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New web publishers often find themselves bogged down with all the lingo and jargon. Trying to figure out what numbers are important for gauging a site's success can be impossible. For many, it's hard enough keeping up with Google ranking. The truth is, however, there's more than just one ranking system a website publisher has to worry about. Alexa is one such ranking measurement that can play a role in how valuable or not any given site is for potential advertisers.
Alexa.com itself is an Amazon.com creation that offers a readout of traffic for some websites. The trick, however, is that it measures based on the amount of users who've paid sites a visit with an Alexa toolbar installed in their own browsers. Alexa ranking is important, but it does have a few flaws. Despite this, a high Alexa ranking can really pay off with advertiser interest.
Alexa rank is derived from the number of visits that come from those with the toolbar installed. The actual number is created using historical data that's accumulated over the course of several months. The rank is a measurement of visits and page views combined together. Daily computations of reach and visits are taken and averaged out to produce the rank.
Alexa ranking can be important financially. The rank is used by many advertisers to decide how much a blog or website might be worth in regard to links. If your site sells links or ad space, Alexa ranking can be a valuable tool in determining pricing. Organized sales programs like Sponsored Reviews and Text Link Ads both base ad selling strength on the kind of ranking a site has on Alexa.
Getting started with Alexa is fairly simple. To help others along, yourself included, just download the Alexa Toolbar. Firefox users can download the SearchStatus extension. This displays Google PageRank and Alexa Rank both.
There's no denying that Alexa rank is important, but the system has its problems. The first one is the fact ranking tends to be skewed toward those sites that have a technical audience. This is simply because these sites have visitors that are likely to have an Alexa toolbar installed on their computers. In essence, this makes Alexa ranks a bit unfair. Still, they are widely used by advertisers. With this in mind, it is a very good idea to understand methods that can be used to increase ranking.
Breaking into the top layer of Alexa's ranking system is very difficult. Gaining an impressive ranking, however, isn't necessarily very tough. Methods for increasing rank vary in difficulty, but they all can pay off. One of the most simplistic and effective ways to increase ranking is to simply build up relevant content on one's site. Another fairly good way to increase rank is to work to obtain incoming links to one's site. These two methods combined can increase traffic, Google rankings and Alexa rankings all at once.
Some of the more tried and true methods are fairly simple to get started. They include placing an Alexa rank widget on your website, encouraging others to download and use the Alexa toolbar, installing the toolbar and your homepage on computers at work and asking friends and family to review your Alexa profile. Other fairly easy concepts include promoting your own URL in webmaster forums, writing articles related to webmasters and employing Alexa redirects to your own website.
Other more time-intensive methods for boosting rankings are out there. They include setting up a webmaster tool section on your own site, having your site's articles Dugg or Stumbled on, buying ads and so on. Some webmasters create their own "Alexa" sections, too.
A few other ideas for boosting Alexa ranking exist, but they aren't considered to be the best or even the most legitimate. They include buying the "homepage" settings at Cybercafes, using Alexa redirects on MySpace pages and even using Alexa auto-surf programs.
Alexa is not necessarily the most accurate ranking system going, but it's an important one. Maximizing ranking can improve ad rate potential and increase overall traffic to your site, however. It's not a bad idea to include this ranking number as a consideration in an overall marketing strategy.
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