I know there has been a lot of debate on the importance of the Alexa ranking system but I'd like you to know that what matters most isn't what you think of your business but what other people think of it. It doesn't matter how great an expert you think you are or how knowledgeable you think you are about a subject; if people think otherwise then there's little you can do.
When I was new to blogging I also discovered that the alexa ranking system isn't that perfect, but it is one of the best ranking systems in the world; an added advantage is that it keeps on updating so you will not only know the status of a website 6 months ago but you will also have an idea of the status of the website being ranked at the moment. I have been taking a close look at the alexa ranking system since I started blogging and I have noticed some of the most important factors it uses to rank. This article will give you some tips on how to significantly improve your blog's alexa rank.
Get Quality Traffic
As with every other ranking system in the world it is very important to understand that traffic plays a huge role in how websites are ranked by alexa.
While it is "almost impossible" for alexa to know the exact amount of visitors to your blog, the traffic you get to your blog plays a huge role in your ranking. For example, the alexa system works through toolbars and the system strongly relies on users who have the alexa toolbar installed visiting your blog, the alexa belief is that the more visitors you get the more people will visit your blog with the toolbar.
Another reason it is very important to get quality traffic to your blog is that Alexa doesn't just count visits to your blog but also page views and how much time each visitor spends on your site; and the only way to make sure your visitors stay to spend more time is by providing quality content and getting quality traffic. That is why you will see a lot of people saying they get a lot of traffic but a low alexa rank; if you're experiencing this try to observe where most of your visitors come from and how much time they spend on your blog, you will notice this also has a huge impact.
In a nutshell, alexa doesn't rank websites based on the number of visitors but on the quality of visitors. This means if you get 1 million visitors from Stumbleupon in 1 month I can still outrank you if get 6000 visitors from quality guest posts in one month.
A great traffic generation method that I noticed works well is the guest blogging/blog commenting traffic.
Focus on Getting Links
This is one method many people ignore or are even unaware of. I have noticed that the types of links you get, the quality of links you get and how often you get them has a great impact on how your website will be ranked by the alexa system. If you take a look at my blog you will notice that a lot of people have more traffic than I have but I have a better alexa rank than most of them This is because I write a lot of guest posts for quality blogs and I keep getting links to my blog.
In order to see this in action you might want to take a took at some of the top blogs ranked by alexa. You will notice a lot of them have a lot of links and even high Pageranks...this is because the alexa ranking system greatly depends on links.
You should also know that when it comes to links I'm not talking about the types of links from link farms or link exchanges but I'm talking about links from quality sites properly ranked by alexa. Alexa also works like a search engine and it crawls and ranks websites on a daily basis, the more links to you it sees from websites it favors, the better ranking you will be awarded.
Update Your Blog More Often
If you take a look at the Google search engine you will notice it gives websites that are always updated more priority compared to websites that are not, the same thing applies to alexa. Alexa gives more importance to websites that are regularly updated and the more you can update your blog, the better.
This doesn't mean you should start writing rubbish on your blog because if you note the first point you will see that I stressed the importance of writing great content; people don't just have to visit your blog but they also have to spend more time on it and only great content can make them do that.
Why You Should Focus on Improving Your Alexa Rank?
In case you don't know I'd like you to know that I have turned down around 6 offers to advertise on my blog this month (yes - this month alone), I have rejected over 10 guest posts this month, I have published over 6 guest posts and I still have over 8 guest posts pending review (that is 24 guest posts in only one month). This is only a fraction of what I get and I have noticed that the high alexa rank of my blog had a huge impact in achieving this.
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