Alexa

Your Alexa ranking is an important part of your online business and helps to determine the value of your brand.

Alexa rankings are used to gauge the health of your website or business and whether it is trending up or down. Alexa rankings can also be used to determine the popularity of your business and how it is faring compared with your competitors.

While consumers don’t really use Alexa Rankings to determine the quality of your brand and website, other businesses, investors and potential business partners do.

In fact, if you are a B2B or if you are looking to secure investors or a business partner, your Alexa Ranking definitely matters.

Understanding your Alexa ranking can also help to boost the performance of your business. As the Alexa website states-

“Alexa is more than just the traffic rank you know and love from its early days. Checking website traffic and rank is the basis for uncovering actionable ideas to grow your business.”

Many businesses agonise over trying to boost their Alexa Ranking, but the good news is that there are a few tips and tricks that you can use to help speed up the process.

By following some of the techniques outlined in this article, you could boost your Alexa ranking in as little as 30 days. This ranking could help you to secure that new investor or boost the reputation of your brand.

If you are looking to boost your Alexa Ranking, here is how to get started with the process-

Understand the Alexa Ranking System

The Alexa rank is owned by Amazon and is a ranking system that audits and outlines the popularity of a particular website.

Alexa can reveal to you the traffic that a website is receiving as well as where the traffic is coming from and how long the traffic is engaging with the page.

According to the Alexa website-

“Alexa’s traffic estimates and ranks are based on the browsing behaviour of people in our global data panel which is a sample of all internet users. Alexa’s traffic ranks are based on the traffic data provided by users in Alexa’s global data panel over a rolling 3 month period.”

The type of information Alexa offers includes-

  • Your websites global rank
  • Your websites rank in the country of origin
  • How your site is ranked relative to other sites
  • Audience geography
  • Visits by country in percentages
  • Bounce rate
  • Daily page views per visitor
  • Daily time on site
  • Top keywords from search engines
  • Search traffic (What percentage come from a search engine)
  • Upstream sites- where people go after visiting the website
  • Total sites linking in
  • Sites related to your website
  • Website load time
  • Audience demographic – gender, education, browsing location

As you can see, Alexa offers a comprehensive view of your website and how your visitors are interacting with your website.

According to the company, Alexa gathers this information by “estimating the average daily visitors and page views to every site over the  past three months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and page views over the past three months is ranked number 1. The site with the least is ranked somewhere around 30 million.”

The website continues to state that the calculation is highly complicated and involves “correcting for biases as well as identifying and discarding fake or spam traffic.”

Of course, the information provided by Alexa is not as accurate as running your own Google Analytics, but it still gives a credible snapshot as to the authority of your brand and even your competitors.

If you are wondering what the top ranked sites are on Alexa, here are the top 5 in order-

  1. Google.com
  2. Youtube.com
  3. Facebook.com
  4. Baidu.com
  5. Yahoo.com

It is interesting to note that the higher your ranking, the harder it is to boost your ranking, whereas the lower your ranking, the easier it is to boost it. This is due to the sheer amount of competition from the top sites online.

Even though Alexa only paints part of the picture, many investors and businesses looking to do a deal with your brand will consult your Alexa ranking before anything else. This is why it is super important that your Alexa ranking is as accurate as possible and paints your brand in the best possible light.

Alexa also helps you to determine things like-

  • Who your main competitors are in your industry
  • How you compare to your competitors
  • How your competitors are doing better than you
  • The best keywords to be using for your brand
  • Your low competition keywords
  • Your competitor’s keywords
  • Technical SEO problems (site load time etc.)

There is a lot of information you can gain from Alexa that you can’t from Google Analytics, which is why it is worth paying attention to.

Boosting Your Ranking on Alexa

Once you have logged your domain into Alexa you will be able to see where you stand in terms of your ranking. Take a screen shot of your current ranking as this will help you to track the changes over time.

In order to boost your ranking on Alexa, here is how to get started-

1.) Certify your site metrics

Alexa offers the option of certifying your sites metrics. This costs a small fee but it may be worth it, especially if you are trying to attract an investor or new clients.

According to the Alexa website-

“To get a more accurate Alexa rank you can certify your site’s metrics on Alexa. Sites with certified metrics have their metrics measured directly by Alexa instead of being estimated based on information from our data panel. Certifying your site’s metrics provides a more accurate rank.”

By certifying your metrics with Alexa, it will allow you to-

  • Achieve more accurate rankings on the site
  • Gain access to more in-depth analytics reports
  • Closely monitor your site’s performance and how it changes in terms of ranking with competitors
  • Display unique visitors, page views and other ranks publicly

The pricing for this starts at around $10 per month but then goes upwards to around $149 per month depending on how much access you require and what special features you need to be included.

It is of course, up to your business whether it is worth making the investment but through certifying your metrics it definitely gives you a distinct advantage over other websites.

When you have access to all of the metrics and they are more accurately tracked, it also helps to put your business on a more confident footing.

2.) Produce Epic Content Weekly 

The next step to improving your Alexa ranking is to produce epic content. Why? With great content on your site it will help to boost your traffic, engagement rates and the time spent on your site.

You may have also seen websites breaking up their epic content into several pages- this is also a good trick to help boost the number of pages each visitor clicks on and the ranking of your brand.

