How to improve Alexa ranking of my blog or website? This is a common question asked on forums across the web. In my opinion, Alexa Ranking is not important at all. Why? The Alexa traffic rank is based on three months traffic data obtained from Alexa Toolbar users and other sources. Yes, a good Alexa ranking, which means a smaller number, may help in making money online. But in reality, the rank is not only inaccurate but also easy to manipulate. If you are too worried about your current Alexa rankings, you need to read this article. I am writing this from my own experience. And for your help I will try to explain with a few examples.
Examples of Irrelevant Alexa Traffic Rankings:
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Increasing traffic, decreasing Alexa ranking: As a full time blogger and affiliate marketer, I run a couple of sites and weblogs. One of my blog is in Technology niche. It has a few of authority articles, which brings in good amount of organic traffic daily and ranks in top 5 position of search result pages. They alone brings in more than 2000 unique visitors daily. And all other pages combined, I get 3000 plus unique visits daily. That blog also has good links from top sites including top software companies. What’s the Alexa ranking for that blog? It is in 421K range. The interesting point here is although my organic traffic is increasing, Alexa Traffic Rank is decreasing (number is getting bigger). Three months ago it was in 200K range and in January 2011, it was in 50K range.
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Same traffic, decreasing Alexa ranking: On the other hand, this blog (www.earnblogger.com) is getting around 2000 unique visitors daily. Due to my personal problems and lack of time, I had to neglect this blog for more than one year. So, the impact on traffic can be seen clearly. No improvement in organic traffic. It remained same all the year. On average, 60K unique search traffic every month. But what’s my Alexa Traffic Rank? It is 153,117 as of today. And Alexa is telling me that earnblogger traffic is decreasing. For your information, the rank was less than 70K a year ago.
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High traffic, low Alexa ranking: Another site of mine (static website, not blog) enjoys good traffic (compared to the above two examples). It is a resource site and covers a variety of topics. Daily traffic is more than 5000 uniques. Demographics tells that more than 45% visitors are from US. The site is more than 7 years old and has good backlinks including links from wikipedia and .edu sites. Now, what’s the Alexa Traffic Rank for this website? It fluctuates in the range of 750K and 850K.
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Low traffic, good Alexa ranking: Finally an example of good Alexa ranking. One friend of mine started blogging by creating a general blog. Just like most bloggers do in the beginning, he started posting all sort of articles, jokes, images and videos on his site. No, he didn’t used autoblogging method, as I had warned him not to use it as a beginner. Then he started to focus on getting a good Alexa ranking. Because, he wants to make money using get paid to blog sites such as sponsored blogging services. He followed a common technique by using Alexa toolbar with a few of his friends. And after 3 months, the Alexa Ranking of his blog went from 1000K to 100K. Now he has even a better ranking (around 60K) and is making money posting sponsored articles. But what’s his real organic traffic? His blog traffic never crossed 500 daily mark and organic search engine traffic is just 150-250 daily.
OK. Enough of examples. What I’m trying to tell with the four examples above is that Alexa Traffic Rank neither depends on traffic nor on site quality. It simply presents a number based on data coming from computers installed with Alexa toolbar. Now compare Alexa ranks of my sites with that of my friend’s new blog. With little manipulation, he got higher Alexa traffic rank (smaller number). And this is what most small sites are doing today. Right? Then why should I bother about that rank?  If Alexa rank really depends on website traffic, why my 7 year old site has such a low rank? In this case, even a toddler can tell that something is wrong.
Alexa Toolbar and Alexa Traffic Rank:
Yes, something is wrong. And I believe the whole idea of ranking sites based on Internet usage data coming from Alexa toolbar is wrong. How many people used Alexa toolbar? Definitely only a handful compared to world wide Internet users. Alexa ranking means nothing to ordinary surfers and the toolbar has nothing to improve their web experience. Then why should one install that additional tool on his/her computer? Then who will install Alexa toolbar? Definitely site owners, bloggers, webmasters and geeks. Most of those users has only one purpose – check/monitor ranking of their own site(s). All of them may not try to manipulate the ranking, but most of them will avoid visiting competitor sites with Alexa toolbar turned on. This is the truth. And this how the system works. Now ask yourself, can you rely on data provided by such a biased system?
Manipulating Alexa Traffic Rank:
Now, I don’t care about Alexa traffic rankings. Because, from my experience I learned that it is not a solid tool or scale for measuring website traffic or quality of a site. But it doesn’t mean that Alexa ranking is useless for all. If you are new to blogging and want to make money online, you may need to keep a good eye on your Alexa ranking. Why? Because most sites that pays for blogging or link placement requires a good Alexa traffic rank. Chances of getting good offers increases when you have a rank lower than 100K. That’s the truth. And many people are exploiting /manipulating the ranking system because of this simple reason.
There are many techniques to cheat Alexa. In my 4th example above, I already wrote how my friend manipulated Alexa ranking to make money writing sponsored posts. His technique was simple. Install Alexa toolbar on several computers and regularly use those to browse you own site. This is what most people are doing to cheat Alexa. There are other ways too. But I’m not going to discuss that top on this article.
Bottom line:
Alexa Traffic Rank has nothing to do with real site traffic. It is just an indicator providing estimated ranks based on a limited set of available data. Alexa clearly states that traffic rank data is based on set of toolbars that use Alexa data, which may not be a representative of global Internet users. Alexa also stated that their “traffic estimates may over- or under-estimate the actual traffic” of any particular website. So, Alexa ranking is not a trustworthy rank and is not to taken seriously.
Instead of scratching your head thinking how to improve your Alexa traffic rank, why not improve your site or create some fresh content? In the long run, it is your site which will make money for you, not Alexa traffic rank. Mind it!
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