Have Alexa On Your Mind?
Posted on July 31, 2007 | By Enkay | Leave a Comment | 922 Views
Are you suffering from having Alexa on your mind a lot? Well its time to find out a cure! After my post talking about my record breaking day resulting from my Jump Start Your Page Rank post, I received some feedback and emails asking me how I was able to drop my Alexa by 10,000 in a matter of one day. A day after I made that post, my Alexa rank dropped by another 30,000 and is now in the 250k range. I still suffer from having Alexa on my mind too much even though there isn’t much you can do about it.
How is Alexa Calculated?
Alexa is different from Technorati mainly because unlike Technorati, Alexa doesn’t see how many link backs you are getting or anything of that sort. Alexa has a toolbar for IE users, and now one for Firefox users that once installed tracks the websites you visits and then reports that back to Alexa. The data that is reported back is used in calculating your Alexa rank. Now you must be thinking, okay, so Alexa is based on how much traffic I get? The answer is yes and no, only because Alexa doesn’t check how many people visit your website daily, but how many people with the Alexa toolbar installed visit your website. This can cause results to be a bit skewed but all that means is that the more people that have the toolbar installed, the better your rank gets.
Alexa for Firefox
Alexa finally realized that 60% of Internet users use Firefox and a few weeks ago they released the Firefox version of their toolbar. What does this mean for you? Well ofcourse it means better ranking, considering that almost 60% of your reading audience was not being accounted for in the earlier rankings. This also means that now the rankings will be a little more accurate. I’m not saying completely accurate mainly because some discrepancies may still exist, but now IE and Firefox users will be accounted for.
You have to remember that only users with the toolbar are accounted for, so if you get a 1,000 visitors with only 100 of them using the toolbar, you still get the same result as having 10,000 visitors out of which only a 100 have the toolbar. Sound unfair? Well, it may not be accurate but it isn’t unfair and the main reason for that is because all websites are graded the same way by Alexa, so in the end, those with the higher traffic are the ones that get the better rank. The higher your rank gets, the more accurate and credible it is.
Raising Your Rank
Earlier in this post I said that there isn’t much you can do to raise your Alexa rank other than provide fantastic content that draws a high number of readers. There are a few other ways that you can help your Alexa rank grow. They are listed below:
1. Encourage readers to install the Alexa toolbar - If you are a blogger, then you probably have the toolbar installed and having a post talking about the Alexa toolbar is a great way to encourage other readers or fellow bloggers to jump on the bandwagon.
2. Install the Alexa Widget - You may have read this elsewhere too, but one of the best ways to get people to notice Alexa is if you have the widget. Chances are that they will click on it out of curiosity and send data to Alexa in doing so, and they may even end up installing the toolbar.
3. Using Alexa Redirect - If you add “http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?” before your URL on places like MyBlogLog and on your own blog, you will notice that it will help your rank. The reason it will help is because every time someone clicks on that link, it sends data to Alexa thereby improving your rank.
Improving Your Rank & Your Feedback
You may have seen other blogs mention a few more ways to kick up your Alexa rank but I am highlighting only the top 3 mainly because you will see a better result by incorporating them into your blog. The widget helped me cut my Alexa rank into half so if you don’t have it on your blog, then go ahead and get it because I have seen many blogs that have seen at least a 25% drop in their Alexa rank. Oh, and a 25% drop is a good thing in case you are wondering because the lower your Alexa rank is, the better it is for you! So, I hope you are able to take something from this post and help your Alexa rank improve. Do any of you have any more tips? and if you have already used some of these tips before, what result did you get? Thanks for reading!
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its like you post, what i want to hear about, honestly! great post!
Thanks Mahdi! I try to write the best posts and sometimes it takes me a little while to come up with them but I’m glad you like it!
Nice X-ray image of Homer Simpson! How much did you give the radiologist to get the x-ray? LOL!!
LOL.. Actually the radiologist did it for free pretty much considering there wasn’t much to look for! Im glad you like the header image, it takes time to make them!
Great post. I did a part on improving Alexa raning yesterday in my Increase Text Link Ads income post yesterday. Alexa is used so much for figuring out how we bloggers get paid.
BeachBum
Yeah. The main reason to bump up Alexa is for ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews along with TLA. As you said, its a major player in how much we make!
I am working on getting my Alexa ranking up so that I can make more money with paid to blog sites. I never thought much about Alexa until I became a member of sites like these. Thanks for the great tips.
Hey not a problem! Nice to see you on the site. I just installed the “Top Commentators” plugin and starting next month, the top 10 get free link backs!
thanks for that discription. i only cared about my pagerank up to now. i´ve heard of alexa and technorati before but i only knew that technorati had something to do with backlinks and i knew nothing about alexa. i guess with this post you encouraged another reader to install the toolbar
i hope it´ll drop quite soon since i want to make even more money with payperpost. thanks again
matthias
Hey Matthias! Thanks for stopping by and I am glad that the post helped you! Let me know if you have any questions, dont be afraid to email me! Thanks again!
never thought about using the alexa redirect on my Mybloglog… but is it good to use for main website as people may question when they see it?
Yes, people do see it but if they want to go to your blog they will click it, thats for sure!
i don’t like idea of using the redirect button, feel its a little cheating….