Giving Alexa A Good Beat-Down
July 18th, 2007 by CourtImproving your site’s Alexa ranking can drastically increase the amount of advertising dollars you can make. ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews for example, allow you to write paid reviews of other sites and products. Premium bloggers command a fee of over $500 to write one, 300+ word review. Text-Link-Ads sold on your site will become worth more as you better your Alexa ranking, and you will be available for higher paying opportunities at PayPerPost.
Alexa ranking is about one thing: website monetization. The better you can make your Alexa ranking, the more money you’re going to make.
How Does Alexa Calculate Their Rankings?
Alexa calculates the traffic for all the websites they know about daily. They do this primarily by gathering data with the Alexa toolbar, which many internet users have attached to their browsers. If you use the toolbar, Alexa can see which sites you are visiting and will log each visit.
Yahoo! happens to be the site ranked #1 on Alexa. This means that Yahoo! has the most traffic out of all of the sites in the world. My site is ranked 47,869, which means that there are 47,868 sites out there that get more traffic than I do.
One concept that is extremely important to understand is that Alexa’s rankings are calculated using a three month moving average. This means that Alexa is going to calculate an average ranking over the previous three months. This is somewhat of a disadvantage to newer sites. My site, for example was the 36,959th ranked site last week but is ranked 47,869 over the last three months.
Since most of Alexa’s traffic calculations are based on stats gathered by their toolbar, the actual rankings are wildly inaccurate. Many bloggers and webmasters get frustrated with this fact and decide that there isn’t anything they can do about their bad rankings. I’ve always seen the inaccuracy as an opportunity.
The Two Factors Of A Good Alexa Rank
- Website Traffic
- Alexa’s Knowledge Of The Website’s Traffic
Website Traffic
Increasing website traffic is a very thorough topic on its own. Since I’ve already written extensively about increasing traffic, let me direct you to some sections you should have a close look at:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Link Building
- My 8 Hours As A Blogging Socialite - This one is a guest post that I did for eMom. I think you’ll be surprised at the results I was able to get.
- 75 Ways To Increase Your Site’s Traffic - This is a great list by Tay at SuperBloggingTips.com. She had great timing with this list because it fits perfect with this post. I never would have found the list if she hadn’t linked to me with it.
Alexa’s Knowledge Of The Website’s Traffic
This is where you can really help yourself out big time. If you’re a newer site or a site that doesn’t get a lot of traffic, Alexa might not even know about you. Since the amount of people that use the Alexa toolbar is very small, your traffic numbers will be more inaccurate than most other sites.
I’ve read list posts that give you like a million ways to increase your Alexa ranking. They say to link to Alexa redirect links instead of to your site and about a million other methods. All of those methods sound super sexy, but the truth is that they can hurt you in the long run. If you’re linking to your site with an Alexa redirected link, you are giving your ‘link juice’ to Alexa rather than to yourself. This will hurt your search engine traffic, which will hurt your Alexa ranking.
One method you can use to get a slightly better ranking is installing an Alexa widget. These little buttons can be placed in your sidebar, or anywhere else. The widget shows off your ranking and is also adds to your Alexa stats when people click on it.
Implementation of the Alexa widget here is one of the factors that made my Alexa ranking start to improve back in May. When people click on the widget, Alexa knows that they were on your site, even if they aren’t using the tool bar.
Installing the widget is pretty easy. All you have to do is go to the Alexa widget page, type in your URL and click ‘build widget’. Alexa will then give you the code that you can paste into your site. If you have a WordPress site you can login to your WordPress admin, go to ‘Presentation’, ‘Theme Editor’, and then ‘Sidebar’. Pasting it at the bottom, right before the last </div> tag will add it to the bottom of your sidebar. Make sure to click ‘update file’.
There isn’t any reason at all to do all kinds of fancy redirecting mumbo jumbo here. Install the widget and work on your traffic. 
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July 18th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I noticed drastic changes to the alexa ranking on my website after installing the widget. I’m sure a lot of people are not aware of this factor.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:48 am
As much as I like reading your articles Court, I do believe that you have accidentally mislead your readers about the Alexa Widget.
If you refer to a post made on 45n5 about how the alexa widget does not help your ranking. An email from Alexa addressing the very thing your article is about.
http://www.45n5.com/permalink/alexa-buttons-do-not-help-alexa-rankings.html
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Not this time Bucky. Did you read in that article where the person said, “I have a couple websites that have “No Data” for an Alexa rank when both average over 50 visitors a day.”
Are you aware that 50 visitors a day isn’t enough to show data? You have to be in the top 100,000 sites in the world to have data on their traffic graphs.
I hate to say it, but a person that gets 50 hits a day isn’t who you should be getting your advice from!
Additionally, if you look at the overall negative tone of that site you should see pretty easily that said blogger likes to be critical of those who are doing better and getting more traffic.
An email sent by a customer service rep making $7 an hour somewhere isn’t really evidence of anything.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Ok, I just spent 15 minutes replying to this and forgot to enter the anti spam word.
Tried to go back, but lost my entire response. I am not retyping it all.
To sum up my previous response, read these.
http://www.alexa.com/site/help/?index=12
http://www.alexa.com/site/help/traffic_learn_more
Take note that nowhere in those pages does it say that the widget will count page views. It explicitly says “Toolbar Users” multiple times.
That sucks that I lost my entire response…
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Hi Bucky, sorry you lost your response!
I have already read all of that documentation Bucky. I’m not going to try to change what you believe because there are always going to be differing opinions on almost everything.
If you really want to prove it, you should try it (as I have) and then publish the results (as I did).
Right now you’re sitting at 261,589. If you really, really want to prove it, install the widget for the next 30-60 days and see what happens!
