To potential clients, it gives them a vehicle by which they can research your site, and if your ranking or reviews are favorable, an air of credibility as well.

Across the Web, a trend is growing - webmasters display their graphical ranking on the front pages of their sites, and there has been a resurgence in reviews of websites on Alexa.com by the average web surfer. Yes, all this is common knowledge even among many new to selling their wares online.

But did you know that there are other ways you can use Alexa.com to your advantage, specifically exploiting some of their latest changes to your advantage? Here are 8 of the 9 ways I've used Alexa as my Personal Secret Traffic Weapon in the first month of my latest website's life.

1. You probably already knew that Alexa Internet is owned by Amazon. But did you know that the reviews done on Alexa are now being linked to Amazon.com? Or, that the new reviews appear on Amazon.com as part of your Amazon profile?

To use this to your advantage, you can create a new Amazon profile centered around the theme of your site. You can even get an article printed on Amazon by filling out their "So You'd Like to..." guide or Listmania (visit amazon.com, then > Help > Friends & Services). And if your ebook/newsletter/book has an ISBN number, you can also partner with a webmaster in a parallel market and review each other's books. The possibilities are as endless as your current Amazon.com profile.

2. Use wordtracker to find high ranking sites for semi-popular keywords.

Find sites in the top ten of those keywords that don't have rankings yet. Suggest your site and several others as related links. It looks like Alexa is changing this information for sites that already have links to "Sites Linking In". For now, the Related Links Suggestion Box is still available for every site by going to:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/editor?type=rl&url=http://www.yoururl.com

- I have a feeling this may go away from the way they've started hiding it since yesterday, so do this step as soon as possible.

If you've done this before, try partnering up with another web marketer and suggesting each other's links to a pre-determined number of sites. Or, use your personal Amazon.com profile to suggest your link for other sites and your new target profile to suggest links for other sites.

Get a free trial of wordtracker here:
http://freetrafficdirectory.com/wordtracker

3. Find out your competitor's ranking.

If yours is higher, or at least close, proclaim yours proudly on your site with Alexa's free dynamic traffic graph banner, which you can get from this page: http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup?mode=graph. Another great thing about this is that if you have an associate ID, Amazon will include your ID in your link and monetize the banner. They also have a site stats and traffic ranking graph if you prefer.

4. Tell your repeat visitors about Alexa's toolbar and the fact that it will now block pop-ups.

I even saw one site link to their download page as a freebie. And why not? It benefits you both. Your visitors can selectively eliminate pop-ups, and you get another Alexa user visiting your site, thus increasing your ranking. Guess what else?

According to this page: http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/promotealexa.html - any purchases made at Amazon using the new toolbar will earn you commissions. (They aren't as particular as they used to be about new associates either. My site was approved overnight.) And if they have Netscape or use a Mac? There's now the Alexa snapshot, which doesn't require installation.

5. Testimonials

When your customers give you testimonials or compliments about your site, offer them a free gift if they will reprint their testimonial at Alexa. If they can't install the toolbar, you can direct them to
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=yourURLhere.com

6. Hard Evidence

You can use the data as supporting evidence during a time period when you're testing an affiliate product that would affect your traffic. If your traffic went up 50% during the two week period when you implemented http://freetrial.sitesell.com/yourfreetraffic.html, use the traffic detail graphic from Alexa to show your progress.

Hard evidence = More sales.

7. Stay In The Loop

Keep up to date on Alexa's top global 500. Often these sites correlate closely to the top 500 Google sites - and you could luck out and find a rapidly rising site that will link back to you. It's also a good measure of upcoming trends you can arrange for your site to capitalize on. The top 500 Global Sites are available on Alexa.com's homepage.

8. Say Thank You.

Thank fellow webmasters for their assistance by doing reviews of their site at Alexa. Then the next time you have cause to email them, mention the review and give permission for them to use it as a testimonial. This works nicely as an ice breaker for a join venture and is also a good way to show that your flattery is sincere, and not just of the smoke-blowing, scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours variety so many are used to online.

This is just a short list of things I implemented as a result of the latest changes to Alexa. If you go by the site and do some exploring, I bet you'll think of dozens more. If so, I hope you'll drop me a line and share.

Note: Get the Alexa Toolbar here: http://freetrafficdirectory.com/alexatoolbar

I bet you're wondering about tip number 9. It's the most valuable and explains how I got freetrafficdirectory.com ranked 137,940 by Alexa by its third week of existence, garnered an unsolicited spider-ing by Google, and a bunch of new members, all for free. By the time you read this, I'll probably have an update out to our newsletter audience:

ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com