5 Minute How To: Improve Your Alexa Rank
54 Comments Published December 16th, 2006 in 5 Minute How Tos, SEO/Traffic/LinksLots of advertisers like Text Link Ads use Alexa Rank as a measure of how valuable ad space is on your blog. In fact, I’m pretty sure it can be a large factor as to whether they’ll even accept your blog into their publisher program. Alexa Rank is based on how much traffic your blog or web site gets, but the problem with this is that it only counts visits from those who have the Alexa Toolbar installed in their browser. Now there may be another way.
Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey has posted How To Boost Your Alexa Ranking In One Easy Step. All you have to do is copy the javascript code for the Alexa Widget and paste it somewhere in the code for your site. The idea is that Alexa will then know about your traffic by the number of times this widget is loaded.
Yaro reports that this very quickly brought up his Alexa Ranking by 25%. I just installed the widget code today so I haven’t noticed any improvement yet. As I write this my rank is showing as 739,195. I’ll be watching it and reporting back the results in a few days or so.
54 Responses to “5 Minute How To: Improve Your Alexa Rank”
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Hi Cesar. Yeah, we’ll have to compare notes on whether it has much effect. Good luck!
I’ll definitely give this a try. You have published this post on 16th Dec and today is 18th Dec. However, you rank is same.
I just checked in and it’s showing up as 669,654 right now (Monday, 2:31pm EST). They must have updated it since this morning when I last looked at the number. That’s actually an impressive jump of almost 9.5% since I put the widget on my page. We’ll have to watch and see what happens with it over the next couple of weeks. Thanks for your comment.
9.5% boost to 669,554 is NOT impressive. I guess your ranking increased because we (alexa toolbar users who are interested in ways to increase our ranking) have visited your site to check if it’s ranking is improving. My ranking is currently 18,000 and I installed the widget yesterday on over 7,000 pages of my site to see if this is true. Please do not visit my site until maybe december 29th so we can have real data about this trick (otherwise the ranking improvement will be due to you visiting instead of the widget doing what we hope it will do!). BTW my site is http://www.deguate.com
Thanks.
Hi Samsonite. I think you’re comparing apples to oranges here. I checked out your site (Don’t worry; I don’t use Alexa toolbar) and yours is a portal pointing to lots of content aggregated from other sites. Mine is a personal blog with around 200 pages of content that I’ve written myself over the past year.
At this point, my traffic ranking on Alexa is 616,241 according to the Alexa Widget and that’s clearly a great improvement over where it was when I first installed it. Any time a statistic like this moves a double digit percentage in a positive direction for a personal blog like this one, it’s a good thing, even if not impressive when compared to a news portal with thousands of pages.
Also, according to my stats, not much of my traffic has come to this page searching for information on how to improve Alexa Ranking, so I don’t think that’s been a factor at all in the increase. Thanks for stopping by and good luck with your site.
Hello Ray, I don’t think I am comparing apples to oranges, all I am saying is that I don’t think that pasting the alexa widget will improve the ranking the way you think. I am now sure of this because I have the widget on over 7,000 pages of my portal and the stats show no significant gain (in fact, they dropped from 16,000 to 18,000 in the past 3 weeks).
That’s why I started investigating this thread and installed the widget, I’m sure if the 10,000 people who visited my site yesterday sent a request to alexa when the widget appeared on their computers, I would have seen a massive change on my alexa ranking yesterday, but this didn’t happen.
So what I think really happens is that you can gain a few points in the ranking because SOME people who see the widget will click on it to see what it is and alexa will count THOSE people on their ranking! So yes, it is good to have the widget on your pages if you want to help your ranking, but alexa won’t count every person who sees the widget!
I will leave the widget installed for a few weeks to see what happens, feel free to check my stats whenever you want to see if what I say is true!
I see what you mean. Darren Rowse from Problogger left a comment on the post I linked to from Yaro’s site where he says that some of his sites had a negative affect on Alexa Rank after installing the widget, too. He has a theory that it might possibly have a corrective effect in some circumstances.
