What is Alexa rank and why do you need it?
What is Alexa and Alexa rank? Per Wikipedia:
In other words, Alexa ranks your website against others. A lower Alexa rank indicates the popularity of your website.
Lower? Yes. Because of the ever-changing number of websites on the internet and on Alexa, the lowest score wins. For quite some time, Google’s Alexa rank has been #1.
Alexa is owned by Amazon
Amazon acquired Alexa in 1999.
Get the Alexa Browser Extension Tool
Alexa ranks your website based on the amount of traffic it records from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed. If I don’t have the toolbar installed on my computer, smartphone, or tablet and I visit your website, Alexa will not count my visit. The good news is, millions of users have installed the toolbar. (6.5M monthly visitors per 2015 stats).
Get the toolbar here. (Scroll to the bottom of the main page to access).
Alexa ranks your website based on the amount of traffic it records from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed.Click To TweetAdvantages of Alexa
- You can check your website against your competitor’s.
- If you’re considering advertising on your site, you can use your ranking as leverage. The better (lower) your rank, the higher advertisers will bid for advertising space.
- Personal pages and blogs are ranked the same as commercial sites.
- You can check traffic information coming to your website.
Traffic information
By typing your website URL into Alexa’s site information page, you can view the following information about your website’s traffic:
- You can check on your global and country rankings (Fun! See my stats below)
- Alexa breaks down your visitor demographics
- Your page views are displayed (how many pages does your average visitor read)
- Daily time spent on your site is displayed
- Where your visitors come from
- Which sites sent visitors to you
- Related sites
Disadvantages of Alexa
- Not every visitor has the Alexa toolbar installed, so the data collected is subjective.
- Does not report the true power of your website.
- It is but one tool in analyzing your SEO
How to improve (lower) your Alexa rank
- Install the toolbar and visit your own site
- Encourage others to do the same (bring this up at your next Blog Hop)
- Write blog posts about Alexa
- Write quality content that attracts more visitors
- Share your content through social media with links to your website
- Get quality inbound links to your site from popular, well-performing sites. Guest blogs, Twitter retweets that result in visitors, bloghops, etc.
- Use competitor’s keywords. Research your competitors and use the same or variations of their keywords.
- Practice great SEO. I use the Yoast WordPress plugin to prompt me with what I need before I hit “publish”.
My Alexa Stats
I first became aware of Alexa during a blog hop hosted by BlogChatter. They promoted a September long blog hop. The following are my stats. Note: BlogChatter is based in India, so my Indian rank is included. My U.S. rank did not appear on Alexa’s rankings until the end of the month. I’ve also included today’s ranking.
September 1 Alexa rank:
Global: 8,827,471
India: 810,543
USA: N/A
September 30 Alexa rank:
Global: 1,142,807
India: 68,408
USA: 175, 736
October 17 Alexa rank:
Global: 966,009
India: 137,083
USA: 175,839
As you can see, my global rank has dropped dramatically by over 7M points. If I can squeeze it down to <100K, I’ll be golden.
Help me lower my Alexa ranking! Install the Alexa toolbar extension and revisit my site!Click To TweetI’ll be keeping an eye on these figures. Quality content is my goal, and I’m determined to post twice a week if not more.
Blessings to you,
Cheryl
This blog is part of October’s AuthorToolboxBlogHop.
The #AuthorToolboxBlogHop is a monthly event on the topic of resources and learning for authors. To learn more and/or sign up, visit here.
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This is so interesting. I love seeing stats, so thanks for sharing. According to the site information page, my rank is 16,598,492. Looks like I have a lot of work to do 🙂
This is quite interesting. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thanks for posting about this! I haven’t taken advantage of working my Alexa rank. Great resource here!
I got no enough data. I think the website is still too new. (only a week old) I’ll be trying this again soon. Thanks for sharing
Great post! I used to follow Alexa for an online client of mine back in my PR agency days. Didn’t think of checking out my own site for this. Thanks for the reminder 🙂
I stopped worrying about my blog. I don’t check how many have visited or my standing. No doubt it is low to non-existent. I do it to network with other writers and to have fun.
That said–I’m sure knowing how to do this is all good. Thanks. 🙂
Anna from elements of emaginette
I installed it, and I’m not happy with the number haha. 🙂 Thanks for this insight. I had no idea.
So interesting. I’ve only ever heard of Alexa, the voice-operated virtual assistant. Thanks so much for the info!
I need to up my technology. I do not currently have an Alexa but that is something I know I need to get and would have a lot of fun with. Thank you so much for this interesting post 🙂
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