Increasing Alexa Rank - A Joint Experiment
I have 2 sites now so I can see first-hand how inaccurate Alexa Ranks can be, which are supposed to measure the level of traffic a site gets. The inaccuracies are created because Alexa relies on measuring how many users who have installed the Alexa IE toolbar.
For many sites these inaccuracies aren’t an issue, but many advertising services like Text-Link Ads and ReviewMe, as well as potential advertisers use these stats to gauge the value of advertising on a site, so monitoring your Alexa Rank can be important.I’ve become a bit frustrated with the fact that my Alexa Rank (currently 26,070) is lower than some sites where based on Google Analytics data I have more traffic. So, I’ve decided to try a few of the methods that DoshDosh have suggested to improve Alexa Rank, and it’d be good if as many of my readers as possible took part to see it works for their sites as well.
Maki listed 20 steps to Increase Alexa Rank, but to take part in the experiment you only need to try 1 or more of the steps below (remember to record your Alexa Rank before you start):
- Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step
- Add an Alexa rank widget on your website
- Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers
- Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Try this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.connectedinternet.co.uk. Replace connectedinternet.co.uk with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will count a unique IP address once a day so clicking it multiple times won’t help
If sufficient numbers of your readers join the experiment and follow steps 1&3 then your Alexa Rank should definitely increase. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone sees any improvement from adding the Alexa rank widget.
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Comment by Nicole Price on 3 May 2008:
Really useful post, this help me in all my seo projects. Thanks.
Comment by Fortunehotels ranking in Alexa on 1 April 2008:
While hi5 maintains its strong hold in Central America, it faces tough competition in Asia from many social networking sites. Hi5.com comes in first ten ranking in http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.fortunehotels.in Alexa.com.
Comment by mathaba on 5 February 2008:
Yes, there is http://www.quantcast.com it appears more accurate for English Speaking / USA sites though not for foreign sites, at least it is worth comparing.
Comment by D Web Design on 5 February 2008:
I was wondering if there was another website like Alexa but with some more real values?
Comment by Niro on 2 February 2008:
Hmm let me tell you my experince… I launched slBlogs.org 1st of january 2008. I tried the alexa tool bar and made my blog home paged. Then ofcause I made this discovery. Its very easy to get in to 1 million margin by it self. But there after bit tough. You need readers. With about 100 readers per day you can easily sneak in to 300000 margin where I am… Awesome right.. Hmm but i haven’t used that redirect issue. Will work on that as well and see… Hope my experience is useful.
Comment by techweb on 18 January 2008:
we were able to increase alexa ranking further
by placing the alexa statistics display on the homepage.
check this: http://www.ourwedding.in
the code we placed at the end of the page:
Comment by Bored No More on 15 January 2008:
I used to have the alexa redirect on all my pages .. but now. damn! it’s been disabled by alexa :((
Comment by Psychic Ability | TerryG on 14 January 2008:
Hello Mark, I would like to give you the example of my splash page. It is for a product that I use and find is nothing short of brilliant for the work I do.
The splash page is http://www.psychic-aus.com/map
What I did was put the widget on the splash page and if a visitor is interested they click for more info (another widget on that page) even the order form.
I have seen my page views increase since I did this in recent times. I am of course targeting the main url for my experiment following along your lines.
I know the traffic exchange traffic will only be the one IP address A will record but if a user is interested and clicks my further info page then I must be getting a whole new ip address. The beauty about te’s is that users are from all over the world and I will be getting a variety of C class recordings (different servers).
Comment by Mark from Bloglyne on 14 January 2008:
@E - put up a quick update on the blog about my recent rank increases.
@Terry - would like to hear more about your splash pages.
@Michael - Started putting up articles about two weeks ago, and visiting my own blog from the office and home and clicking once from each location per day on the rank widget.
I have also started to gain a few more visiters, and my rank is up about 210,000 this week.
Comment by Michael on 12 January 2008:
the alexa redirect no longer works so do you have any other suggestions?