.  However, one week has gone by since my last post and we've been rocketing up the charts.  Today, the Alexa traffic rank stands at 2,622,590 - a pretty big leap from last week. 

One thing that could have affected the ranking is the Vodafone Appstar competition.  We entered a few apps two weeks ago, so they've been online since.  Whilst there are no links from the Appstar site, the Netrunner name is out there.  Since Alexa's ranking is based in part on the 'net usage of Alexa toolbar users and people who've installed the Alexa toolbar are most likely to be techies, this could skew the numbers a little anomolously.  It could be that our surge in traffic rank is down to other widget developers who've entered apps checking out their competition!  We'll just have to wait and see. 

Our next step on the road to dominatin of the 'net is to get into some local business directories.  I'll be focusing on those which are a) free and b) offering links.  These really do offer a fledgeling site a great way to get a couple of links and let the search engines notice you.  I'm going to bother with them because they are easy pickings.

The Appstar competition winners will be announced on 22 April, so if we do actually win (and we've foolishly allowed ourselves hope!) we'll be mounting a campaign to get as many votes as possible for stage two of the competition.  Facebook & Twitter, here we come!