July 18th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
[…] Link to Article yahoo Giving Alexa A Good Beat-Down » Posted at Make Money Online Free | […]
July 18th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Wow, thanks for the info, Court! I knew of the Alexa widget, but I didn’t know it tracked visitors like their toolbar does. I’m sure this will give my rank a sweet boost!
July 18th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
I did a few posts about that subject. The widget will help very much. It’s one of the first thing I do on my sites.
Also, I installed the toolbar for Firefox(not from Alexa but recommended by them). I did not do the redirect.
Improving your site ranking on Alexa
July 18th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
I put the link for you and you will see how a few weeks can make a difference.
Court, you got a good raised with PPP
Too bad they don’t update the stats often with the Alexa change.
July 18th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Thanks for the link, Court!
Wow I didn’t know how the Alexa widget actually worked. Thanks for the info, I think I’m going to go install it now.
July 18th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Alright, so that’s why you had a sudden increase with your ranking in May! Thanks for the help, oh and I just got under the 200,000 mark with my blog! Go me.
July 18th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
[…] Thanks to Court, I’ve just learned that by installing an Alexa widget on my blog, it can help give the site a […]
July 18th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Hi Court
I see your premium charge for PPP Direct.
My Alexa rank lags far far behind my Technorati rank, so I’m off to installing that alexa widget!
July 19th, 2007 at 4:23 am
Traffic calculator by alexa actually do not really represent the whole internet user. Alexa use it’s toolbar user. Therefor alexa do not really accurate for ranking 100k +
July 19th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Here is my big beef with Alexa, as evidenced by something you say in your own article:
“Since the amount of people that use the Alexa toolbar is very small,…”
That Alexa carries so much weight at sites like PPP and Review Me is asinine. The numbers are based only on the traffic of those who choose to download an additional toolbar and we all know most people like to surf without a lot of extra tracking software bogging down their system. I sure do.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Hey Court! I found your site through a link over at newsnotion.com. Looks like you have a good thing going, and I look fwd to more great posts!
July 20th, 2007 at 3:21 am
[…] Tuttle explains how to improve your Alexa traffic rank with the use of a simple […]
July 20th, 2007 at 7:39 am
[…] Giving Alexa a Good Beat Down by Courtney Tuttle - Court’s blog has just taken off and I believe it’s because he provides extrememly useful information and he is willing to help a fellow blogger out. This is a great article on increasing those Alexa numbers, which by the way, I could use some help on. […]
July 20th, 2007 at 8:12 am
I had never heard of the Alexa widget! Thanks a million for these tips. It has been a source of frustration for me because my traffic is much higher than my Alexa score indicates. I was assuming it was because my audience isn’t composed of “web” people who would probably have the Alexa toolbar installed.
Off to get that widget.
Thanks!
July 20th, 2007 at 9:05 am
I can’t stand Alexa. It is inaccurate and people rely on its ‘rankings’ far too much.
Perhaps this is a good way of making your ranking a little more realistic, although I detest Alexa so much the last thing I want is their badge on my website!
- Martin Reed
July 20th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
[…] Giving Alexa A Good Beat-Down (7-18) […]
July 20th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
thanks for this post … never knew installing the widget in your site could help!
will do it right now.
July 24th, 2007 at 1:27 am
[…] Enter the Alexa Widget. I first discovered the widget in Courtney Tuttle’s excellent post called Giving Alexa a Good Beat-Down. In the article he provides good background on Alexa and how installing the widget can help you to […]
July 25th, 2007 at 10:29 am
I only really have google adverts on my website, so I’m not too bothered about my Alexa ranking…yet anyway.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
[…] Original post by Court […]
August 4th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Hi,
Following your wise advice, I just installed the Alexa widget.
I can’t wait to see if the change is drastic.
Thanks for all the useful info that you so freely give.
Marie
August 8th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Hi Court.
When I first started out playing with my Alexa rank, the widget did help halved it from something like 500k to 250k in less than a month.
I’ve since built it up to its current rank of around 122k but I was around 100k in July.
Here’s the story: I was away on vacation for a week in July and so didn’t visit my own site with the Alexa toolbar then. However my traffic stayed constant so I’d assume that my Alexa rank would not be affected much.
I was wrong - my weekly rank dropped by around 40k which dragged my average rank down quite badly. Was around 100k vs. 120k currently.
So in conclusion, I think the widget would help when you are starting out to a certain point but after that - Alexa seems to trust the toolbar more.
August 13th, 2007 at 8:18 am
[…] Reading Court’s blog recently, I found a post about the Alexa Widget. […]
August 23rd, 2007 at 7:00 am
[…] I guess Court was right. […]
August 29th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Court,
I have another blog that has an Alexa rank of 14. But it is not in the top 100,000. This blog is not high in traffic, just a personal family blog.
I don’t understand why this one has a 14 but mine at LAMyHome has like almost 6 million when more readers are reaing my LAMyHome.
Family blog: http://brandon-ethan.blogspot.com/
August 30th, 2007 at 4:34 am
Easy,
Because Alexa take the whole domain(blogspot) and not just the subdomain.
Google PR is by page. So, your family blog won’t have the PR of blogger in this case.
December 9th, 2007 at 5:20 am
if anything, the alexa is something new for people to click (at least the first time). i’ll probably add one just to see how the numbers change.
January 24th, 2008 at 7:10 am
I have been trying to figure why it fluctuates fro a while even when you are getting more traffic…I agree with you though a low alexa ranking is good..Thanks for all the info…
May 14th, 2008 at 5:56 am
I heared the announcement that alexa has changed its ranking algorithm. I am little happy with this change because my website got little improvment. see new alexa ranking for http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.fortunehotels.in Fortune Park Hotels Ltd.