Everything You Should Know about Alexa Rank

What Does Alexa Rank Present Itself?

It’s known as a global ranking system that estimates and then gives ratings to websites according to their popularity. For this reason, the lower your Alexa rank is, the more well-known your resource is. Besides, it looks at competitive analysis, e.g. how your website refers to other portals. Thus, it might serve as a useful benchmarking KPI tool.

How Does Alexa Rank Work?

Alexa Rank is calculated with the help of following parameters: a number of page views for the last 3 months and average daily unique visitors. Therefore, it estimates such data as engagement and traffic from its toolbar.

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In order to improve Alexa rank, you should get started by downloading and installing its toolbar. After it, you will be shown the place of your site in accordance with the rating. Moreover, all traffic data will be sent to a central server with a record of your IP address and URL.

How Is It Calculated?

We’ve already described it in brief, but let’s pay more attention to this issue. Alexa rank collects information and stats based on its own global data panel. For this, it uses browser extensions for Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and so on.

Alexa ranking algorithm measures websites by unique daily visitors and average page views over the last 3 months. Furthermore, the resource with the highest combination of these parameters is ranked as #1. It’s noteworthy that if one and the same viewer visits a resource several times a day, it will be estimated as a single visit. That’s because the site calculates the frequency of unique visits.

What’s more, Alexa ranking tries to cover third-party data in order to compensate those users that are not included in the measurement panel.

Are Alexa Ranking Data Accurate?

Though Alexa rank is known as one of the most effective tools for website promotion, its data can’t be called absolutely accurate. There was a great and detailed research of Alexa in comparison with Google Analytics. According to it, some resources with really imposing and high page views have rather low Alexa ranking.

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The reason for it lies in its coverage. In fact, Google can boast of a wider coverage than Alexa since not all the users have Alexa toolbar installed. Therefore, you’d better use this tool to compare your website with others. Alexa rank checker can’t serve as the determining instrument for having an accurate overview of your resource.

Is It Possible to Manipulate Alexa Rank?

As Search Engine Journal says, users are able to manipulate their Alexa rank. In order to increase it, you should create a JavaScript option for opening an array of website page addresses. The main idea is to have addresses opened in separate windows – that is how page views are increased artificially.

Though it might seem great at first glance, it’s not recommended to follow since it might result in problems with UX. Do you like those sites that force you to click through various pages in order to read a page or an article? It’s irritating, isn’t it?

Don’t become a person who creates it. If you want to receive a helpful and worthy tip, then write regular and involving content. You will not only get Alexa rank this way but attract right traffic to your resource. It will provide you with long-term perspectives while manipulation techniques are nothing else but short tactics. So, their results won’t last for long as well.

How to Check Alexa Rank of Your Site?

It’s very simple! Just turn to an official checker, enter your site’s URL, and receive data. From here, you can make a detailed research of your resource by the following parameters:

Keyword opportunities breakdown;
Comparison metrics (such as search traffic, bounce rate, linking websites);
Top keywords by traffic (with share of voice);
Similar resources by audience overlap score.

If you want to check Alexa rank for several domains at once, you need the bulk rank checker. Just enter all your URLs in it. Pay attention that each link should be on a separate line.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Alexa Rank

Alexa ranking might be helpful in the following way:

If you use your resource mostly for advertising campaigns and making money, a high Alexa web rank gives an opportunity to charge more for ad space.
It allows comparing your site with rivals without wasting too much time on it. All data are already collected in one place and divided by important parameters. Just analyze it!
You may attract quest writers who would like to contribute their articles to ranked and promising websites.
You receive insights which might be useful for SEO and marketing strategies.

Still, here are some points when Alexa might not assist you:

Data you get may be limited by those users who have the toolbar being installed. So, some sites dispose low rank despite getting lots of users and high traffic.
There’re some ways to manipulate your Alexa rank, that’s why rankings are not always reliable.
Unfortunately, Alexa doesn’t rank subpages separately. It covers only top-level sites and domains.

5 Tips How to Improve Alexa Rank

We recommend increasing Alexa ranking service without manipulation. Follow our effective and easy-to-use tips:

Add metadata. They include meta descriptions and titles. It helps users understand what your resource and concrete site pages are about.
Prepare client-oriented content. When users want to read it, it doesn’t only improve SEO but attracts them to your website and ranks for keywords that determine your revenue. Also, it increases chances that users having Alexa toolbar installed will provide you with a higher rank. According to statistics, 70% of users prefer content to traditional ads.
Update your site timely. Whatever your site is about, you should improve engagement by creating useful and interesting content. It should always be fresh and timely!
Use social media. Having your website on the Net and writing content here is great, but you should also promote your product or services in social networks. An ideal option is when you know your target audience and choose social media strategies according to its interests. With more than 3 million social network users a day, you won’t leave an opportunity to attract them to your resource.
Increase web traffic. In fact, it’s the hardest option in this list. It covers not only good content but high-grade backlinks, snippets, and more. Together they maintain a high-quality and healthy resource. Besides, even good hosting can make sense. Take it into account!

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What Are 10 Most Popular Websites Ranked by Alexa?

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If you check Alexa rank of the most popular websites, you will be surprised to discover top 10 resources. They are provided with such statistics as average time spent on the site on a daily basis, average traffic from the site in percents, linking sites, and more.

Thus, here is the top:

Google.com – the search engine that even doesn’t require a presentation;
Youtube.com – the portal with a mine of videos;
Facebook.com – the social network known worldwide;
Baidu.com – the search engine in Chinese;
Wikipedia.org – a big online encyclopedia;
Gq.com – an American magazine about men’s style;
Taobao.com – the online shop based on C2C;
Tmall.com – a Chinese online shop for electronics, household appliances, etc.;
Yahoo.com – the 2nd most popular search portal in the world;
Amazon.com – the online shop for electronics, apparel, and more.

To Sum It All Up

To tell the truth, certified Alexa rank might serve as a useful and effective tool to get traffic and receive data for site comparison. Be productive and base your marketing work as on Alexa, so Google Analytics. Use it as an additional instrument to develop your SEO strategy.