According to the statistics from WebsiteSetup, it’s estimated that there are over 1.7 billion websites on the Internet, and 576,000 new ones established per day. So how can you know whether your site is popular with the audiences or not? What is your site’s ranking in that multifold of websites out there? Alexa Rank will acknowledge you about that. This article will specifically discuss this Alexa Rank, how to check your Alexa ranking, and 5 simple ways to improve that.
What is Alexa Rank?
Alexa rank is a global measure of the popularity of a website. With Alexa, millions of websites will be ranked in order of their popularity, and the one at the topmost of Alexa Rank is the most popular. This ranking system indicates how well a website is doing compared with all other sites, which makes it become a useful index for benchmarking and competitive analysis.
This also offers users to look for similar sites that share the same audience to find other competitors.
How is Alexa Rank Calculated?
Two primary factors that Alexa relies on ranking websites are unique daily visitors and average pageviews of the site over the past 3 months.
- Unique daily visitors: the number of Alexa users visiting a site in a day.
- Average pageviews: the frequency of a particular page or URL is visited by users of Alexa.
Thereby, the website with the highest number of unique visitors and pageviews is ranked Number 1, which is now Google.
Traffic and engagement are collected from the browsing behavior of millions of Internet users on Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and so on in Alexa’s global panel. Alexa is also said to source third-party data to broaden its view of Internet users.
Alexa’s ranking algorithm analyses a website and calculates the visit frequency of individuals. It is considered a single visit if a user visits a website more than once on the same day. The algorithm also finds the potential biases and adjusts their rankings so as to make up for the visitors who Alexa’s measurement panel does not include in.
Is Alexa Ranking Important?
Needless to say, this metric is crucial for you and your business to acknowledge. First and foremost, it helps users to put their business in comparison with their competitors for a better reference. If you know where your competitors are on the ranking system, you can begin deploying basic SEO research to find out what they are doing well, what their drawbacks are, what you can learn from them, and then improve on your own page to gain more traffic.
Besides, as it is a public metric, your potential partners, investors, and advertisers will consider your Alexa Rank a reliable source to evaluate your business’s value. Hence, the higher rank your site can reach, the more possibility you receive close attention and new opportunities.
Is Alexa Ranking An Accurate Tool?
Although Alexa rank can be viewed as a great KPI to compare one website’s performance with another’s, its statistics are not always the most accurate ones.
Many people have weighed the differences between Alexa and Google Analytics and then concluded that Alexa is not as accurate as it is expected. Statistics have shown that some websites that are visited by a higher number of users actually have a lower Alexa rank than Google.
For example, according to James (2015) on Marketing 4 Restaurant, Google and Alexa ranking of 4x4earth and marketing4restaurants are totally different, as displayed on the table above. This seems to be inaccurate as 4x4earth is known to receive much more traffic than Marketing4Restuarants.com, yet Alexa still ranked the Marketing4Restaurants.com significantly higher.
This issue may derive from how the data is gathered. As we may know, Google has all of its data gathered from the actual websites while Alexa receives information from Internet surfers who have installed the Alexa toolbar. This is just a very small portion of the total number of website surfing traffic. Besides, the data from both websites are in Australia, so the number of users may be limited due to personal preferences.
Can Alexa Rank Change?
According to an article from Search Engine Journal, your website’s Alexa rank can be manipulated by performing a JavaScript function to launch a large group of page addresses from your website. This aims to get each of these addresses to open in a different window, thereby increasing the number of page views.
However, boosting your Alexa rank artificially just lasts for a short term like a lot of quick fixes. The more proper and long-term method to further enhance the rank is to create good content regularly to get the right traffic to your website. One helpful strategy for you is SEO, standing for Search Engine Optimization, which will increase both quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
How Can I Check Alexa Rank of My Site?
To look up your site’s Alexa rank, just access the official website of Alexa, enter the URL and hit “Run Analysis”.
It will indicate SEO keyword opportunities, competitive benchmarking, website traffic statistics as well as audience insights in a very clear and understandable way.
It’s also possible to view the Alexa Rank of any website when visiting it by installing the Alexa Toolbar on your browser.
How Can I Get A Higher Alexa Rank?
If you want to have a more accurate Alexa Rank, you can certify the metrics of your site on Alexa. Usually, websites with uncertified metrics will be measured based on information from the data panel. However, when your site has certified ones, it is directly estimated by Alexa. There are a lot of other advantages of Certified Site Metrics, but one of them is a more accurate Alexa Rank.
So, straight to the point, how can you obtain a better Alexa rank?
Produce engaging, original content
A website with a multifold of interesting, original, and frequently updated content will provide your audience with a sense of real value, thereby building loyal audiences. When users find your resources useful and informative, they tend to interact more with your future content as well as share among their own networks. That may work to introduce new visitors that are possible to turn into potential customers. Not only does quality content attract more individuals, but it also helps search engines like Google to recognize and reward your effort by little upgrading your rankings.
Link more relevant websites to yours
This is also known as inbound links which helps search engines both define your niche more precisely as well as increase the trust and quality of your site. To put it another way, authoritative inbound links coming from sites that have a great reputation will bring your own site credibility.
Another type of linking related websites is the internal link which leads to another page or post on the same website. It is helpful since it navigates visitors through your website and engages them with relevant information. This also makes a contribution to site links, which appear below your main page link in a search engine page. But it is more important to combine these links with appealing content to make sure that all kinds of content you produce are relevant and bring value to your visitors.
Indeed, both inbound links and internal links are some main categories that search engines rely on to determine how appropriate your content is and how it can benefit visitors. However, you should use these links in a proper way though it is crucial in your online strategy. It’s because redundant linking can decrease the understandability or credibility of your site and search engines are likely to penalize that.
Research traffic-driving keywords
You should find out what keywords are driving traffic to your competitors’ websites and learn from that to improve yours. By carrying out a little keyword research, you may acknowledge the terms that your audiences are looking for. In other words, keyword research is the know-how of understanding your customers’ needs and desires. It will help you a lot in the decision-making process for your online marketing strategy.
Understand your competitors’ marketing strategies
Whatever type of your business, competition is indispensable. Therefore, the key to success here is knowing your opponents and their business practices well. This includes what products/services they offer, what their marketing strategies are, how they interact with customers and how customers think about their brand. And then you can learn what works, what your competitive advantages are as well as what can be applied and developed in your own site. All of these aspects are useful in informing your overall strategy and enable you to enhance your position in the market.
Apply SEO practices on your website
SEO is a crucial long-term strategy that requires both your time and efforts. Not only can it increase your website’s visibility to customers but it is also a cost-effective way to improve your bottom line. Every SEO project usually underlines the content, design, or technology that creates your site, supporting in boosting its SERP ranking when fully optimized.
For example, if your business platform is Shopify and you long for staying at the top spot of search engine results pages, take a look at SEO Booster. It may be the best fit solution for your business to reduce your SEO tasks on Shopify since it helps:
- Improve image search with Alt-tags
- Drive organic traffic in a Google-recommended way
- Perform the site properly on mobile devices
- Handle your optimization even when you have little SEO knowledge
- Be assisted actively with daily close support
- Especially, a new future – The website diagnosis feature has been enhanced to a high level with more details
In conclusion
Alexa is a practical and beneficial measure for any marketers who want to know their own business and competitor’s better as well as aim to find more opportunities. Thus, to keep your business updated and achieve higher Alexa rankings, you should invest both time and attention to this. Several simple approaches may help, such as creating high-quality content, learning opponent’s strategies, and employing appropriate SEO practices. So now, let’s flick Alexa’s website and be prepared to discover more about your sites!