Karlonia.com

Although often criticized by webmasters, the Alexa traffic ranking is still viewed by many in the general public as an indicator of a website’s importance. More importantly for Internet marketers, it is used as a gauge for estimating a site’s advertising value. In this article, I will discuss the importance of the Alexa system and its weaknesses as it relates to marketing and website promotion. Then I will list 10 simple ways in which you can increase both your Alexa rank and your income potential. These methods were derived from an excellent article by Maki from DoshDosh.com entitled 20 Quick Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank.

What exactly is the Alexa rank?

The Alexa rank is a system that collects historical traffic data from users of the Alexa toolbar or Firefox Search Status extension and uses this to determine the relative rankings of websites for the previous three months. It is based on the combined total of global reach and page views for each site. The reach is a percentage of all Internet users who visit your site within a specific time period (usually 3 months). Page views are determined by calculating the number of pages within each website that are visited by users of the toolbar within a 24-hour period.

Why should I care about my Alexa rank or want to increase it?

Although there are problems with using the Alexa system as an accurate measure of website traffic, as a professional webmaster you should not completely ignore it. Having a higher rank can significantly increase your bargaining power when it comes to selling advertising on your site. If advertisers see that your site has a higher ranking, they are likely to think that they can sell more of their products and services by having a link on your site. This means that you can charge them higher fees for that link.

There is also the matter of public perception. If people look at your Alexa stats and think that your site is relatively important, they may be more likely to link to it from other sites or bookmark it for future visits. Over time, this means more opportunities for advertising revenue to flow into your coffers. Meanwhile, some domain appraisal services even use Alexa statistics to determine the value of your domain name. This can lead to more profitable dealings with other webmasters if they think that your domain is more valuable. In short, having a higher Alexa rank will increase the public’s perception of your site as popular and important, regardless of whether or not this is actually true.

Weaknesses and Criticism of the Alexa rank

Due to the method of data collection (in this case the toolbar), the Alexa rankings tend to be skewed towards webmasters, the Internet savvy, and technically oriented people because these are the kinds of people who are more likely to have the toolbar or Firefox extension installed. Many Internet users who may not even be aware of the toolbar’s existence are left out of the calculations altogether. Other users may be aware of the toolbar but do not want to install it because some antivirus programs consider it spyware, and it also has been known to cause some slowness on older computer systems. Of course, these people are also left out of the calculations, further skewing the results.

Many people have claimed that it is possible to manipulate the rankings and increase them artificially, causing many webmasters to have a jaundiced view of Alexa statistics or even discount them entirely. I actually agree with this to a certain extent. It is certainly possible for an obscure site with a very low ranking or no ranking at all to increase its rank without getting any quality visitors. However, above a rank of 100,000 or so, it becomes much more difficult to “game” the system. In order to raise your rank above this level, you will need to have some reliable, legitimate sources of traffic.

10 simple ways to increase your site’s Alexa rank

1. Install the Firefox Search Status extension or the Alexa toolbar. If you have a blog or other website and post content to it regularly, this will result in a small but steady stream of hits being recorded in the Alexa stats as you visit your own pages. Note that hitting the same page multiple times within a 24-hour period will not count towards your ranking, however.
2. Encourage other people to use the toolbar and/or extension, especially if you can persuade them to visit your site regularly. This will multiply the effects of your own page views by getting other users involved and adding to your reach.
3. Write articles about Alexa strategies and post them to your blog. Other webmasters and bloggers are often looking for ways to increase their rankings, so if you can provide them with some useful information on the topic, they will likely appreciate it and might even link back to you. This will not only help your ranking because of the increased traffic, but it may also help your link popularity for SEO purposes.
4. Post your URL in forums, especially if they are geared towards other website owners. You’ll want to be careful not to get too “spammy” with this, but most forums will at least allow you to put a link back to your site in your signature file. If you can make useful, well-written posts, this can be a way of picking up some additional traffic.
5. Write more content that would be of interest to other webmasters. Topics like SEO, domaining, website promotion, web development, and Internet marketing will qualify. If some of these people leave comments, you might even get some useful tips in addition to the traffic boost.
6. Use social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, etc. These sites can have a favorable impact on your Alexa rank simply because of the sheer quantity of traffic they can deliver. However, in order to gain long term benefits to your ranking, you will need to submit good quality articles to these kinds of sites on a regular basis.
7. Create a section on your website for useful webmaster tools. This can draw in repeat traffic from other site owners who may be interested in accessing and downloading the tools. I am beginning to do something similar to this with my Applications category, although I still need to add many more posts to it.
8. Use PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. While this one is not exactly free, it is still very useful if you happen to be marketing something where you might want to use this method anyway. Simply set up your landing page as a separate file on your domain, run your PPC campaign as you normally would, and enjoy the benefits of the traffic boost in addition to your sales conversions!
9. Optimize popular posts to increase Alexa traffic. If you have certain pages on your site that are drawing a significant amount of traffic from search engines or other sources, you can maximize their ranking benefit by including a clickable Alexa graph at the bottom of your posts. You can also use internal links in these posts to direct users to other Alexa-related articles that you have already written.
10. Buy text links and banners for placement on forums or other sites that are frequented by webmasters. If you discover sites that are already getting a large amount of traffic from people that are likely to have the toolbar or extension installed, a well-placed ad on some of these sites could significantly boost your ranking. These ads may cost a considerable amount of money, however, so this is something to consider only if you don’t mind spending a little cash on your promotional efforts.

There are also some “grey hat” techniques out there that can artificially increase your Alexa rank. These include things like posting Alexa redirect links in select areas, using MySpace pictures or banners for redirects, or using Alexa autosurf traffic exchanges. However, if you use the ten methods that I have outlined above, you should be able to get a significant boost to your rank without having to resort to questionable tactics.