How to Increase Alexa Rank

A few weeks ago I covered 5 affiliate marketing tools which no affiliate marketer or marketer online in general should be without.
One of the free tools was the SEO Quake toolbar which I like to use for getting immediate analytical information when it comes to the pages I'm surfing and one of the most interesting stats it will give you is a domain's Alexa rank. There are other ways to find this stat, but the Alexa rank is generally considered to be one of the most reputable metrics of a site's quality.
You can learn all kinds of information about any website you're browsing for free without needing access to their Google Analytics to see it using Alexa.
Likely the most important information/stat is a site's Alexa rank itself which is seen as a testament to that site's worth/reputation. In case you needed more proof of this, Google itself and Facebook occupy the numbers 1 and 2 positions on Alexa, respectively.
But how is this number calculated and how can you increase your Alexa rank?
How to Increase Alexa Rank
This number is the product of two significant statistics when it comes to your site: traffic and page views. Traffic is how many unique visitors your site receives per day and page views refers to how many pages on average a person views on your site.
Alexa looks at both of these stats over the past 3 month period of your site. So not only do you need consistent high levels of traffic, but you need people to spend a lot of time exploring your site, getting your bounce rate (the percent of visitors to your site whom leave your site on the same page them came in on without visiting any other pages) as low as possible.
Getting your Alexa rank as close to #1 as possible should be a major priority of yours as a webmaster because it happens by virtue of doing things which you should already be doing in optimizing your site. Getting your bounce rate as low as possible by serving up as much unique and informative content as possible as well as getting your traffic levels higher and higher.
Additionally this rank is (potentially) a mark of achievement and authority for your site; and it can (potentially) be a great way to attract advertisers and get them to pay to have their advertisements shown on your site.

For more information on how to increase Alexa rank, check out these posts on 70+ ways to increase website traffic and how to lower bounce rate.

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The Importance of Your Site's Alexa Rank

Why is the Alexa ranking of your website or blog so important?

How reliable is the Alexa ranking system?

According to Alexa, they gather web traffic statistics from web surfers who have installed the Alexa Toolbar, or from website pages that display an Alexa Widget.

This means, that visitors to your site that do not have the Alexa Toolbar installed will not contribute to your ranking unless you address this by adding a simple to install graphical widget to your website's sidebar, header or footer. This way, when any of your sites pages are visited a request is made to Alexa's system to retrieve your site's current rank and at the same time Alexa will record the request as a qualified visit to your site and your Alexa rank will be adjusted accordingly.

All Alexa ranks are based on the preceding three months traffic data collected and an average trend rank is calculated when comparing this data against all other sites contained in the Alexa database.

The trend rank of any site is calculated according to the following criteria:

1. Reach - the percentage of global internet users who visited the site.

2. Pageviews - the percent of global pageviews the website received

3. Pageviews/user - a calculation of the pageviews per visitor to the site

4. Bounce rate - the percentage of visitors to the site that closed the site after visiting only a single page.

5. Time on site - an average calculation of the time spent on the site by each visitor

6. Search percentage - the percentage of visits to the site that were referred from a known search engine.

Alexa have recently stated that its toolbar has achieved over 10 million downloads worldwide, but I am unsure as to the duration this claim refers to. I am confident to assume that a very large percentage of toolbars will remain installed are being installed and therefore continue to contribute to the accuracy of the Alexa ranking system. But, this does however highlight the need for webmasters, who wish to gain the best rank possible, to install an Alexa widget on their sites.

Although not everyone in the web development industry believes that Alexa is a reliable popularity ranking system, Alexa (an Amazon company) remains at the forefront of the website ranking world and receives worldwide recognition of this. I recently searched Google with the keyword "website ranking", and the results were clear. It was Alexa.Com who was at the top of the search results.

In contrast to Google Pagerank systems, the lower a site's Alexa rank number, the higher the rank is. Google operate a system in reverse where a higher number indicates a higher rank. At the time of writing this article, Goole ranked no. 1 on Alexa's Top Sites list, closely followed by Facebook, Youtube and Yahoo.

But, with all this said, what does having a high Alexa rank do for your site?

Your site's rank is very important for recognition and website monetization. Many website flipping businesses use Alexa to assist when making a calculated decision regarding the financial potential of a website on the open market. There are also websites that provide website value estimations, and once again a website's Alexa rank is used when making their calculations. Businesses such as these feel that the Alexa rank to be a very useful tool in determining the overall popularity of a site and in turn the potential financial viability of the site.

A high rank could imply high traffic and this often attracts advertisers when looking for potential advertising space. For those looking to move into the affiliate marketing industry, a high rank is often required by product and service sellers before they allow membership to their affiliate programs. This way they feel confident that their products or services are being advertised by sites with good traffic and therefore a good reputation. Websites with lower ranks are often rejected.

Tracking the movement of a site's Alexa rank is a very important practice for any web developer or blog owner. By keeping a close eye on the movement of the rank in relation to changes made to the site, a web developer or blog owner can make informed judgements on the effectiveness of changes or additions to the site and then act accordingly. But Alexa.Com does not offer tracking facilities to any websites that are ranked over 100,000 and as a result the only way to track changes has been to visit Alexa.Com every day to obtain the results yourself and record them in your own way. Perhaps as a spreadsheet or in a note book. A Google search of the term "Track Alexa" can provide some great tools for doing this for you.

In conclusion, although a million or two Alexa toolbar users and Alexa widgets cannot give us an exact ranking on the popularity of every website currently being served to the world wide web, the information Alexa provides can give us a basic idea on the general traffic a site receives and where the traffic is mostly being referred from. Alexa rank is important to any website because it provides recognition, increases the potential of monetization and provides important information that will help web developers improve the quality of their sites by improving the sites visitor experience. So tracking your site's rank is exceptionally important.

