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How Does Alexa Rank Truly Work?

Okay! As bloggers, the two major things that show marketers, business owners and other cooperate bodies how successful your blog is, are; Google page rank (PR) and Alexa rank. If your blog can have a good PR and or a better Alexa rank, your blog will have more business opportunities than you’ll ever imagine 🙂

how does alexa rank truly work

But you just can’t get a high PR or a Best Alexa ranking without climbing the ladder gradually. And how do I mean climbing the ladder gradually? You need to build yourself quality traffic streams, have friends and your blog readers share your content on social media and elsewhere…

Reason for the post

Now, a friend was truly anxious to know how the Alexa ranking system works. Because he is running a mobile site and he gets 500+ unique visitors per day. But the thing is, most of his visitors visit his site through operamini, ucbrowser and other mobile web browsers. We all know that mobile browsers don’t have the facility to use the Alexa toolbar right?

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Even with his good amount of traffic, his ranking is still not dropping the way he planned it would be. So he wondered 🙁

Sometime back, he approached me and ask me a question – “Baba, how does alexa rank truly work?” believe it or not, that’s a lovely question to ask, or don’t you think?

I would have given him the answer right there, but I decide to make it my next post, why? Because I truly want you guys to contribute to the post, so he’ll truly know more about the Alexa ranking and from your own point, how it truly works.

Aside him, I know that many people out there are also trying to learn how the alexa ranking system truly works…

But first, let me talk some more about the Google PR and the Alexa Ranking…

What is the best way to increase your blog’s PR

You know, I read somewhere that in other to get a good PR, you must have some good amount of traffic, get enough social signals and your blog should also be lively. Yes! These are the key ingredient to increase your blog PR.

In reality, if you want to simply increase your blog’s homepage Google Page Rank;

  • Allow it to be shared across social platforms: If you are using WordPress, try adding social plugins or if you are using blogger blog, try adding some good social bar to your blog,
  • Let people talk about your blog: Try to make your blog as engaging as possible, create post that people will love to share and refer other people to, create that lovely post that other bloggers would love to link back to.
  • Push traffic to it: You don’t need to have 50,000+ visitors per day before you can have an increase in Page rank, as long as you have a reasonable amount of traffic that can help you with the above tips, you are good to go 🙂 .

Try the above tips and I assure you that you will have an increase in page rank.

Sometime, when you check your blog posts, you will discover that some of your contents have a higher PR when you compare it with your homepage. That is because those contents get more social shares and engagements.

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To increase your Page Rank, you don’t need to have extra tools or to be that seo expert. Thank God, Google have made it easy for us 🙂

How can we increase our alexa rank?

I also read that in other to increase my alexa ranking, I will need to do some few things, which are;

  • Install the alexa toolbar
  • Have people, your blog readers do a review of your blog over at alexa’s site
  • Create a custom toolbar and give your readers to download
  • Locate communities of bloggers that uses the toolbar, so your rank will increase if they visit you.

Those are the things i need to do if I want to get my alexa ranking to a favorable spot – at least, that’s what I read, right? 🙂 .

Now if you watch, you will see that in other to get your rank up, you must have their toolbar installed. And also, the people who visit your blog need to have the toolbar installed as well. Why? Because, they give ranking based on the record their toolbar sends out.

If you create two blogs on two different categories (niche) – let’s say the “making money” niche and the “house sales” niche, you will discover that the making money niche site will have a better Alexa rank than that of the House sales niche, even if the House sales niche is getting more traffic than the Making money niche.

The reason is simply because; people who will be visiting the making money niche sites are bloggers or entrepreneurs who wants to make money online. And you know almost all bloggers (if not all) have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browsers.

How does Alexa rank truly work?

Now to make my subject more clearly to you guys, let me ask you the same question as I was asked; how does Alexa truly work? Is it only when people review your blog on their site, install their toolbar on your browser and the browsers of your visitors, or is it something not mentioned here? I truly need to know!

Over to you

It looks like I have said so much about so much, now let me pass the keyboard to your guys…

What do you think about the post? Do you have comments, contribution(s) to make about the post? Then please do by using the comment box below. Remember that your comment will help somebody who’s in need of an answer about the Alexa ranking.

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Do you have comments questions and or thought you’d love t share with us? You can do so by using the comment box below. Remember that your comments questions and thoughts are highly welcomed and much appreciated.

Let’s be social

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25 thoughts on “How Does Alexa Rank Truly Work?”

  1. I truly didn’t knew this amazing facts about how alexa works and its functionality. I only focused on improving it.

    Thanks for sharing wonderful post.

  2. HI Babanature,

    You said it all well enough in your post I think, leaving us nothing much to add 🙂

    Yes, that’s exactly how Alexa works, or unless you have the paid version, then it works all the better they say. I don’t so I don’t have much of an idea. I am also trying to conduct this little experiment where I removed CommentLuv, as you might have noticed, and am presently trying the various other commenting system.