I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with it, but it appears to be improving my rank and it does follow logically that each page view is being counted by Alexa as the code from the widget has to load from their site. Hopefully, it does provide a boost to you, too. It did take a couple of days for me to notice any change at all. Maybe someone will come up with solid information on how this works soon.
I am also giving it a try
Good luck with it, Madhur. My Alexa Widget is showing 595,357 right now and that’s a big difference from where it started. I really do think this is a way for Alexa to make their traffic rankings more accurate. I don’t know why some bloggers are seeing their numbers going the wrong way, but mine have only improved. I also don’t know how common the Alexa toolbar is. I’ve never used it myself and don’t know many who do. The widget seems like a much more accurate way to track traffic levels. Please let me know how it works out for you.
Ray,
Is there a way to add the javascript code without having the widget display? As you know ( I’m sure ) I hate adding little foo-foo’s on any of my blogs. I’ve got a pretty intense minimalist theme going on, and I’d like to keep it.
Hi Leroy,
I don’t think so. I looked over the code again and it’s just a line calling some javascript from Alexa’s site. There’s no specific code for the image that you could just leave out. Anyway, the official word seems to be that the widget doesn’t really help your Alexa Rank anyway. I’m using the Search Status plugin for Firefox now so that may make some difference in my rank over time. If you haven’t used it before, it’s pretty cool and offers some features you may find useful for SEO. I don’t know the download url for it offhand, but you should be able to Google for it.
i’ll incorporate into my blogspot & wordpress package blog….any ways thankhs for d tip
Hi Sat. I think samsonite’s explanation probably is the best one so far. Having the Alexa widget on your site may not have a direct effect on improving your Alexa Rank, but it at least has the effect of making you and your visitors more aware of Alexa. In my case, it made me start using a plugin in my browser to start watching my Alexa Rank. This also had the effect of improving my rankings. Right now, it’s sitting at 196,701, which is quite a bit of an improvement since this post. You may even consider offering a link to download the widget from your site as an incentive to get visitors to use it. A few more users with the Alexa toolbar visiting your site every day or so will definitely have an effect. Thanks for your comment and good luck!
Oh cool..it works..great thanx to freshblogger …..my rank has improved by 100000 in few days….u can see in my site..it was 749600 now much better…….thanx
Yes sat dis mthod works much well..also in case of mine…
Hi Sat. My Alexa Rank continues to improve, but I’m not sure anymore that it has anything to do with the widget. I’m glad to see yours is going up, too. Good luck!
I guess only time will tell and as one famous supermarket saying goes, ‘Every little helps.’ Hmm, I think, lol
Hey Lee. I still don’t know what effect the widget may be having, but I’m getting close to breaking through that magic 100,000 milestone. I think I’ll keep it there for a bit longer… Thanks for commenting!
We have released AlexaAutoSurf.com – an auto-surf site that only allows users with the Alexa toolbar to join/surf. Take a look at it, most of the sites in the network have already jumped from 7-8 million all the way close to 100,000. It’s a great way to receive thousands of hits daily and you’ll see the results on Alexa!
I’m giving it a crack! Thanks! Can’t hurt
Hi Karen. I think the most important part of my getting a higher Alexa Rank has just been the fact that I’m now aware of it. One of the best tips I’ve gotten for getting at least to the top 100,000 mark is to install the Alexa toolbar in IE or use the SearchStatus plugin in FireFox and set your blog as your homepage. After doing this for a couple of weeks, you should notice some improvement in your score. To get the really high ranks, though, I’m afraid only lots of traffic will do that. Good luck!
Hello Ray, I think what you say about installing the searchresults for firefox is true. I installed them on 3 different computers about a week ago and have seen some gain by visiting my site with BOTH browsers, on the 3 machines.
My 3 month average is currently on the 12,000 range and I am hoping to breach the 10,000 barrier in the next 3 months. However at these low rankings gaining a position is very difficult.
