Are you trying really hard to boost your Google rankings? Definitely yes! But, what about your Alexa Rank!
What, you haven’t done anything about it till yet! Now I know why you are still receiving partial results.
It’s true that Google ranking is highly important for the success of your business. But one ranking that holds equal significance as Google ranking is Alexa Rank.
Alexa Rank can bring immense gains to your business. This post will tell you everything about the Alexa ranking system and how you can use it for your online business success.
Read this post till the end, as this is the most comprehensive guide about Alexa Rank that you will ever read.
What is Alexa Rank?
Alexa is a worldwide network established in 1996, which is termed as Web Analytics’ Stone Age. The setup was established by Alexa.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.com. It delivers commercial web traffic data obtained through numerous web browser extensions and toolbars.
This analytics platform checks the frequency of visits on your site and makes the result visible to the public. For this, it uses a simple algorithm to track and record the volume of user traffic for users who have installed the Alexa toolbar. As per our research, Alexa presently houses online browsing behavior data for more than 300 million webpages.
How Alexa Rank Works?
This tool uses the information offered by its users for ranking their websites. You can start with it, by simply downloading and installing the Alexa toolbar. Once you will run the setup, the Alexa Rank of the visited site will be displayed. Additionally, the collected data will be sent to a central server via the toolbar. Your website’s URL, as well as its IP address, will be recorded.
The free of cost ranking system by Alexa is based on traffic offered by its worldwide data panel, which extracts data from multiple websites and browser extensions that have installed the script. Though the traffic ranks change on a daily basis, the ranking for an individual site is based on two aspects:
Average page views for a duration of 3 months
Unique daily visitors
Also, Alexa sources its data from third-party providers to offer a broader spectrum of online users. You can check Alexa rank for a website by visiting Alexa’s website without installing the widget or extension. Based on the factors, Alexa rank is offered for a specific country as well as on a worldwide basis.
Factors that Affect Alexa Rank:
In addition to the above mentioned two aspects, there are multiple other factors that play an important role in Alexa Rank.
- Total number of page views
- Traffic from individuals using Alexa toolbar
- CTR or Click through Rate
- Bounce Rate
- Time spent on the website by each visitor
- Diversity and Quality of the views
- Shares, comments, and likes on social media
- Number of backlinks or inbound links
- UI/UX of the website
- Website’s load speed
Does Alexa Rank Really Matter?
Well, Alexa Rank may not affect your website much, but the best thing is that it can help you know your site is performing online. This means that you can be assured that results you are putting in are bringing success to your site or simply turning out as a big waste.
In addition to this, Alexa Rank can help you analyze the performance of your competitors at a quick glance. You can have a rough idea of how famous your website is in relation to your competitor’s site. But if your competitor has a higher Alexa rank as compared to your website, then you cannot conclude that it must be receiving more traffic. It is because just like numerous pros, Alexa Rank does have some of its flaws.
To make it simpler for you, here we have listed some good and bad about Alexa Rank.
The Advantages or Pros of Alexa Rank:
- The best thing about Alexa Rank is that it allows you to easily compare your site with the website of your competitor without incurring any cost. You just have to check for the ‘compare sites’ section and measure the results of your marketing strategies with the result of your competitors.
- Even if you have a blog or a personal page, it would be treated the same and would be offered the same ranking as offered to a website.
- The results obtained are displayed publicly. Therefore advertisers, webmasters, and other potential experts will be able to see your site’s ranking. This can help them decide whether they would be willing to advertise their brand on your website. This is even an excellent solution for bloggers to make money through advertising.
- With a higher Alexa Rank, you can easily attract high-quality guest posts from reliable sources. Definitely, guest bloggers and writers would want to write for websites with a higher Alexa ranking.
- The information offered by Alexa, lets you get insights into the overall performance of your site. This makes it highly useful for supporting your online marketing and SEO efforts.
The Disadvantages or Cons of Alexa Rank:
- Undoubtedly, Alexa rank is relevant. But, you have to install Alexa toolbar in order to achieve this ranking.
- Since the service is available for free, so there are lots of websites that might be receiving a good volume of traffic but are still not able to receive the desired rank. Hence, the rank your website or blog might get may not be absolutely correct.
- They rely on a small size sample audience.
- There is no separate ranking given to the sub-domains. The overall traffic is counted for the domains at the topmost position only.
- It is easy to influence or game Alexa Ranking
Does Alexa Rank Affect Your Site’s Traffic and SEO?
