Alexa: What it is and How it Can Help Your Website

Alexa is a web-ranking service that measures the traffic a website generates by looking at both the number of times a website is viewed per day, as well as the overall “reach.” Alexa rating is important because many advertisers and webmasters look at it as a way to determine the value of a link on the website. As a result, managing your Alexa rank is important if you are looking to use link advertisements as a way to generate money. With this in mind, the following are a few strategies for increasing a website’s Alexa rank.

Increase the Proportion of Your Visitors that Use Alexa

Alexa determines its rankings based on the number of users and site views from those who transmit data via the Alexa toolbar, also known as Sparky. The Alexa toolbar is commonly installed on a browser, such as Firefox or Internet Explorer. As a result, visitors only count towards your Alexa ranking if they have the toolbar downloaded and installed. Increasing your appeal to these users will rapidly result in your website moving up the rankings.

One group that often uses the Alexa toolbar is webmasters and other people interested in web design. Developing content of interest to webmasters and encouraging webmaster visits will greatly aid in increasing a site’s Alexa ranking. Another group that appears to have a great number of Alexa users is users in East Asia, based on the presence of several Asian websites in the Alexa top 500. Advertising on Asian social networking sites may help increase the number of visitors with the Alexa toolbar enabled.

Increase traffic

The best way to increase traffic, long-term, is to develop quality content that leads to a strong base of users who visit frequently. Aside from this, a few inexpensive Payperclick advertisements, such as those offered by Google, Yahoo or Exactseek, will increase traffic, and thus, your Alexa ranking. You may target keywords to audiences who may have a higher likelihood of possessing the Alexa toolbar, such as webmasters and other Alexa-heavy groups. An alternative suggestion to this is buying banners or links from webmaster forums and websites.


It’s also possible to hire forum posters to mention your site or include it in their signature. Posters for hire (as they are called) can be found at forums such as Digital Point and other webmaster forums. Adding an Alexa page in which you can link to and post new content on Alexa will also help generate hits on Alexa.

Optimize your hits to score on Alexa

The easiest and most obvious method of doing this is to install the Alexa toolbar on your own computer and make your website the homepage. Other methods of doing this is to change all links to your website to the following format: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect? which may help increase your Alexa ranking.

For particularly popular portions of your website, add an Alexa widget or Widget graph at the bottom, and uses the Alexa redirect for internal URL links. In addition, it is sometimes possible to get a nearby cybercafe or other major business to install the Alexa toolbar on their computers and to make your website their homepage.

Alexa is not a perfect tool for measuring your website’s traffic, but it is one used by many advertisers. As a result, it is critical for any site’s monetization strategies. While there is only so much that you can do to manipulate your rankings, a few simple techniques can help boost the way your website is ranked.