We’ve been talking about how to increase your Alexa Rank in the past two posts.  What I didn’t realize is that some people do not understand all the hullabaloo about Alexa.  My apologies to those who feel this way and thanks to Adam, one of our readers, who brought this to my attention.

So, indeed, why should we bother with Alexa Rank?  Is it really important?  More so, what is Alexa Rank?

Simply put, Alexa collects data regarding the traffic that goes through your site or your blog.  This was explained in the previous post where I quoted the text from Alexa itself.  So it is much like a system which measures your site’s popularity.

So how is this important?  Ask yourself, why are you maintaining your blog or your web site?  If it is fully for your own pleasure and no one else’s, then Alexa Rank may not be important to you at all.  However, if you want to let the rest of the world know about your site, then Alexa could work for you.

Another important thing is that Alexa is being used by a lot of advertisers and publishers.  If you are working on monetizing your blog, then you definitely need these people.  And how do you attract them?  By getting a high ranking in the eyes of the people at Alexa. Of course, there are other factors that could come into play, it is not always that simple.  However, this is the basic premise behind the importance of Alexa.

I hope that helps.

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In the last post, we talked about installing the Alexa Toolbar as the first step to increasing your Alexa Rank. Let us look at some more things that you can do to achieve this goal.

Alexa Rank Widget
This widget is something different from your Alexa Toolbar. It is supposed to add to your visitor count even if the visitor does not click on your toolbar. According to stats, the widget receives a fair amount of clicks from visitors in general.

Set your default homepage to your web site
This is particularly effective for those who are promoting a business or company web site or blog. What you can do is install the Alexa Toolbar and widget in all your computers in the office and then set the default homepage to your own web site or company blog. Of course, this can only be done for the official site – forget about doing this for your personal site or blog, you’ll only get in trouble!

Alexa redirects
Do you like leaving comments and posting in forums? Use this to your Alexa advantage by making use of Alexa redirects. It works this way – instead of using a direct link to your site or your blog, use a redirect: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.yourdomain.com. People who click on your link will then be counted – hopefully increasing your Alexa rank. This last one is not a surefire way of increasing Alexa rankings but it just might help.

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I am quite sure that if you place any value on the concept of Alexa rank, then you would answer a resounding yes to that question. For the benefit of those who are not very familiar with Alexa rank, here are some salient points from the Alexa web site:

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago.

Now that you have that basic info, what should you do to increase your Alexa rank? Here are a few things that would come in handy.

Alexa Toolbar
I talked about this sometime ago and the question was whether or not you really need the Alexa Toolbar. Well, if you are going to work on increasing your rank, then you might as well install the toolbar. It is going to make monitoring much easier for you.

(to be continued)

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I am sure that you have read and heard a lot of discussion regarding the Alexa Toolbar for blogs. This has been a hot topic for quite some time now and whether or not the Alexa Toolbar is actually helpful may not be clear to you. On the one hand, there are those bloggers who swear by it. On the other hand, there are bloggers who say that it is nothing but hype. So what is it really? Let’s take a look at both sides – the pros and the cons.

Down with Alexa!
-The toolbar is very much utilized by web developers. This is not inherently bad but it does affect the sample of the users. As such, the figures may not be as accurate as you would like it to be.

-Manipulation of Alexa figures can be easy. Though this may do wonders for your sense of achievement, it may not be reflective of true success.

-You can only use so many toolbars. If Alexa is not that accurate, you might be better off using other toolbars.

Go Alexa!
-Having good Alexa figures can help impress other users who trust in them. More so, this could also catch the attention of advertisers, making it work for you.

-Using the toolbar is convenient – you can see your figures without having to visit the Alexa site.

-An Alexa thumbnail of your site can be used by other sites. This will increase your popularity eventually.

So, what is the verdict? Try it out for yourself and see if it will work for you. If not, remove it and nothing is lost. If it works, then good for you!

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