Alexa.com is a website which provides information on traffic levels for websites. The Alexa rank is measured according to the amount of users who’ve visited a website with the Alexa toolbar installed.
More simply, Alexa is a ranking system which is based on the level of traffic each website receives from the number of people who have the Alexa toolbar.
Alexa Bias
Undoubtedly Alexa rankings are skewed towards websites which have a large webmaster/tech audience. This is because a more web savvy audience is much more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed than whose visitors are unaware of Alexa.
As such, many have indicated that Alexa is a vastly inaccurate method of measuring a website’s reach, traffic and potential. Ultimately the web has a finite amount of website ranking systems for measuring site value. Sweet Spot Marketing looks at the Alexa ranking as it might compare with your competitors sites in the same industry.
Alexa Results
Think of Alexa Rankings like a Golf score – the lower the better. As you might image, SweetSpotMarketing.com falls into a more tech savvy category than many other websites. Internally, we have several employees who have downloaded the tool bar. Also, many of our friends, clients, and general site visitors are perhaps more apt to have the tool bar installed.
Back in September of 2008, our domain name was actually SweetSpot-Marketing.com, our company site was in its infancy and our Alexa Rank was over 17 million. A year later we have a new domain, but more importantly our Alexa Rank moved into the top 200K sites.
Sweet Spot Alexa Rankings
How do I improve my Alexa Ranking?
There are methods which will allow you to bring an Alexa ranking in the millions down to the sub-million level for most any site (tech or not). Getting past the 100,000 or 10,000 mark is a considerably more difficult process these days. If you are interested in knowing who the best of the best are, Alexa ranks the top 500 sites for you.
Before getting into tips for improving your Alexa ranking, it’s important to first emphasize that you should devote most of your efforts in growing your site audience alongside strategic implementation of original content.
Having great content always leads to natural traffic and naturally increases links. In the long run, focusing on maintaining a site which attracts a larger audience will ultimately improve your Alexa ranking beyond what any one person can do alone. The power of many always trumps the power on an individual on the web.
Step 1: Start using Alexa yourself. If you are using Internet Explorer, visit Alexa.com and download the Alexa Toolbar. A better option, if you’re using Firefox, is to download the Search Status extension. This Firefox add-on will give you other data beyond Alexa ranking.
Step 2: Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. If you are part of a larger corporation that employs several people, then have an IT person install the toolbar on everyone’s computer for them. Imagine the potential if everyone’s default home page was the company website!
Step 3: Setup an Alexa profile and verify your site. By signing up at Alexa.com and verifying your site (simple file upload) you can customize what Alexa info is presented about your site.
Step 4: Get others to rate your Alexa profile. This may be a roundabout way of improving your score, but letting Alexa know that others care about your site is positive. It definitely can’t hurt to generate some positive PR even if it does not directly impact your ranking like site visitors do.
Step 5: Use an Alexa widget. Alexa currently provides 3 widget options depending on what information you may want to share. Some webmasters think Alexa can monitor these widgets so each click counts as a visit, even if the visitor does not have the Alexa toolbar installed on their computer. Don’t be totally consumed with improving your Alexa rank (remember the bias) to the point that it begins to hurt your website and negatively impact user experience. If you can place the widget in a non-distracting location on the web, this tactic may work for you, but it’s not for everyone.
Step 6: Use Pay-Per-Click Campaigns. If your site is relevant to a more tech savvy crowd, then buying traffic on search engines will likely bring in more Alexa toolbar users. It’s a side benefit of non-converting PPC traffic if you are looking for a silver lining.
The easiest way to know if any of the tips mentioned really work is to actually try them for yourself and monitor the results. As a Sweet Spot Marketing SEO client we monitor this trend for you.