Rank of a website directly shows how important the website is and the frequency of the people who access it. There are many websites dedicated to rank every website in the internet according to various ranking formulas and algorithms. Therefore the rank of a website definitely varies from a ranking organization to another. But there are mainly two organizations to find a reasonable rank value where most of the people around the globe trust. As I promised you in the earlier post, I will explain how to find the rank of your website or another website using these two organizations. It is very important to find the rank of another website when you plan to purchase a good or service (for SEO, to register in paid web directories and to publish press releases).

The first rank I recommend is Google. The Google’s ranking algorithms are so complex and changing time to time. It is the most respected in the Internet as far as I know. There are many websites who shows the Google page rank of a website by asking to enter the URL of the website. But we can’t be 100% sure about their accuracy. My advice is to download the freely available Google toolbar for your web browser (offered for Firefox and IE). After downloading and installing it, restart the web browser. You will find the Google toolbar attached to your web browser as follows.

Now you are ready to find the page rank of any website you prefer. All you have to do is, go to the website you like to find the page rank. After it is fully loaded look at the small horizontal box in the Google toolbar as follows.

If Google has started ranking for the website you accessed, the box will appear activated and if the website has a rank > 0, it will be displayed in green color. When you take your mouse over it, it will show the page rank as a fraction of 10 (Ex. 1/10, 2/10 to 10/10).

Oops! I forgot to tell you about the Google rank range. Google rank starts from zero and ends with 10. If the website has a rank 10, it is the best (I couldn’t find a website ranking 10 up to now.). If the above mentioned box in the Google toolbar is inactive, most probably the website is new. Otherwise it is not publicly listed. You have to e careful when you pay for these kinds of websites. My personal advice is to find a website which has a rank greater than or equal to 5, if you plan to pay for a good or service offered online.

The other most respected ranking organization is alexa.com. It is more informative than the Google toolbar. But the ranking algorithm and criteria is different from Google. The websites having higher ranks in Google also have higher ranks in alexa.com normally. Therefore any respected and trusted website will have similar rankings in Google and alexa.com. Those ranks will not be the same. But both will show higher ranks for trusted and famous websites. Alexa.com shows a graph of website traffic for any website which is among the top 100,000 websites. It also shows the number of visitors from each region/country. And there are many other statistics displayed. With alexa.com, you also have the facility to compare traffic of multiple websites up to 5. This is a very good feature provided there if you are in a situation where you have to make a choice from multiple numbers of websites. I used this technique to find my webhost as I had to make a decision to choose a web hosting company from multiple websites.

If the website you wanted to find the rank shows higher ranks in both Google and alexa.com, you can trust it. I advise you to find traffic details of it using alexa.com ranking as it will show you the recent progress or decline of traffic of that website. Always try to choose a website which has a steady traffic. It is better not to choose new websites for your payments.

Now you know how to find the rank of a website and sometimes you might find the page rank of this website :-). You won’t be able to find a higher rank as this is a new website. But I hope that you will trust me on the future information that I’m going to provide freely. In the next post, I will move back into SEO and I will explain you about the most common SEO abusing methods which will affect your website badly.

Free stuffs (also called as freebies) are available all over the internet. They come in different kinds of forms like free software, mp3s, videos, various consumer products, magazines, money, email, web hosting, eBooks, screen savers and many more. Sometimes you have to register in their websites to get their free offers. Some websites ask you to fill a questionnaire to get the free offer. There are certain things that you should know before you download any of these free offers. This article gives some important things that you should consider when you download free stuff.

The most important thing that you must do before download anything from the internet is installing trusted anti-virus software and an internet spyware detection and removal tool. Otherwise your computer will be attacked by various viruses and spyware which will ultimately destroy your computer in various ways. I mentioned you this because about 99.99% free stuffs are carriers of various computer viruses and spyware with or without their knowledge.

Some free stuff like free software, mp3s and videos are used by websites as marketing tools for their promotions of new products or existing products. Sometimes they are given away freely as trial versions. You will have to pay to get the fully functioning version. There are cracks (These days mainly as Torrents) available for trial software to make it a fully functional software. But these cracks may also carry the unwanted viruses and spyware. If you want to find free fully functional software, you better find open source software as they will make the least damage or zero damage to your computer. But make sure that you download them from their original developer.

Various free stuffs like consumer goods (soaps, perfume, cream, food, etc.) are not always good for your body and health. These are offered sometimes to get a feedback from you after using them. Sometimes companies test their new products on you like scientists test on rats and rabbits. You have to be very careful when using these kinds of free stuffs. You better check the vendor’s profile and reputation.