I am not 100% sure if the visits I make with both browsers are actually counted as different users by Alexa but it woul be good to have other user’s input on this.
Regarding the widget, I am now certain that Alexa will not count every visitor who opens a page with it, otherwise it would mean that my site would send over 350,000 unique visitors a month and more than 6 million pageviews and it clearly isn’t showing that data for my site.
I also know now that if people check your stats at Alexa by clicking on your widget it will not count their visit unless they have the Alexa toolbar installed…
Hey samsonite. It’s good to hear from you. That’s a pretty good Alexa Rank! How much did you bring the rank down during the course of your experiment with searchstatus?
I’m curious as to whether this will continue to help my rank. Since it’s the only thing I can definitively tell has helped, I’m going to keep doing it, but I’m wondering how much more it can really help me. Congratulations on the great stats!
Hi Ray, I was able to bring the rank down almost 1,000 positions but I am not sure if this had anything to do with the searchresults add-on for firefox. However gainig positions at this level is very difficult and the bar usually changes no more than 300 places so dropping 1,000 in a week dure is great. If this is working, at the rank you are (99,000) I bet doing this could get your ranking in the 50,000’s range.
Keep in mind your alexa ranking is lowering because most people visiting this forum are looking for ways to drop their rankings and most of them will have the alexa toolbar installed, so the gain you have experimented so far is due to their visits, and not the widget that you installed.
Thanks, samsonite. I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and posting occasionally with updates. That should help keep the number going down, too. Onward to 50,000!
Hi Matt. Thanks for the tip. I don’t think that service would be of much use to me, but maybe others might find it useful.
Your strategy regarding installing the toolbar and setting your site as the homepage is fine, but consider using a system that has hundreds of unique visitors visiting your site every hour, all of them have the Alexa toolbar installed! The system is 100% automatic, you can simply earn credits from auto-surfing (very simple process, opens a page that reloads every 5 seconds, each time displaying another site from the system), and each time you view a page (each time the page loads, you don’t have to sit there and view each one) you receive 0.5 credits. You can then add credits to a any of your sites and users will start viewing them! Think about it, your rank now = #,###,###. After using our system = ##,###! We have many features that no other auto-surf site has, you should try it, let me know if you have any questions. Just for signing up you receive 2,500 free credits (views). There’s a complete automatic referral system – keep earning while your referrals surf! You could be earning hundreds of thousands of credits each day, even if you’re asleep! For those of you that don’t own a website: Earn credits anyway, you can turn around and sell them to other users!
AlexaAutoSurf
-Matt
I did the widget, and only have been in existence for 3 months….Look at my rank in the states…It is 5k(NOT DROPPED 5K)…I also went to many social trading websites…Huge Difference
Thanks,
Ahmad
http://www.ezluv.com
It’s definitely working, because you’re in the top 100,000, and by the looks of blogtopsites, your traffic doesn’t make you worthy of that ranking. Hopefully it works, and increases my ranking too! The funny thing is that I also found a secret to boosting my traffic, so I wont really be able to tell if the Alexa widget is truly helping me!
Thanks for the post,
-Sam from MarketMatador.com
P.S. Love this site theme. Immediately enticed me to read on. Good Job!
Hi Ahmad. I don’t think you would have much trouble getting traffic to your site. I would expect that just a few good links here and there would bring a lot of people to check it out. Good luck!
Hi Sam. I don’t think anymore that the Alexa widget is really what’s working here, but having definitely seems to increase awareness of Alexa Rank in general. The posts that I’ve written on the subject also seem to be bringing in more visitors who have the Alexa toolbar installed. This could account for some of the improvement I’ve seen here.
As far as blogtopsites go, I’m in a pretty competitive niche with that, so I’m not sure how much that really reflects my traffic levels. I should probably think about changing the category I’m listed in to one that might be less competitive and possibly even more accurate.
Thanks for commenting and good luck with your site!
