Alexa Ranking. Does Your Business Need It?

Alexa ranking gauges your website's performance by focusing on site traffic and page views rather than SEO.

Of the over 30 million sites analyzed daily, Google, YouTube, and Tmall occupy the top three slots. This is no mean feat and is a testament to how popular this sites are. Is your site as popular as Google? Better check out your website rank by visiting the official Alexa page.

Did you know that there are two Alexas?

There’s the well-known Alexa, the automated virtual digital assistant connected to your smart devices known as Amazon Echo devices. And there is Alexa, the first free website traffic checker developed in 1996 by Amazon.

Everyone wants to be visible on Google.

With over 1.7 billion websites and 500 million blogs, it is a tall order to rank on SERPs.

How then will you know your website’s health and where you stand online?

Site ranking programs will do that for you.

Most website ranking software focuses on SEO as a metric of measurement. Alexa’s ranking is very different and focuses on website popularity.

Fun fact

Did you know that the Inspiration for Alexa, the VA’s voice, came from the Star Trek movie?

What is Alexa Ranking?

This figure represents the most popular sites, according to Alexa.

Alexa is proprietary software from Amazon that ranks websites globally according to popularity. Alexa focuses on estimated site traffic and user engagement to give a rank.

Who are unique visitors?

 According to Alexa software, unique visitors are people who visit your site over a predetermined period usually 30 minutes. 

An increase in traffic to your site doesn’t convert to a better Alexa ranking. It all depends on how well your competitors are doing.

You need to know the following about the Alexa ranking system.

• Alexa’s rankings depend on a site’s performance compared to its competitors.
• Alexa’s global panel uses three months of data to rank a site, If a website does not record any traffic in three months, it won’t have an Alexa rank.
• Your Alexa rank depends on the number of unique visitors and their browsing history.
• Data from millions of sites, many plugins, and browser extensions, including the Alexa toolbar, all feed Alexas global ranking panel.
• Sites with the Alexa certify code measure traffic directly whether the site has the Alexa toolbar.
• A more popular website will have a lower Alexa ranking. According to Alexa, a site with an Alexa ranking of 1 will be the most popular site globally.
• Alexa only measures domain traffic.

Table of contents

1. How is Alexa ranking computed?

2. Why does your business need a great Alexa ranking?

3. Can you improve your Alexa ranking?

4. Improve your Alexa rankings with these five surefire tips.

How is an Alexa rank computed?

Alexa ranks depend on data collected from a particular website over three months, with daily data updating every 24 hours.

Alexa collects data from millions of sites. The three major ways of data collection are;

• Alexa mainly depends on browsers with the Alexa toolbar on them. Every time a person visits a site, the toolbar collects the site’s URL and the computer’s IP address. The collected data streams to a global control panel where Alexa’s algorithms compute the site’s popularity.
• Alexa also collects data directly from websites. Website owners who have enrolled in the Alexa global ranking system and have installed the Alexa certify code on their sites have an automatic measurement of their traffic.
• In 2008, Alexa underwent a significant overhaul. Alexa global ranking software now collects data from over 25000 browser extensions, toolbars, and plugins.

What is the Alexa global data panel?

Alexa’s data panel is the sample of global internet traffic used to calculate Alexa Ranks and estimate non-Certified metrics. The panel comprises millions of internet users using one of over 25,000 different browser extensions. 

Why is the Alexa ranking important for your business?

Let’s face it; everyone wants a high online rank, especially for businesses.

A high Alexa rank means the following to a business,

1. Brand visibility

How visible is your business?

According to Statista, there are over 1.72 billion websites, coupled with 4.9 billion daily internet users, your online business visibility is crucial.

It makes sense to improve your Alexa ranking to be more visible.

Improved Alexa ranking means,

• Your business is more visible to your customers
• Better customer interactions
• You have increased sales and conversions.

Every online business’s goal is to make a profit. Whether through subscriptions, leads, or physical products. A popular website will be more visible and thus make more conversions leading to increased revenues.

What is a good Alexa rank?

Relationship between traffic and Alexa rank

An Alexa rank from 1 to 500000 is great. Studies have shown that Alexa’s ranking becomes less accurate as the position moves further from position 1.

2. Alexas software enables you to apply comparison metrics to your competitors.

Alexa’s rankings are unique. It’s the only website analytics program that factors your competitor’s performance to give a score.

This is very important for an online business.

Knowing how your competitors are doing will give you an insight into what to do to improve your sites. Alexa goes a notch further by giving ranking keywords and how your competitors are doing on them.

Alexa offers a content gap analysis, which is incredibly important for your site’s SEO and PPC campaigns. 

Content gap analysis focuses on,

• Keyword gap analysis. These are keywords that your competitors are ranking for in search results, but you aren’t.
• Buying stage gap analysis. A part of your sales funnels that aren’t correctly optimized to answer common questions.
• Channel gap. Channels in your strategy that you’re not optimally using to drive sales and bring your content to the world.

 3. Finding great affiliates with the Alexa global panel

Almost all online businesses have an affiliate program. Affiliates are great for scaling your business. Affiliate marketing works on leveraging the influence of people or brands with a large following. Well, Alexa is an excellent way of finding these popular entities affiliated or people.

A high-ranking super affiliate who ranks on Alexa typically has loads of traffic to their site. Partnering with them will have a positive ripple effect on your site.

Alexas comparison metrics will help you decide on the best affiliate partner.

As seen above, a search of the most popular sites will give you a detailed breakdown of stats such as a daily page view, percentage traffic, and a good deal of other metrics.