Colin Cunningham
Founder of TrackAlexa.Com
http://www.trackalexa.com

TrackAlexa.Com - Track Alexa Ranks For Domains Ranked Over 100,000

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What is Alexa Ranking, How Does It Affect You & How Do You Improve Your Ranking?

Alexa.com defines themselves as "the web information company," but to webmasters and bloggers, they are so much more. Essentially, Alexa is a company that measures web traffic on almost every website on the internet through their increasingly popular toolbar plugin. This becomes an important element in leveraging your blog's ranking as a sell point to advertisers, sponsors, buyers, readers and whoever else wants a piece of your material.

Why is this important? Alexa rankings can make or break your business.

Before you freak out, let me explain how this plays out. Essentially, the way Alexa.com is measuring your website's traffic is one of the most unfair surveys around. Why? Well they only record hits on your blog if it passes through their systems... meaning that your visitors need either the Alexa.com toolbar installed or you need to have a widget displayed on your website.

Advantage internet/technology bloggers. As a whole, the tech readership crew is much more likely to have an Alexa toolbar installed than your typical user. What this means for non-tech focused websites is that they are going to be seen as having less traffic than others.

So I have less traffic according to some company... who cares!?

You need to start caring about your Alexa.com ranking if you aren't already. As much as it pains me to say this, they have a monopoly over the sector. As advertisers move away from the unreliable "Google Pagerank" service, Alexa Ranking is the next logical sell point to move towards (and eventually destroy :D ).

Your Alexa ranking is used as a big factor in valuing the advertising space on your website by, I would say, about 85% of advertisers. A higher positioning means more money in your pocket. Alexa rankings are being used increasingly to leverage blogs, despite the fact that the numbers can be horrendously manipulated. More high paying reviews, better advertising offers, more press coverage, it is a must have.

What can you do to improve your ranking?

So you have a less-than-stellar rating, don't worry... you can improve and manipulate this pretty easily. Here are the top three things you should be doing, anything else is water under the bridge... so when you read a post "the top x ways to improve your Alexa ranking," they are making most of it up out of thin air.

1. Place an Alexa.com widget/plugin or chart on your website
2. Install the Alexa toolbar on your own computer and encourage your readers to do the same on their computers
3. Write popular content and get SEO optimized for traffic

Pretty self-explanatory, throw an Alexa widget up on your website. Why? This logs your visitors even if they don't have a toolbar. Essentially, this can make up for visitors not having toolbars of their own (though not entirely). I have heard reports of HUGE gains after installing an Alexa chart or widget. They offer them to you on the website for free, so you should be taking advantage of their offer.

Other than that, you need to have the traffic to push your ranking up, so keep writing interesting content that is dense with information so you get the search engine positioning and page views that you need. Your ranking is based on your last three months of traffic average traffic, so while my weekly average is currently under 100,000, I am registering a 273,000 Alexa ranking. This will take some time, so be patient and keep writing.

Alexa.com ranking is important, so you definitely shouldn't underestimate its influence on your earnings. Don't get freaked out if your rating isn't so hot, because there is more to life on the web than statistics alone. But if you simply don't care, you need to start caring because you are missing out on potential income by having a poor rank.

-The Net Fool

The author of this article is Jim "The Net Fool".

He is owner of theNetFool.com If you'd like to learn more about blogging, you can visit http://www.thenetfool.com You'll find all the information you need!

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Increase Google Page Rank And Alexa Page Rank

What is Google Page Rank?

Google Page Rank as Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, said it is an instrument designed to classify sites that are indexed by the Google search engine. Page rank can range from 0-10, 0 is the lowest score possible for a site, while 10 is the greatest. The bigger the page rank of a site with both receiving a greater number of visitors. A page rank grater then 2 is ok, page rank over 4 is excellent!

Ok, now you know what is Google Page Rank. But how exactly is it calculated?

Google uses a very complicated mathematical formula to determine the rank of a page.

When Google evaluates a site, taking into account several factors. The first is the general layout of the site and how is it complete. Google do not like sending the search engine to map incomplete websites, you should only send your site map when it is completely finished.

The second major factor is the use of keywords. Google favors sites with good use of keywords. They like a keyword density of 5-7%. Another important factor are the external links. Google loves when other sites send backlinks to your website. Another important factor is how often your site is updated. Google hates old sites, so be sure to update your site very often. All these factors are the basis of what is called Google Page Rank.

What is Alexa Rank?

Alexa rank ranges from 1 to 1 billion, or even more, depending on the number of existing sites. Each site found on the Internet is included in the Alexa network, so you're basically competing with everyone. The main goal is to have a rank as high (usually 1-700.000 is considered a good ranking). You can find your Alexa rank directly accessing Alexa.com and searching for your website.

How can I increase Google Page Rank?

The good thing about Google Page Rank is that it can be improved quite easily. Apply the following suggestions to improve your rank:

1. Create a site that is optimized for search engines. Your site should be full of quality content and your main keywords. Try to reach a keyword density of 3-5% and make sure that all keywords and content are in line with goal.

2. Use proper title and meta tags. One of the important factors in search engine optimization is the titles and meta tags. When you use them make sure the title is appropriate to your site and META tags are describing your site very well.

3. Submit your site map to Google. Do this only when the site is complete.

How can I increase Alexa rank?

To improve your Alexa rank you need to improve your traffic received by your site. There are many programs on the net who claim they can improve your Alexa rank, but generally they are not effective and may do more harm than good in terms of rank your site. Do not try to register your site to 300,000 search engines, it's the worst thing you can do!

There is a software called eMarketing Helper, with the help of this software you can increase your website rank on auto pilot, I suggest you should try it: http://www.emarketinghelper.com

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