For those online who are interested in improving the search engine positioning of their site, then be introduced to the seductress that’s known as Alexa. Alexa, is the not so guarded secret when it comes to SEO and Internet positioning analysis.
Alexa is a comprehensive ranking system on how popular yours or any other site on the Web is, this compared to all the other sites on the Internet. This particular ranking system is based on the estimated number of visitors that a site gets, which is tracked by Alexa.
For instance, the biggest most popular sites on the Web, who we know gets the most traffic are obviously ranked at the top of Alexa, as these are the sites which receives the most online traffic, which are currently: 1 – Google.com, 2 – Facebook.com, 3 – Youtube.com, 4 – yahoo.com, 5 – baidu.com, 6 – wikipedia.org, and so on.
Once you visit Alexa, alexa.com what you’ll find is a “Top Sites” tab on the menu bar which lists the rankings of the Top 500 most visited sites in the world, listed globally, or you can choose by country, or by category.
The Algorithm That’s Used By Alexa
The algorithm is simple, as what it records is the amount of unique visitor traffic which a particular site receives. To view this, you’ll need to download and install the Alexa Toolbar on your browser, and the information provided is the traffic capture of the most popular sites based on a 3 month period.
There are two general parameters which are taken into account, which are “Page View” and “Reach.” These are the measurements of how much traffic a particular site gets.
What a page view refers to is the exact number of times that a webpage is viewed by an Alexa user. What reach refers to is the number of Alexa users who’ll visit a particular site in a day, for instance, Google and Facebook will be visited numerous times.
The Ranking Process
The first step that’s involved in the ranking process is calculating the number of page views and reach for all the sites which are active on the Web, including yours, this on a daily basis.
The second step involves the calculation of the rank, which involves a geometric mean of page views along with reach, which is averaged over a period of 3 months.
All that one needs to do is go to Alexa.com and then download the Alexa Toolbar. The toolbar will then automatically display the Alexa rank of the site your at, for that particular day.
It also displays the sites which have been visited by all of the web surfers which are linked to the site that you’ve visited. The Alexa Toolbar also sends all of this data to its central server along with recording the IP address.
How To Improve The Alexa Ranking On Your Site Or Blog
• Install The Alexa Toolbar – Make sure that you first install the Alexa toolbar on your browser. Some will then set their site or blog as the home page. The reason being that Alexa rank is determined based on the information which is collected by the Alexa toolbar.
Just the click by the visitor who has the toolbar installed counts as a visit to the website. So as a webmaster, setting your blog as the home page contributes to your Alexa rank to improve.
• Keep Your Pages Related And Content Relevant – It’s recommended that you keep your pages relative to each other as much as possible. Try to keep your target keywords similar, staying within the general niche of your site.
• Fix All Broken Links – You should be using one of the many available software utility programs to find broken links on your site, and then remove or repair them if they’re not working. Make it a point to check them regularly to see whether the links are still active, which directs your visitors to the correct site.
• Adding Meta Descriptions – This on your webpages based on the content. What Meta tags will do is describe the content of your site. You can include the main keywords which are relevant to the subject of your article.
• Adding Relevant Text Content – Content is still considered king when it comes to the relevancy of your site. Write as much related content as possible which is tailored to your keywords. If your site happens to be e-commerce based, then it’s important to provide unique articles regarding your products which you’re selling.
• Adding Links To Your Most Prominent Pages – Linking all of your most important content pages on your site to each other is important, this so that the search engines and your readers can find them. If you happen to have more than one article which are related to each other, then you should be linking them preferably from your home page.
• Increasing Links Back To Your Site – Add links from popular external sites and social media sites which has related relevant content. You can do so by leaving complementary comments on blog posts, or sharing your articles on social media. Make sure you compile your profile to include your sites address so you’ll be found.
More Accurate Measures Of Traffic Based On Google Analytics
3 Different Types Of Traffic
• Direct Traffic – This the traffic where the visitors will come directly to your site, which is bookmarked on their computer, or your domain URL is entered directly into their browser.
• Search Engine Traffic – This traffic is the much coveted free traffic which you’ll get from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. This is the traffic which every webmaster wants more of.
• Referral Traffic – Is the traffic which comes from every other source such as links from other sites, as well as from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Some claim that these “real” traffic statistics should be used rather than the estimated traffic which Alexa provides, this to determine the true authority of a particular website.
There are free tools such as Google Analytics which can provide this genuine real data. This particularly if someone ever wants to advertise on your site, for instance, they should be requesting this precise accurate data before making a media buy.
You can view yours, or any other websites Alexa Ranking: Here
You can download the Alexa Toolbar to display on your browser: Here