    For one, spam has totally stopped that was earlier coming up due to CommentLuv somehow. With it’s removal a few bloggers reduced their visits, so it was perhaps evident they were coming to drop links more than anything else – thus because they had Alexa – it affected my Alexa too as you mentioned, though page views increased.

    As you mentioned, I do have a lot of mobile users, nearly 60% I think, and yes, they don’t have Alexa toolbar, and most of them aren’t even bloggers, they are just surfers, so that affects the ranking too.

    Overall, what I am noticing is that though my traffic has increased, so has the daily visitors, time on site, and all other things, it’s just the Alexa that is presently on the rise. Yes, if I put back CommentLuv perhaps I would have more bloggers come over, though the comments still come in plenty, and they are from bloggers, but perhaps those bloggers don’t have Alexa toolbar – I wonder and I honestly am not looking at this aspect while I am conducting this experiment. But I would soon be writing a detailed post about my findings to help others, and you’d know more of it then.

    Thanks for sharing all of this with us. Have a nice week ahead 🙂

    1. Hello Harleena,
      You’ve said interesting things in your comment.
      I’ll definitely be looking forward to reading your finding about the alexa and the journey as a whole 🙂

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. Do have a wonderful weekend ahead…

  3. You are right about Alexa and PR bro. These two factors have a lot to do in attracting advertising and paid review business to a blog. Given that Google PR update does not respect its initial timing, it’s not playing a strong part as before.

    My blog was setup in November last year and since then, PR update has been once and that was earlier this year. While my Alexa is 24k, PR remains at 0. I still get quite impressive advertising offers.

    About reducing Alexa rank, I’m tempted to believe that frequently publishing content and traffic from SEO have a big part to play beside the methods you have listed above, Engagement on your blog too is a strong factor. You may have huge traffic but with very high bounce rate and little time on site. These are all engagement factors that Alexa take into consideration.

    People use traffic bots and get fake hits in their thousands. But this doesn’t matter. As long as you have poor engagement, the traffic will not have a positive effect.

    I don’t know if Alexa has clearly listed its ranking factors somewhere. That would be very interesting to know

    1. Hey bro,
      I have seen blog that got good amount of traffic with bounce rate of average and a PR of 5 but still, Alexa ranking is still cheating I don’t think bounce rate is the issue here, but as you said; it would be great to know how the alexa raking system truly works 🙂

      Thanks for stopping by and making a comment on “how alexa ranking works” Do have a good weekend bro 🙂

  4. Hello; my primary site the midway marketplace made a marked improvement in alexa ranking without having the alexa tool bar. I did a lot of blog commenting on sites with comment luv installed. I think the key is does your friend get page views from all these visitors. Because the site i mentioned gets a high percentage of its traffic from mobile devices. large numbers of visitors don’t help if they only look at one or two pages or are only on the site for a few seconds. but with alexa its all a guess. same with google. the best approach is consistent posting of new content, social media shares, blog commenting, and patience. best of luck to us all, max

    1. Hello Maxwell,
      Well, Google have told us how they rank blogs and websites. As long as your social signal is high, you will get a good PR from Google. But alexa raking did not mention how they rank websites/blogs.

      The person i am talking about, his bounce rate is Normal (below 50%) and his blog speed is very much okay. How the Alexa ranking system works, is still a mystery 🙂

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. Do have a wonderful day . . .

  5. Hi Babanature,

    Great post. I have interest to see how alexa rank can go up and down. My first opinion was like you “money making niche” thing. But then after I stumble upon several news website I just think ” do the readers of newyorktimes, huffingtonpost, bbc.co.uk or cnn use alexa toolbars? I don’t think so. I just think there must be something else than just toolbars. Well, maybe

    Thanks. Wish you enjoy the week

    1. Hello Okto,
      If you watch carefully, I do visits those sites myself likewise you and many other people using the alexa toolbar to surf the web, so automatically, these news sites alexa ranking improves because of the amount of people (you and me) visiting them 🙂

      I do hope we get a good answer someday on how the alexa ranking system truly works.
      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. Do have a wonderful week start 🙂

  6. Swapnadip chakraborty

    Very informative article Babanature,, Yes, I fully agree with your all points mentioned in the above post. If your blog has good alexa ranking or Google page rank, then you are all set for your journey. But to get this, you have to follow some procedure.

    If you ask me about it, then I would suggest
    Always post quality content.
    Do not copy your article from others.
    Try to post your article frequently.
    Try to reduce bounce rate of your blog.
    Increase your traffic.
    Create Google Authorship

    Here you have described it so wee that I am the same bent of mine ,as you are.

    Regards,
    Swapnadip

  7. Hello babanture,

    i would like to say that alaexa rank is one of the best way to scale any blog or website, if your alexa rank is good then it is good for your website it also increase the domain authority of your website.

