How Important Is Your Alexa Ranking?
Many of us that are utilizing online marketing strive to increase conversion rate by attracting targeted traffic through top listings on search engines like Google, relying on heavy traffic and some even may think that a good position with Alexa’s ranking system might serve beneficial to them as well.
If you’re not familiar with Alexa it tracks the frequency of visits daily to various websites over a period of three months from users who have the Alexa toolbar installed. The traffic is based on “reach” (number of times an Alexa user visits a particular site in 1 day) and page views (number of times a page is viewed by Alexa users).
If you haven’t already, it’s quite easy to download/install the Alexa toolbar which will send data to the central server while you surf the web. Each time you visit a web page utilizing the toolbar, information is sent to the server indicating your IP and the page you are visiting from all users.
Is It Really That Important?
Too many people mistaken concentrating entirely on improving their Alexa ranking. Getting a low Alexa ranking gives the impression that your site gets a lot of traffic. Thus, the #1 spot would mean that your website would essentially be receiving the most traffic in the world, which is currently being held by Yahoo.
It seems that if you manage to make it in the top 100,000 it’s a sign your site obtains a reasonable amount of traffic. Currently SusanSuarez.com is currently ranking at 140,260 but I’ve been wondering, is it really worth anything?
Alexa numbers can be wildly misleading and manipulated. How so? Alexa’s free toolbar is used to report back tracking of those utilizing the toolbar. Since not every Internet user has the toolbar installed, Alexa will multiply the number of visitors by a specific margin to estimate the total number of visitors a site may typically get.
For instance: For every Alexa toolbar user that visits a page, Alexa may assume that another nine non-toolbar users visited the same page. For every 100 toolbar visitors, Alexa may estimate 900 non-toolbar users are also visiting the same page within the same 24-hour period.
Can you see where this goes? If you happen to drive a higher percentage of traffic from Alexa toolbar users vs non-toolbar users to your site, you can increase your Alexa rating faster. Alexa doesn’t account for users preferences or habits. Toolbar users tend to visit particular types of sites more frequently…users like webmasters or internet savvy marketers. So if you are an internet entrepreneur and you attract similar people to your website, most likely they will have the toolbar installed which would inflate the Alexa rating.
To sum up, here is a breakdown of pros/cons of using Alexa:
Pros
- It helps advertisers and webmasters determine the real marketing potential of your site. Blogs and ordinary websites get ranked the same way
- Useful tool to compare against a competitor’s site to measure marketing efforts and popularity
Cons
- Fairly small sample size of audience (those that have the Alexa toolbar installed) to measure marketing efforts
- Due to the small sample size, there are millions of websites that may get a lot of traffic but are not ranked by Alexa
- Many people feel that Alexa traffic can be “gamed” to therefore show inaccurate results.
Ways To Improve Ranking
Since there are programs such as TextLinkAds that utilize Alexa ranking, it may be of best interest to amuse yourself with using it. Once installed, here are a few ideas to boost your Alexa ranking:
- Download/Install the Alexa toolbar and surf your own website
- Place the Alexa widget on your website to entice visitors to use it.
- Write on topics that internet-savvy individuals would read and promote it on webmaster forums or social networking sites. Or include your url into your forum signature. There is a higher probability that they have the Alexa toolbar installed
- Write great articles that could gain you a Stumble! or a Digg which could open you up to a network of even more Alexa users
- Get your friends to download the Alexa toolbar
- I haven’t used this before, but I’ve heard you could use an Alexa redirect. Placing http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect? in front of your website’s url will get Alexa to take into consideration clicks on redirected links if the visitor doesn’t have the Alexa toolbar.
Even though the results may be inaccurate due to the requirement of needing the Alexa toolbar installed, a lot of individuals feel that it is valuable for direct advertising and useful for monetizing a site since Alexa focuses on traffic rather than the number of links to it.
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Comments
Alexa is one of the biggest bullshit ever. I mean it’s totally irrelevant, a tech blog that has the probability of being visited by alexa toolbar users a lot greater then let’s say a music blog with 3x times more traffic, but still rank better. It’s loads of crap, but advertisers live by it.
Good post, Susan. I went to download the Alexa toolbar, but they don’t support Vista yet. Does using the toolbar really increase your ranking? I’ve heard mixed opinions on that. Interesting nonetheless.
I’ve stopped looking at Alexa a relatively long time ago. I’ll let my subscriptions speak for the rank when I do get a reasonable amount of traffic. Based on your example, [I'll agree with both Thomas Sinfield and eshark] knowing your Alexa rank may be quiet depressing if it goes down and motivating when it’s lower, but showing the Alexa rank to your visitors is simply showing off.
Hi Bill :)
The screenshot was for example purposes, but if the toolbar is installed every site visited will automatically show the ranking in the lower section of the browser.
-Susan
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Great post Susan. I think Alexa sucks but I use it, as apparently you need a high Alexa ranking to attract more advertisers and join programs such as textlinkads.
But sometimes I will look at my alexa ranking for the previous day and find it has plummeted. Yet when I check my actual site traffic - the number of visitors has increased.
And I have sites with higher traffic and lower ranking and vice versa.
Thanks for the tips on increasing your ranking. It is also worth having your website as your homepage.
Bill - hehe :)
David - It certainly is.
WarriorBlog - I don’t like to admit it, but I’m somewhat addicted to any type of stat, for the same reason :)
Catherine - It is pretty interesting how that works out.
Great post Susan and great blog too. As you mentioned the traffic count is really quite inaccurate but lacking anything better it has become an advertising measurement standard. I tend to look at subscription members in order to get a better idea of traffic numbers but alas this too is far from perfect. Really enjoyed your blog and your style.
Grizzly
I hate rankings, whether Alexa, Technorati or PageRank. They are all flawed in some way, but unfortunately, advertisers use them to gauge the popularity and thus monetary value of a site - they have to use something somehow.
Today, I came across a site alexarankteam.com. It boasts they can rank the site easily. I think you may try their service.
waste of time…. it onlt shows your 3 month average anyhow and thats not relevant in todays high paced world
John - It seems like a great way to start a business, although it sounds a bit pricey…the first payoff starts at $488
Simon - It’s amazing how much can change in 3 months!
How I boost Alexa ranking from 1,456,330 to 570,301 in 35 Days ?…
I am very happy that my AhTim.com ranking have jump again from 820,734 to 570,301 when I check my Alexa ranking yesterday ! Refer to my 1st monthly SEO report , AhTim.com stay at 820,734 just 5 Days ago and I already expect it to jump again very soon b…
If you depend on link or site selling as a form of monetization you’ll definitely want to increase your http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.fortunehotels.in Alexa rank, because it’ll increase your bargaining power when it comes to ad pricing.
Not bad at all, but this topic is rather little of interest. Please do not disappoint your readership.
I’ve install Alexa toolbar myself since last few months.. well.. eventhough some people dont really think this was useless, for me.. it’s good to have that kind of ranking because it will motivate yourself from writing a good post and keep u blogging.