|
|
|
|
|
|
| How To Increase Your Alexa Rank .::. Alexa Ranking Blog |
|
20 Quick Ways to Increase
Your Alexa Rank |
Alexa.com
is a subsidiary of Amazon.com and 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.
In this article, I’ll examine the importance of the Alexa Rank as it relates
to site monetization while briefly discussing some of the weaknesses involved
in using Alexa ranking as a reliable traffic measure for any website.
Lastly, I’ve also included an extensive list of twenty methods and strategies
you can use to increase your Alexa Rank dramatically in the short and long
run.
What is the Alexa Rank?
Put simply, the Alexa Rank is a ranking system which bases its ranking schema
on the level of traffic each website receives from the number of people
who visit a website with the Alexa toolbar installed.
See Alexa’s definition of the
Alexa Traffic Rank:
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic
data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page
views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number
of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis.
The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two
quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both
the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on
the site viewed by those users)
Problems with the Alexa Rank
Alexa ranking is heavily skewed towards websites which have a large webmaster/tech
audience. This is because webmasters or web savvy audiences are much more
likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed than websites 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. I don’t disagree.
Alexa is a silly way to measure web traffic but unfortunately, in an imperfect
world Alexa is still heavily used by webmasters and ad networks when measuring
the value of advertising on your website.
I understand the defects of Alexa’s ranking system and I’m not going to
go into more detail about it here. What’s primarily important to me is that
the Alexa Rank has become a central element in site monetization strategies.
I’m not concerned with the utility and value of Alexa but it’s perceived
importance in the eyes of potential advertisers.
How do I get started with Alexa?
There are two easy ways to start using Alexa. If you are using Internet
Explorer, visit
this page
and download the Alexa Toolbar. If you’re using Firefox, download the
SearchStatus
extension which displays the Alexa Rank, Google PageRank as well as
other useful features.
I highly recommend that you use Firefox and SearchStatus instead of Alexa
toolbar, which I find to be more bulky and less useful.
Can one actually game or manipulate the Alexa Ranking?
I believe that there are methods which will allow you to easily bring an
Alexa ranking in the millions down to the 100,000 level. However, bringing
it past the 10,000 or 1,000 mark is a considerably more difficult process,
because of the stiff competition among websites.
Some have adamantly stated that there are no proven ways to game Alexa,
while others have claimed that auto-surfs and scripts do work to some degree.
I’m not going to take any sides because I can’t guarantee that auto-surfs
or other artificial methods will have similar effects for every blog.
The easiest way to know to know if any of the tips mentioned below really
work is to actually try them for yourselves and monitor the results.
20 Ways to Increase your Alexa Rank
Here is a collection of methods you can use to boost your Alexa Rank. Most
of these tips are derived from several fellow webmasters I know who claimed
to have derived positive results through their experiments with the Alexa
Rankings.
Some of the other tips were derived articles and sources, which I have duly
referenced at the end of this post.
Do these tips work? According to some, yes they definitely do work. But
do note that most of them require active effort of some sort and hence,
they will work as long as long as you are consistently performing specific
actions.
To increase your Alexa rank in the long run, I would highly recommended
that one focus on developing quality content which attracts and maintains
a large audience instead of purely focusing on artificially increasing your
Alexa Rank.
Great link-worthy content will leads to an natural increase in site traffic
and is an excellent way to passively increase your Alexa rank.
It is important to emphasize that you should devote most of your efforts
in growing your site audience alongside integrated implementation of any
of the following tips below.
1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension
and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few
days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day. According to some,
each click counts as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.
3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends,
fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link
to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your
readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.
4. Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS
Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the
homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may
work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.
5. Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not
entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.
6. Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear
about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you
targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This
gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.
7. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the
toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer
useful feedback. It’s also a good way to give back to the community if you
have useful articles to share with others.
8. Write content that is related to webmasters. This can fall in
the category of domaining and SEO, two fields in which most webmasters will
have the Alexa toolbar installed. Promote your content on social networking
websites and webmaster forums.
9. Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Try this:
http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.doshdosh.com. Replace doshdosh.com
with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments
as well as forum signatures. This redirect will count a unique IP address
once a day so clicking it multiple times won’t help. There is no official
proof that redirects positively benefit your Alexa Rank, so use with caution.
10. Post in Asian social networking websites or forums. Some webmasters
have suggested that East Asian web users are big Alexa toolbar fans, judging
by the presence of several Asia-based websites in the Alexa Top 500. I suggest
trying this only if you have the time or capacity to do so.
11. Create a webmaster tools section on your website. This is a magnet
for webmasters who will often revisit your website to gain access to the
tools. Aaron Wall’s webpage on SEOTools is a very good example.
12. Get Dugg or Stumbled. This usually brings massive numbers of
visitors to your website and the sheer amount will have a positive impact
on your Alexa Rank. Naturally, you’ll need to develop link worthy material.
13. Use PayperClick Campaigns. Buying advertisements on search engines
such as Google or Exact Seek will help bring in Traffic. Doubly useful when
your ad is highly relevant to webmasters.
14. Create an Alexa category on your blog and use it to include any
articles or news about Alexa. This acts as an easily accessible resource
for webmasters or casual search visitors while helping you rank in the search
engines.
15. Optimize your popular posts. Got a popular post that consistently
receives traffic from the search engines? Include a widget/graph at the
bottom of the post, link to your Alexa post or use Alexa redirection on
your internal URLs.
16. Buy banners and links for traffic from webmaster forums and websites.
A prominent and well displayed ad will drive lots of webmaster traffic to
your website, which can significantly boost your rank.
17. Hire forum posters to pimp your website. Either buy signatures
in webmaster forums or promote specific articles or material in your website
on a regular basis. You can easily find posters for hire in Digital Point
and other webmaster forums.
18. Pay Cybercafe owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your
website as the homepage for all their computers. This might be difficult
to arrange and isn’t really a viable solution for most. I’m keeping this
one in because some have suggested that it does work.
19. Use MySpace. This is a little shady so I don’t recommended it
unless you’re really interested in artificially inflating your Alexa Rank.
Use visually attractive pictures or banners and link them to your redirected
Alexa URL. This will be most effective if your website has content that
is actually relevant to the MySpace Crowd.
20.
Try Alexa auto-surfs. Do they work? Maybe for brand new sites.
I think they are mostly suitable for new websites with a very poor Alexa
rank. Note that there be problems when you try to use auto surfs alongside
contextual ads like Adsense. They aren’t also long term solutions to improving
your Alexa Rank so I suggest using with caution. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|