How Important is Your Website’s Alexa Rank

Alexa traffic rank is one of the most popular metrics that decide the authority of any website or a blog. Alexa usually calculates the rank of a domain by tracking the number If Alexa toolbar is installed in the web browser and it accesses the information related to the websites the user visits, in terms of page views and reach. Page view may be defined as the number of times the URL is visited, whereas reach is the number of users from among the Alexa users that have visited the site in a day.

Alexa then makes an analysis of the data obtained from all the users who have installed the Alexa toolbar over three-month duration. It also compares the rank obtained with that of the previous quarter and then the change is determined. After the analysis the report is made public and the site with the lowest Alexa number is ranked as the best. According to some experts, for every Alexa toolbar user that visits a particular website, Alexa assumes that 9 non-Alexa user has accessed the same website.
Importance of Alexa Ranking

         Alexa Traffic can be used as a competitive intelligence tool. But, you should take into consideration the small number of Alexa toolbar users with respect to the internet user community. You can use the ‘Compare’ section to compare your site with that of your competitor’s. Alexa ranking offers information about your website. It is a good tool to have in view of search engine optimization.
Alexa starts showing ranking graph when you get into top 100K sites. Alexa sells the top 25K and 100K lists but now they are providing the same for free download. There are various companies that go through these sites. In order to generate business and reach out to a large number of internet users, they buy advertising. Thus, if your site appears in the top 100K list, then companies may knock on your door to buy advertising rights which will generate revenue for you.
Moreover, people might most probably be considering Alexa rank as one of the metric for blog commenting and guest posting. When our discount coupon blog featuring carbonite and sittercity coupons experienced a drastic improvement in its Alexa rank, many guest posts and advertising offers knocked our doors.
The better your Alexa ranking is, the better will be your advertising revenue earnings. If you have a blog or a forum, then the good news is that Alexa even ranks the blogs. Thus a place in the 100K list will attract more visitors, subscribers and comments for your blog. If your forum features in the 100K list then the number of members starts increasing and so do the posts. Most importantly it’s an Amazon.com company.

However, the question that keeps being asked is how important is increasing the Alexa rankings. Not much according to experts. According to them, the ranking system has been questioned for its degree of accuracy. Experts feel that there are other traffic monitoring sites, Google Analytics being the most favourite. Alexa toolbar can only be installed in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. Thus, users of other web browsers do not get their online activities monitored by Alexa.
Secondly, the number of Alexa users is quite small with respect to the total internet user community. Certain Anti-virus such as Symantec and McAfee has classified Alexa as adware and trackware. Thus the security question comes into play and many users have thus stopped the toolbar activity from monitoring what they do.
Alexa rankings can be manipulated. Say, for example you have a site and you have installed the Alexa toolbar. You can always ask a few of your friends to install the same toolbar and visit your website a few times a day. If this is what is followed for about three months then chances of appearing in the top 100K list is easy.
Another problem with this toolbar is that most of its users are in the online marketing, SEO and web publishing business. Thus, one can use his financial power to pay internet users to visit the web site a number of times a day. The professional may keep a tab of the number of times a particular user is viewing the site and then pay him accordingly. Thus, rising through Alexa rankings is easier