Free offers like money are 99.99% scams and you will get into trouble. My advice is that never get into money free offers. No one will give you free money. The people pretend to give money actually try to get money from you.

EBooks, email and webhosting free offers are less harmful compared to others. These are used as a medium for marketing products and services. Yahoo GeoCities, Gmail, free eBooks offered by various internet businessmen are some examples for these kinds of free offers.

The reality that you must understand is, no one offer free offers if they don’t get a benefit from them. Each and every free offer is designed in such a way that the offerer will benefit from it by some way. Therefore you better be careful when using or downloading free offers.

Coupon codes are the special type of codes which are published by various types of businesses. This is done in large scale by online shopping websites (e-commerce websites) to promote their newly launched products or existing products. These codes are mostly offered by the e-commerce websites who starts their online business to attract new customers. But there are many well established online companies who offer coupon codes and referral codes to keep their existing customer base. This article describes about these two types of codes and how you can benefit from them.

Coupon codes

Coupon codes are offered by the e-commerce websites directly to their customers for a specific time period or product. They expect more customers and more sales by offering these coupon codes. They normally advertise in their own website and other websites. They will offer a code which includes characters, numbers or both. When you find these kinds of coupon codes all you have to do is, go to the website of the offer. After selecting the specific product(s) they will allow you to put your coupon code. If you put a valid one, you will get a discount for the product that you are going to buy. Sometimes you will get free products for the coupon code. When you plan to buy a good or service online, it will be beneficial for you if you search through a search engine about the product or service whether there are any coupon codes available. If you find one, it will definitely save you some money.

Referral Codes

Referral codes are slightly different from coupon codes. But you will get the same results. Referral codes are offered to the existing customers of an e-commerce website to give it to others. The existing customer will be paid a commission for every new customer referred by him/her. The new customer will be given a discount too. The referral codes are mainly offered for the new products or new businesses. If you have a referral code, all you have to do is follow the same procedure that I mentioned in coupon codes.

Before using a coupon code or a referral code you must find out whether they are valid for the time frame or product that you are going to purchase online. And you must also keep in mind that whether it is a needed one to buy. Otherwise you will be wasting your hardly earned money even though you get a discount for a specific product or service.

There are many websites who are dedicated to provide coupon codes and referral codes. But I must tell you this. Some of them are scams. And never pay for any coupon or referral code. Normally referral codes are distributed freely in those websites as they also get a commission.

Online shopping has evolved into a major shopping medium all over the world. It is a convenient and time saving way of shopping if you know how to do it properly. Otherwise you’ll end up with a waste of your hardly earned money. Some people even buy cars through online shopping. But there are some important things to consider when shopping online. This article will let you know some important features that you should know when you shop online.

The most important thing is you must know your budget and what are the essential items that you have to buy. Many online shopping websites use various kinds of marketing strategies to promote relevant products that you are going to buy. For an example many websites display some related items to the item that you searched as “The shoppers who bought your item also bought these” or Buy one or more from these items and you will get a x% discount”. You must not buy them unless you have a requirement as this will reduce your money to buy your most needed items if you are sticking into a budget.

Next thing you must consider is what type of an item that you are planning to buy. If you are planning to buy consumer goods like milk, chocolate, butter, drugs, etc., you know what are the brands that you usually buy. Then it is easy to search those items on the web and you can check whether the prices are reasonable as you know their general price margins. But if you plan to buy items like apparel, jewelries, Electronics goods, fruits, vegetables etc., you must have a good understanding about them as in online shopping you just see pictures or animations. You can’t touch them or check whether they are in a good condition. My advice is that if you are desperate in buying these kinds of items from an online shopping mall, you must first read their item return policy and online shopping policy. If those policies are satisfying, you can consider about purchasing them online.

Another important thing is that the popularity and reliability of the website. This is very important as there are many scams in the internet (For more information, please read these articles Article1 and Article 2 ). You can find reviews on the website that you are going to purchase items. This is a must you should follow.

Next thing you should consider how they deliver your ordered items and how long it will take. Normally if you need them in a hurry, you will have to pay more. You must find out whether they follow a proper packaging and delivery strategy which guarantees that you received your ordered items safely on time and as it is.

In my personal view, it is better if you do normal shopping for the items like fruits, vegetables, and valuable items like jewelries. You can do online shopping for the items which can be kept for a long time and doesn’t require more attention when selecting. And never buy from a single website. Do a comparison and find the best website for your required items.