Ray I agree with you…but we are getting a good amount of traffic, a good gauge instead of alexa is trafficestimate.com, they actually will give you the scoop on your site, for example last month I had 119,000 visitors and it gave me an estimate of 115,000, which is pretty damn accurate…Now we have to just find a good source to help with conversions:)
Thanks,
Ahmad
http://www.ezluv.com
Hi Ahmad. I just tried freshblogger.com on trafficestimate.com and it estimated 107,700 visits in the last 30 days! I think that’s a bit high…
You’re so right about the conversions, though. If conversions are high, even a small amount of traffic can be a very good source of revenue. Good luck!
Well I have learned a lot from posts like these. Im not as fortunate to have an 18,000 page ranking like some folks. I can however testify to seeing an excellent improvement in my page ranking (about 27%!) after doing the following 4 things…
1)Using this site, which is free, that sends thousands of people to my sites everyday
2)Getting the firefox extension (alternative to the alexa toolbar)
3)Adding the alexa widget to my site.
4)Using the following URL whenever possible
“http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.xxxxxxxxxxx.com”
just replace the x’s with your sites’ url.
I highly recommend doing all 4!
Thanks again for this post! (i do have to say though that the widget only seems to record somewhere in the neighborhood of 15% of actual traffic). Using the redirect through alexa will count a lot of the hits to your site that the widget misses. It only counts a hit once per 24hrs per IP address however.
Best of luck to all.
Okay it may work… I tried this about 3 months ago and my site was ranked at 195,000… now it’s ranked at about 77,000, the lowest it’s ever been and I have it hidden in an Iframe… now I have to admit my traffic itself did increase do to a topsite list so that probaly helped, however it only increase from around 18,000 a day to 20,000 a day… the site is http://www.crunkedout.com
I have jumped from the 4,000,000 to the 2,000,000 in a week.
Dominic Essex
http://www.10makemoney.blogspot.com
I’ve created a Wordpress Plugin to Improve your Alexa Ranking. It adds the Alexa Redirect prefix to your internal links.
http://www.thebloggable.com/one-step-to-50-improved-alexa-ranking/
Hey Cautious Observer. I think I must have lost your comment for a while! Thanks for the tips and links. I’m sure they’ll be useful!
Hey JRock. Interesting site… LOL. Is there any particular benefit to using the IFrame? You’re talking about putting the widget in the IFrame, right? That’s a great traffic number, BTW. Good job! Good luck with your site and thanks for commenting.
Hi Ariah. You read my mind! I was thinking about the same thing recently. My only concern is how it might affect PageRank. Internal links are extremely valuable in conserving and sharing PageRank within a site and if using the redirects adversely affects that then it might not be a good idea. Do you have any ideas about this? Thanks for commenting!
Great Information guys, I will have to look into trying this
This plugin is no good, since it screws with your links, and in this way diminishing your Google ranking and search results. A better option is to make the Alexa redirecting JavaScript-powered: in this way the HTML will not be modified, and the redirects will still work. I’ve applied this technique to a new plugin called Better “Alexa Redirect” WordPress plugin. If you are interested about it, visit this URL to learn more about it:
http://kaloyan.info/blog/better-alexa-redirect-plugin/
or visit this page to download it:
http://wp-alexa-redirect.googlecode.com/
Hi, Kaloyan. That’s a really interesting approach and seems to get around the problems of the original. Thanks for letting us know about it!
Hi all.
I will be installing the Alexa widget tonight and will be checking everyday to see how it helps my site.
As of today 09/18/07 my alexa ranking is 1,246,212..Probably very bad compared with your sites..
Well let’s see if this theory is real. By the way grear blog and yes I do have the alexa tool bar in firefox.
Eric
http://www.egsmartsys.com
I might give this a go? my site is 7,186,931 ! a long way back.
Thanks for sharing! I’m giving this one a try. Merry Christmas!
I think kaloyan’s plugin is more effective.
Thanks Ray, kaloyan
Great article! Very informative. look forward to reading more of your articles. Thanks
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