Though there is no direct relation between SEO and Alexa Rank, a lower Alexa rank means that your website is receiving high amounts of traffic.
You see, a lower Alexa rank is better as it implies your website is enjoying a good chunk of visitors from the search engine pages.
This way, your website tends to receive more high authority links that will improve the domain authority of your website and help you rank much higher for the search terms. Eventually, your website will earn more traffic that will encourage your Alexa Rank.
How to Get better Alexa Rank?
Here, check some tips and ways to get better Alexa Rank for your website, blog or personal page.
1. Produce Engaging, Unique Content
First and most important, you must frequently update your site with original and engaging content that offers rich value to your audience. A content lacking such aspects fail to develop loyal audiences.
Readers are always looking for informative and valuable resources. They love to engage with such content and share it among their networks, which introduces new visitors that can turn into potential customers.
Also, quality content is greatly rewarded by Google search engines. This way, you can also earn great results for your website SEO.
2. Get Relevant Links to Your Site:
Also called inbound links, this strategy helps search engines to clearly know about your niche as well as it increases the quality and trust of your website. But make sure you get authoritative inbound links from websites, which are performing great online as only then you can gain credibility for your site.
You can further support this strategy by producing original and unique content so that users keep on visit your website and would love to stay there as well.
3. Practice Internal Links
Such links are one that leads from one post or page on your website to another. Internal links are highly beneficial as they guide visitors for your site. This means that they are great for website navigation, keeping customers engaged with related and relevant content.
In addition to this, internal links contribute greatly to site links that are sub-links appearing in search engines below the link on the main page. But again, you have to create top-notch content for your site so that you can make the most of your internal linking strategy. While generating the content, you must produce content, which is relevant and offers great value to the visitors.
4. Search Keywords that Can Drive Traffic to Your Site:
You have to search for keywords, which can get traffic to your website. Additionally, you can search for keywords, which drive traffic to your competitor’s site. Use these keywords and optimize your website for the same. Also, you can plan PPC campaigns for such keywords.
With a proper keyword research strategy, it is possible to know about your customer’s language as well as their desires and needs. You can even take help of inbound marketers in this context as they can guide you select the right keywords and areas of your website.
5. Gain Knowledge about Marketing Strategy of Your Competitors:
It is essential to analyze the marketing efforts of your competitors. It is because having a good idea about it can help you plan your website’s strategy accordingly. Hence, offering you a clear understanding of important metrics along with strategies that are working, and having clear identification and anticipation of industry trends can help you beat your competitors.
Having sound knowledge of all such angles can help you create a well-informed strategy and let you develop more knowledgeable business actions, which will positively affect your website’s position in the market.
6. Follow Appropriate SEO Best Practices on Your Site:
SEO is an extremely vital strategy, which needs a significant volume of your attention and time. Use it to make the overall experience of your website better so that it can offer a rich experience to the users.
7. Handle Well Your Alexa Account:
Make sure you include meta tags to your website on the Alexa tool. This way, it will be verified as a part of Alexa account. Furthermore, you need to add Alexa widget to your blog or website to earn more regular visitors as well as receive the most accurate results.
8. Focus on Dwell Time and Repeat Visitors:
It is not essential to regularly look for new traffic to gain the desired Alexa rank. You can also garner the intended results by getting repeat customers again and again. For this, test your social media engagement, email marketing, and other techniques that entice people to visit your website.
9. Ask Users to Install Alexa Toolbar:
This is a great technique for websites and brands that have a strong relationship with their users. If you have this, they ask your current followers to install the Alexa widget. It can offer you a noticeable and an instant boost by making your current traffic count more visible.
Optimize Your Site for Keywords Related to Alexa
Lastly, optimize your website for Alexa related content and keywords. This will drive in more links to your pages and eventually improve the site rankings.
Final Words:
Alexa Rank can influence various aspects of your website, but its core foundation is web traffic. Hence, if your site’s traffic increases in a period of 3 months, its Alexa Rank will decrease. Though the increase in traffic is always positive, it not the correct representation of the performance of your site. The overall success of your website would depend on specific goals for SEO as well.
However, it’s true that Alexa Rank can be used as an excellent tool for SEO audits, particularly to get a fair comparison to your competitors. So, even if your website is receiving good traffic and you are getting the desired results, still you can use Alexa Rank as a tool to keep an eye on your competitors. This way, you can always employ strategies and solutions that can bring you better results.