What is Alexa Ranking and How to increase your Alexa Ranking?

rishimodi · #1 (**permalink**) 12-20-2008, 12:20 AM

Are you wondering what Alexa Ranking is all about? Don’t worry you are not alone; you have a plenty of company. Not many are aware of Alexa ranking. Alexa was originally used by internet professionals, but that is not the case any more. Today, it is not only the professionals who are using Alexa; it is also used by general public who use the internet. You can use Alexa to analyze your website’s traffic in comparison with the other websites on the World Wide Web. Alexa will tell you which sites on the web are the most visited sites. How are the websites ranked by Alexa?

Amazon.com owns Alexa and the main function of Alexa is to enhance web navigation through user participation. Alexa does not stop with ranking websites; they have a number of other services such as data services and webmaster resources that help webmasters to enhance the overall online experience. In this article, we will limit our discussion to the Ranking System of Alexa.

You would need Alexa toolbar to know the Alexa ranking of a website. You will also be able to find the Alexa ranking of a website by making a search at www.alexa.com. However, most people prefer to install the Alexa toolbar so that they can get the information they need instantly without having to make a search in Alexa.com. Using the Alexa toolbar, you will be able to find the Alexa ranking of all the websites you visit. Every time you visit a new site, its Alexa ranking will be updated in the toolbar. If you want to get more information about a particular website, you can click on the ranking indicated in the toolbar and by doing so you will be sent to Alexa’s website with all the information about the site in question. You will also be able to find complete traffic analysis and reviews posted by the users. One of the major uses of having Alexa toolbar installed in your browser is that when you visit a website using a browser in which Alexa toolbar is installed, Alexa will monitor and record your visit, which they use to rank the sites.

Even if you visit a site multiple times in a day, Alexa toolbar will give only one vote per day per site from your computer. When you visit the same site again the next day, then your vote will be counted for that day. Alexa also keeps a tab on the number of pages you view during the day. All the unique pages that you visit in the site will also be counted and recorded. Alexa calculates all the visits and unique page views for the last three months and presents the average visits for the period considered. These figures are also used to calculate the Alexa ranking of sites. Greater the traffic to your website, the lesser the number assigned by Alexa. When you have a higher number in Alexa ranking then it indicates that your site is poorly visited.

Alexa ranking helps you in getting a realistic view of a site’s traffic. Because Alexa calculates its rankings based on the data it collects over a period of time. The rankings cannot be manipulated by sudden surge of traffic. However, it is not to mean that Alexa’s system of ranking is a perfect system. It has limitations of its own. The visits are counted only when Alexa toolbar is installed. Not everyone has Alexa toolbar installed. Therefore, a website may be receiving thousands of unique page views through browsers that do not have Alexa toolbar which are not taken into consideration for ranking. Though this is a major drawback, looking at the results we can understand that it is not as big a problem as it seems to be.

As per Alexa ranking,

Weather.Comis ranked 64.

Cnn.Com is ranked 26

Amazon.Com is ranked 14

Google.Com is ranked 5

Yahoo.com is ranked 1

These rankings tally with the general visitor trends.

There is lot more about Alexa and Alexa ranking but the information that you have now is good enough for the start. If you hear someone saying that you have a certain ranking in Alexa or when they list the most visited sites on the web, you will have an idea of what they are talking about.

rishimodi · #2 (**permalink**) 12-20-2008, 12:21 AM

Here are some methods that you can use to improve your Alexa ranking:

As the first step, install Alexa Toolbar. If you are using Firefox, install SearchStatus extension. After installing the toolbar, make your blog or your website as your homepage.
Add an Alexa rank widget on your website. When visitors click on the widgets, each click will be counted as a visit. In this case, the visits will be taken into consideration even when the user does not have the Alexa toolbar.
Start promoting the use of Alexa toolbar in whatever way possible, even if it means telling your friends, other webmasters and not to forget your website’s visitors. Since not all of us are aware about Alexa ranking and Alexa toolbar, have links to Alexa’s notes on their toolbar and tracking system. This will help your website visitors to know more about Alexa ranking and toolbar and it will encourage them to use Alexa toolbar.
If you run your own company or have an office, make sure that Alexa toolbar or Firefox SS extension is installed on all the computers. Make all your office computers have your website as their home page. You will be able to benefit from this only when you have dynamic or unique IP for each computer.

Encourage your friends to review your profile in Alexa. It is believed that these ratings help in someway though it is not clear how exactly this helps.

Write an article about Alexa or make a blog post. Those who are interested in knowing about increasing Alexa ranking will link to your website. This will give you free back links as well as some targeted traffic. This will gradually enhance your Alexa ranking.

Promote your website in all possible forums. Most webmasters will have Alexa toolbar installed and you will be able to get those webmasters visit your website. They might even write a line or two as feedback. This is also a way of sharing with others if you have some helpful articles.

Try to attract targeted traffic by writing articles relating to domain selling and SEO and promote it in web forums and social networking sites. Most webmasters who deal with these two will certainly have Alexa toolbar installed by getting their traffic you can make their visits count.

Some webmasters use Alexa redirects for their website URL. Replace doshdosh.com with the URL of your website. When you are trying to create links, use the redirected URL in places such as blog comments, forum signatures, etc. Please note that it is only a practice among webmaster to use Alexa redirects; there is no official recommendation that using these Alexa redirects help your ranking. Exercise your own discretion and caution in using this.
It has been observed that internet users from East Asia are huge fans of Alexa toolbar. Therefore by promoting your website in Asian forums and social networking sites, you will be able reap better benefits. If you need proof for this you just need to look at the list of top 500 sites in Alexa.
You can attract a lot of webmasters by developing a webmaster resources section in your website. You can get many webmasters revisit your website to make use of the tools and resources.
Develop link worthy material and post in Digg or Stumble. You will be able to get huge traffics from these sites, which is sure to have a positive effect on your Alexa ranking.
Generate traffic through Pay-Per-Click campaigns on Google and Exact Seek. You will be able to generate higher traffic if you create ad campaigns that interest webmasters.
If you own a blog, make sure that you have a special category assigned for Alexa. Write articles and include Alexa related news. This is one of the proven ways to attract the webmasters traffic, which will help your ranking in the search engines.
If any of your posts or pages happens to be popular then try to make the best out of that page, tapping on its potential. Add a widget or Alexa graph on that post linking to your Alexa post. You can also use Alexa redirection for internal URLs.
Generate traffic through the use of banners and links in other sites and webmaster forums. If your ad gets a prominent place in the advertising site, then you are sure to get some useful traffic that can help your Alexa ranking.
Make use of freelance forum posters to promote your website. You can also buy signatures in forums, promote articles, etc. You will be able to easily find freelancers who will be happy to post in forums in places like Digital Point.
You can talk to internet café owners and make them install Alexa toolbar and make your website as their homepage in all their computers of course by negotiating a fee for doing that. If you are lucky, you will find internet café owners who are ready to listen to you and make some easy money.
Make use of MySpace. Add pictures that are appealing, you can also use banners in place of photos. These should be linked to your redirected Alexa URL. You will be able to attract more visitors through this if you can have some useful content for the MySpace users. This is an artificial way of inflating your Alexa rank, so use your own discretion in implementing this.
If you have brand new sites then you might like to try Alexa auto-surfs. If you have a very poor Alexa rank, then this might work. You must remember that this is only a short-term solution and this may interfere with your other monetizing efforts such as Adsense. Therefore, you must use this strategy also with caution.