3 questions anwered about Alexa rank.

The Alexa rank is second only to Google page rank when it comes to measuring a site. People seem to have a lot of questions about Alexa. I’ll try to answer the questions that I’ve seen asked the most. The answers may surprise you.

1. What is Alexa measuring anyway?

Alexa measures visits to your site. Sounds great so far, build traffic and get a better ranking right? No. It measures visits to your site, but only people with the Alexa toolbar installed count. If you don’t run a site about SEO or webmaster related topics, you won’t get very many readers with the toolbar installed.


2. Should I be worried about my Alexa ranking?

No, not really. Unless you offer paid posts on your site, it’s meaningless. A lot of the better paying advertisers that use sponsored posting programs want a high Google PR and a low Alexa rank. I’m sure that makes sense, at least to them, since there are so few verifiable ways to measure a site’s worth to the potential advertiser. Even if you do offer sponsored posts to support your site, like I do, it might not matter too much. Your site will do a lot better, and probably make more money, if you focus on more important things. Content, site design and promotion, are far more important to you than Alexa.

3. How can you get a better Alexa ranking?

Ask your readers to install the Alexa toolbar. This is your best option, and it’s even better now that Alexa supports Firefox. You can even get a custom toolbar for your readers. Alexa will let you offer your readers a toolbar with a custom graphic supplied by you. An added bonus for Amazon affiliates, if someone with your custom toolbar installed makes a purchase at Amazon you get a commission. That’s why I’m going to offer a custom toolbar in the near future.

There’s some speculation that posting an Alexa widget on your site will count the visitors without the toolbar. I have no idea if it works. I added one to this site’s footer to check it out.

Update:

• The Alexa widget does work. It counts everyone who visits your site, as long as the Alexa image loads. So your visitors don’t need to have the toolbar installed.

My thoughts.

If you write sponsored posts then improving your Alexa rank and your Google PR are probably in your best interest. Don’t start stressing out about it though. The best way to improve your rankings is to make your site or blog the best it can be. The only thing you really have control of is your site. Put good quality content on there and keep it updated. Make your site easy to use. Try to make it as appealing as possible to readers. If it’s something people want to read, the rankings will be good.

I’d also like to give a shout out to JohnCow.com who got me thinking about this. You might want to read his post titled ” Boost Your Alexa Rank Today “.

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