Saturday, August 02, 2008

10 Quick & Easy Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank

Despite the huge webmaster bias Alexa rankings are still considered the main way in which the popularity of a website is judged. A low Alexa Rank illustrates that your site isn't particularly popular and it does negatively impact the chances of recruiting advertisers for your site.

As Alexa rankings rely on data gathered from users which have the Alexa toolbar installed they have a strong webmaster bias, with tech websites having their Alexa rankings hugely inflated. Knowing this there are a number of ways in which you can increase your website's Alexa Rank:

1) Install the Alexa toolbar and set your site as your homepage.

2) If you have an office install the Alexa toolbar on all the computers and set your site as the homepage. Encourage your employees to do the same at home.

3) Put an Alexa widget on your website. When users click through to Alexa.com this will be tracked which will help to boost your Alexa Rank.

4) Encourage visitors to install the Alexa toolbar, perhaps through featuring the toolbar, adding a link to Alexa, or even promoting it in your email newsletter. If you manage to encourage only a couple of percent of your visitors to use the toolbar the effect on your Alexa Ranking will be huge.

5) Join webmaster forums. A high proportion of webmasters have the Alexa toolbar installed so participating in webmaster or online marketing forums and adding your site in your signature can be an effective way to inflate your Alexa Rank.

6) Submit your site to social media and bookmarking sites, such as Digg and StumbleUpon. Alexa toolbar usage is particularly high amongst these users, and as a consequence many click-throughs will give you a rankings boost. As a longer term strategy try to create power profiles on these sites and compliment this by creating link bait.

7) Try Alexa auto-surfs - search on Google for these and you'll come across a number of sites which offer these programmes.

8) Write or blog about Alexa. This has two effects - it educates your users about Alexa and also attracts internet users who already have the Alexa toolbar to your site.

9) Many webmasters use the Alexa toolbar so try writing content which is targeted at them. Tools are also very effective and you don't always have to design the tools yourself - comprehensive resource pages can be just as effective.

10) This is an offline tip which can be very effective. Pay internet café owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your site as their homepage.

For more information about online marketing visit Marketing Minefield, where you can find out more about internet marketing and ways to drive traffic to your website.