4. Alexa ranking help in verifying your site’s health

How healthy is your site? Are you doing as well as you think? Software like Google Analytics looks at how well you’re doing for specific keywords, maybe at a loss to explain why your traffic might be tanking.

Alexa is unique because it looks at your website from a different angle. A Comparison between your business and competitors generates a picture of how the whole niche/ sector is doing. The problem could be a Google upgrade or a seasonal change in demand affecting the entire niche.

The question in most people’s minds is, 

Can you improve your site’s Alexa rankings?

The answer is, Yes.

You can make your website more popular and attract more significant traffic and improve user engagements.

Use these five surefire tips to improve your Alexa rankings.

Site analytics improvement is a problem all site owners appreciate. A high internet rank is hard to achieve, and it takes constant effort. Every second, millions of sites upload new content, and you have to be on your toes not to drown in the online clutter.

There is no silver bullet for high ranking, and it takes a mix of intelligent moves and best practices. Use Alexa’s global ranking system together with other analytic tools, this will give you an edge.

Did you know that websites with an Alexa ranking of less than 1 million are eligible to contribute questions to HARO as journalists? Imagine the authority that comes from expert opinions featured in your articles.

Here are five sure ways of improving your Alexa rank

 1. Authoritative content

Authoritative, well-researched, and well-written content will attract readers. An internet user looking for answers will spend more time on a site/page where the info is ironclad and addresses their concerns.

Longer posts full of helpful tips and tricks will hook readers and keep them on the page longer. 

This is what Alexa considers the number of visitors and web pages. Optimize your content and make sure it’s packed full of goodness.

 2. Link your content

An inbound link occurs when related sites in your niche refer or link back to you. A reputable site referring to you raises the credibility and trust of your site to your visitors. When your articles are authoritative and well written, other sites in your niche will want to associate with you.

Having internal links, which are links between your posts, is a good idea because a viewer will spend more time reading interesting, related content topics written by you. But all this boils down to your site having the best content ever.

Inbound and internal links improve the credibility of your site. Sites with high-value links are more valued by search engines. Links enable search engines to understand your site’s contents better. When your site ranks highly, you will appear higher on SERPs, improving traffic and improving Alexa rankings.

 3. Harness the power of social media

With approximately 3.78 billion people using social media in 2021, it makes perfect sense to market yourself there aggressively. Remember, Alexa rankings entirely depend on your site's traffic, so being in front of more users is a plus.

When your site, boasting of well-written, authoritative content and linking to trusted sources, hits social media, your readership will explode.

More visits and higher page views equal higher Alexa rankings.

Check out how to monitor your company’s social media campaigns using software

4. Keyword research

Keywords are a specific set of words that are input in search queries.

Keyword research helps you know the most common and relevant words, phrases, and synonyms appearing in search queries.

Knowing which words are ranking for your competitor will help you align your content. This is because you can tweak your site to rank for those words appearing in search queries.

Keyword research will help you run an effective PPC campaign. Pay Per Click is a brilliant marketing strategy.

How does a PPC campaign work?

Every time a user inputs a search query, Google displays SERP most relevant to the query. This is organic traffic where Google ranks the most authoritative results first.

The PPC campaign, which brings inorganic/ paid traffic, is more of a shortcut. In PPC, a website pays to appear highly in SERP for specific keywords. Every time a query related to your keyword is input, your site will appear.

PPC is very effective in driving inorganic traffic to your site, thus boosting your Alexa rank.

5. Leverage on SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an effective method of getting traffic to your site. SEO has different facets that will improve your Alexa rank.

SEO has two major categories,

On-site SEO

This refers to the steps directly done on your website to optimize components that enable your site to rank highly and attract relevant traffic.

Proper on-site SEO is important because,

• It allows search engines to find sites and rank them.
• Assists the user to understand the site content and its relevance to their search query

On-site SEO involves,

1. Optimizing content and HTML source codes by crafting content that is;

• High-quality and authoritative. How reliable is your content? Do you quote figures and statements from reliable sources? Content that can stand the test of intense scrutiny will rank highly on SERP.
• Unique. Content must be original and not plagiarized from other sites.
• User-friendly. How readable is the content? Is it an easy read, well-formatted, and appealing to the eyes? Is it full of ads and affiliate links?
• In-depth. Content must be thorough and answer all user-relevant questions. Thin material isn’t desirable.

Keywords. Is your content aligned with user search queries? If your content contains high traffic keywords, then traffic to your site will increase.

   2. Improving page load speeds

   3. Proper linkages, both inbound and outbound links

   4. Page metadata

   5. Mobile-friendliness

   6. Optimize site images

Off-site/off-page SEO

This is a crucial aspect of driving traffic to your site. Off-page SEO refers to practices out of a website that influences traffic to a site and ranking on SERPs.

Off-page SEO includes.

1. Backlink building. This is the heart and soul of off-site SEO. There are many types of backlinks, including,

• Natural links require no input from a site owner. Usually, another site will link to you because your content is authoritative and valued.
• Implementing manual linkages through deliberate link-building activities such as customer referrals is a great SEO strategy.
• Guest blogging is one way to get authoritative backlinks. Often the host site will allow you an editorial link back to your site.

   2. Social media marketing

   3. Influencer marketing

Conclusion

The Alexa global ranking system is an effective tool to measure and improve your website traffic. Unfortunately, many site owners haven’t fully harnessed the incredible superpowers of this revolutionary piece of software.

Being one of the earliest software analytics tools globally, so many misconceptions about the Alexa software exist.

These misconceptions are not all accurate, though, because Alexa is a proven tool for site analysis. Therefore, when properly used, it can give direction and purpose to your website’s marketing plan. Using Alexa together with other software is a brilliant idea.