    Warm Regards
    sam

    1. Hello Sam,
      Yeah, Alexa rank of a blog can tell alot about the blog. But Alexa Ranking does not relate to domain authority. Domain authority is being measured in a different way then the alexa ranking system.

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your contribution. Do have a faithful weekend ahead…

  8. Hi Babanature

    It is right the two most authenticated criteria to know the performance of a blog are its Google and Alexa ranks. The advantage of latter is that you can regularly monitor how you are going at it. While for the Google PR you have to wait its update.

    It means we can better improve our Alexa rank by regular checking if we are improving or declining. It shows the overall progress of your blog including rank in the world, rank in your proximity area, bounce rate, pageviews etc.

    Earlier the only criter to get higher Alexa rank was frequency of publishing posts. Higher the frequency means higher the Alexa rank. But now several other factors are equally considered including the feedback to your post through social media.

    Thanks a lot for sharing another wonderful post that is on much interesting topic.

    1. Hello Mi,
      I’d say that alexa ranking is still a mysterious case, and i wonder why 😀 . . .

      Thanks for your input on this, it was indeed appreciated.
      Do have a wonderful weekend ahead…

  9. The full modus operandi of Alexa in ranking of webpages is still something under the shadow for most webmasters and can only be suggested out of constant and close monitoring of real time performance on the said Alexa page. Just like Google, It is extremely difficult for one to come up and categorically tell or say this is how they work.

    For me, I see it as a function of time together with the activities going on in your pages, especially traffic level. My Alexa has been dropping naturally ever since I started out sometimes last year. I noticed in real time that when traffic increases, Alexa Global ranking drops together with regional ranking.

    Though other factors can be involved but I can’t just pin point and say this is it.

  10. hi

    Can you please elaborate on – Have your blog readers do review at alexa’s site.

    I have got alexa tool bar installed on my blog and i really guess that it helps.

    thanks

    1. Hello Harish,

      There was a time when if you want a good alexa rank, other bloggers, friends and fans will have to write a review about your blog on Alexa’s site. But they retired the review option earlier this year… So now, i’d say that the review is pretty much not working as at now.

      Alexa tool bar helps and if other bloggers who have the same toolbar visit your blog, your ranking will definitely improve

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. Do have a wonderful weekend ahead…

  11. Hello Babanature,

    I have a completely different view about Alexa and it’s rankings or even PR for that matter: they matter, no doubt – but certainly not too much!

    When I started NTP, I was really fascinated about Alexa and at a point, I hit the 83k mark…I was ecstatic to say the least. But did that transcend to more money? This, I sadly say, no!

    So I changed strategy (only a fool does the same thing over and over and expects different results). Today, my focus is on making my blog(s) productive irrespective of Alexa and Page rank. It may please you to know that one of my niche sites has pulled in more money in its 3 months of existence (via eBook sales) than NTP has in about 1.5 years. And yes, this site has a PR of O and an Alexa rank well in the millions.

    For all other bloggers, my advice is simple: focus on the bucks! Afterall, isn’t that the main point?

    Always,
    Terungwa

    1. Hello Akaahan,
      Truly, Alexa or Google doesn’t determine how much you earn online. I got my first 200 euro from Google adsense the first two month of creating my blog, now i get advert sponsors. Is it because of my ranking? Nope! Once you blog is everywhere you will definitely get the attention you need.

      But in the long run, those rankings do matter and those ranking will determine your millions in future times 🙂

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your thoughts. It is well noted and much appreciated…
      Have a beautiful weekend ahead…

  12. Hey man,

    Installing the toolbar is a great thing. Another matter is the freshness. Having more fresh post constantly will help generate better ranking.

    Of course, traffic is the key ingredient here 🙂

    Great write and thanks for sharing!

  13. Hi Babanature,

    Well first I’ll say that your tips on increasing our page rank aren’t exactly true. There are over 200 things that Google looks at to get your site to move up in the search engines. I’ve been doing all that you mentioned above for years and mine goes up and down and it’s been down for awhile now.

    But as far as Alexa ranking goes you are definitely right about how this all works. I think people obsess way too much over numbers but if you’re trying to get advertisers for your site then they do matter a lot.

    I wrote a post about this years ago for the sames reasons you did, I didn’t realize how many people didn’t understand how it all works. But since it’s all based on their toolbar then that should bring a lot of people comfort right! Maybe people just don’t have that downloaded.

    Thanks Babanature for sharing this and I know so many people probably really appreciate it.

    Enjoy your weekend and have fun now.

    ~Adrienne

  14. Hi Baba,
    You are right.
    But the main problem is that I have an entertainment website. most of my visitor from search Engine. and they are not webmaster. they just visit my site to enjoy life in free time. Actually I have two topic in my site.
    Happy Wedding anniversary Wishes
    Happy Birthday Wishes.
    Now How can I improve my Alexa Rank.
    one thing more. I have Good amount of traffic. about 4500-5000 visitor / per day and 8500-9000 page view/ day.
    thanks in Advance

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