Website Owners Focus on Getting Better Alexa Rank, But It Doesn’t Always Mean Better Traffic

Great websites often struggle with increasing Alexa rank

For website owners, operating a site usually means using the Alexa ranking to determine where the site’s at in terms of popularity.  It has long been used as a tool to analyze data and discover just where a site is in terms of overall web traffic, however it is not flawless.  Having a good Alexa ranking doesn’t always mean the site is getting great traffic.

An accurate determination of traffic isn’t possible because in order for Alexa to grab the number of visitors, each visitor has to have downloaded the Alexa toolbar plug-in.  This is something the average user doesn’t do.  So in a world where a better Alexa ranking is a lower number, there could be a website ranked below 100,000 with less than 15,000 visitors a month, and a website ranking near a million or more that gets over 100,000+ actual visitors a month.   The website with the 100K visitors should, in theory, have a lower ranking, but the 15K visitor site outranks it by far.  How can this happen? 

It’s all about content. 

Alexa rank not determined by average user

Since most people who download the Alexa toolbar are interested in stats themselves, the users that browse the web and have the Alexa tool bar installed tend to be interested in a particular kind of information – most of it having to do with websites,  page rank, troubleshooting, problems with Google, making money at home, SEO (search engine optimization) and, shockingly, improving Alexa ranking.  There will be other interests for those users, of course, but if improving the Alexa ranking of a website is the owner’s primary focus, then the website should include some sort of information that would attract traffic from people who have the Alexa toolbar downloaded.  This means incorporating the appropriate content.

Content that attracts Alexa toolbar users can be slipped in virtually anywhere within the site, but successful webmasters never compromise the quality and direction of the site simply for statistics.  The balance can be difficult, as quality and ”targeted” traffic to a website is still the most important (but it isn’t necessarily reflected in an Alexa rank) and yet sometimes the rank alone is used to determine advertising pricing and website value by many industry experts.  In fact, some companies won’t even consider placing ads on websites outside of a specific Alexa rank, regardless of  traffic. 

Getting a better Alexa ranking keeps the site a step ahead of competition

For true traffic, Google Analytics or other related software is the best indicator for actual numbers.  But, the bottom line is that those who don’t include content appealing to the Alexa toolbar user will always be one step behind the rest. 

According to SEO experts, those who are seeking to be competitive online in their site rankings, reviewing the content and ensuring some little nugget is there to appeal to users with the Alexa toolbar installed is the best way to get a site more noticed.  Improving an Alexa ranking is not impossible when approached properly.