Save this article
Use this article for free on your own website
Republish this article for free on your own website or blog. Or search or browse for more articles that your audience will appreciate. Huge choice available. Ideal for finding quality, free content. Read our publishers guide.
Alexa Ranking Is Worth Keeping Up With
Getting a grasp on all the inside language involved in web publishing can be a challenge. Figuring out what numbers count and what don't for tracking a website's success can seem like an impossibility. Many publishers find it difficult enough to keep up with Google ranking. The sad reality is that this number isn't the only important one. Alexa ranking is also a valuable number to keep up with, especially if earning potential is important.
Getting a grasp on all the inside language involved in web publishing can be a challenge. Figuring out what numbers count and what don’t for tracking a website’s success can seem like an impossibility. Many publishers find it difficult enough to keep up with Google ranking. The sad reality is that this number isn’t the only important one. Alexa ranking is also a valuable number to keep up with, especially if earning potential is important.
Amazon.com is responsible for Alexa, which is a ranking system for traffic that websites draw. This particular measurement, however, is based on the number of visitors who stop by a site that also happen to have the Alexa toolbar installed on their own browsers. While it’s true Alexa ranking is very important, it has its pitfalls. This number can be very important for advertising rates though, so it’s smart to keep up with.
Alexa rank involves the number of people that visit sites with the toolbar installed on their browsers. Traffic rank revealed is based on historical data aggregated over three months from the millions of Alexa users. This number is a combined measurement of page views and the number of users. A daily computation of reach and page views is taken. The main number for traffic rank is derived at by using these two numbers averaged over time.
Alexa ranking can be directly connected to how well a site does in regard to advertisers. This rank is used to determine pricing and/or the value of a site. Sales programs like Text Link Ads, Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe all use the Alexa rank to determine the advertising pull a particular site might have.
Getting going with Alexa is easy. All that’s necessary is downloading the toolbar. Those who use Firefox can pick up the SearchStatus extension. Once this is installed, pages you look at will register on Alexa’s radar.
There’s no denying that Alexa rank is important, but the system has its problems. The first one is the fact ranking tends to be skewed toward those sites that have a technical audience. This is simply because these sites have visitors that are likely to have an Alexa toolbar installed on their computers. In essence, this makes Alexa ranks a bit unfair. Still, they are widely used by advertisers. With this in mind, it is a very good idea to understand methods that can be used to increase ranking.
Although it is incredibly difficult to break into the top 10,000 on the Alexa charts, there are things that can be done to improve overall ranking. Some ideas take a little more work than others. The best, however, involves nothing more than developing content that is appealing and consistently draws in traffic. Adding content that generates links from other sites is a fantastic way to naturally increase traffic. An improved Alexa rank is an offshoot.
There are other fairly easy ways to boost Alexa ranking. They include putting an Alexa rank widget on one’s own site, getting others to download and use the toolbar, putting this toolbar on all of your computers and your office’s and even asking friends and family members to rank your Alexa profile. Some other ways to boost rank include promoting your personal URL in webmaster chat rooms and forums, creating articles that relate to webmasters and even using Alexa redirects to your own site.
There are other ways to increase ranking with Alexa, but they will take a bit more work beyond writing basic content. These include creating a tool section on your site for other webmasters, managing to get Stumbled on or Dugg, buying Pay-Per-Click ads and even creating an Alexa category on your website. Make sure to optimize your most popular posts or pages with widgets that use Alexa redirection on your own URL. Consider hiring others to post in forums to increase the buzz about your site, too.
Some less favored methods for rankings can also be tried. These include tooling MySpace pages to work as Alexa redirects, using auto-surf programs and purchasing homepage rights at Cybercafes.
Although Alexa isn’t the most accurate system going, it is a very important one. Boosting ranking can help increase the ad revenues a site enjoys. With this in mind, it can be very smart for publishers to pay close attention to where they stand.