There are no rules as to what constitutes as epic content however, here are some things to keep in mind-

  • Make your focus on offering value to your readers
  • Go into detail about topics and aim for a word count of at least 2,000 plus
  • Go above and beyond what is already out there online to enhance your authority
  • Break up passages with bulleted lists and subheadings
  • Find new and interesting ways to jazz up your content whether it is through graphs, tables and slides
  • Use lots of images in order to add to your words and boost engagement levels
  • Create catchy, bold headlines that spark interest and get your audience curious as to what you are talking about
  • Write content that addresses concerns of your audience and try to answer their most pressing questions

These top tips will help you to create epic content every single time, which will help you to boost your ranking on Alexa in no time at all.

According to the Alexa website-

“Produce engaging, original content updated frequently that provides real value to your audience. When readers find resources valuable and informative, they engage with future content and share among their networks, introducing new visitors that potentially turn into customers.”

For the best results, we recommend posting at least 2-3 pieces of epic content weekly. You may have to do this for at least 1-3 months in order to see the best results, but it will pay off.

To keep on track, monitor your content and how it is performing so you can make adjustments and tweak it along the way. This is where your own metrics on Google Analytics will help you to determine how to boost your ranking on Alexa.

3.) Build Quality Backlinks

Building quality backlinks is not only great for SEO but it is also great for boosting your Alexa ranking as well.

There are two things that are important when it comes to building backlinks- trust and authority. The more you can get backlinks on trusted and authoritative sites, the higher up you are likely to rank.

Getting backlinks on highly authoritative sites may not be easy, however there are some methods you can try-

  • Reach out to authors of big publications and asked to be featured
  • Reply to comments and share a link on top articles and posts
  • Pitch article ideas to big publications
  • Guest posts on other relevant sites
  • Post on social media as often as possible

When it comes to creating backlinks, it is best to focus on great content as your top priority. In fact, internet marketing guru, Neil Patel recommends brands to use the 90/10 rule when it comes to link building where 90 percent of your effort goes into making content and 10 percent goes into building credible links.

4.) Analyse Your Competitors and their Keywords

One of our favourite things when it comes to Alexa is the ability to see your competitors statistics as well. Again, while these statistics may not be 100 percent accurate, especially if they have not certified their metrics, they do offer a serious snapshot into what is going on in your industry.

One thing to pay particular attention to is your competitor’s keywords, as this is really going to help you get a leg up over your competition.

When you can see your competitor’s keywords, it allows you to know which  keywords are bringing in the most traffic. When you have this information, you can optimise your own site for these keywords and begin building momentum to dominate your industry.

This will help to not only boost your SEO rankings, but it will also help to drive your competition out of the water and will allow you to take over high search traffic keywords.

In order to boost your search rankings quickly, start with the keywords that have the least competition and then build your way up. This is also a great strategy if budget is an option.

For a crystal clear snapshot at the right keywords to choose, use Alexa along with Google’s Keyword planner.

While Alexa will help you to see what keywords your competitors are using, Google’s Keyword Planner will help you to see what the competition is overall and how you can best approach using the keyword as part of your strategy.

If you have one of the paid packages on Alexa however, you can use their keyword tool that will help you to find the best keywords to target for your website as well.

Alexa’s own keyword tool is called the “Keyword Difficulty Tool”, which helps you to find easy to rank keywords.

According to the Alexa website-

“Our keyword suggestion tool uses your site’s competitive power to find the best keyword ideas for your website…Alexa’s keyword suggestions are tailored to your site’s ability to rank and the relevance to your business….”

This will help to not only improve your ranking but will save you time and money in choosing the perfect keywords for your brand.

5.) Install an Alexa Rank Toolbar and/or Widget

Another way to boost your Alexa ranking is to install their widget or toolbar onto your site. Here is how to install each feature-

The Alexa Toolbar

Having the Alexa toolbar can help to increase your ranking, especially if your site is currently ranked in the millions.

Installing the toolbar is easy- simply visit the Alexa Toolbar installation page and click on the extension. The toolbar with then download to your preferred browser.

The toolbar also gives you access to special features such as your traffic ranking, related links, how your site looked in the past and other search analytics.

The Alexa Widget (Or Code)

One of the best ways to accurately rank on Alexa is to install one of their widgets on your website. Alexa also has plug-ins for word press and code that you can manually import into your site.

This is one of the best ways to bring your Alexa rank up to speed and can be an excellent solution if your Alexa rank statistics are not aligned with your Google Analytics.

Even though your Alexa ranking will always be slightly different to your Google Analytics, this is a great way to get the numbers on an even scale with each other.

Installing the widget is also one of the fastest ways to get your site ranking boosted fast.

6.) Share your Content on Social Media Platforms

As you saw earlier, Facebook is the top three most visited website in the world. According to Alexa, the average user also spends over 15 minutes on the site at any given time.

We all know how it is when we visit Facebook- we go just for a quick browse and ending up scrolling through for nearly an hour!

Facebook is definitely the most popular social network in the world, but many of the other platforms like Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn are also ranked well by Alexa.

When you share your content on platforms such as these, it helps to boost your ranking and authority and Alexa does record this.

Posting on social media also increases the chance of your article going viral and increases the amount of engagement and traffic on your site.

Alexa heavily tracks social traffic so the more traffic you can get, the higher your ranking is likely to be.

Posting on social media is also great for your SEO and acquiring new leads and customers, so really it is a win-win all round.

7.) Create Internal Links

We mentioned the importance of building backlinks, but internal links are also important.

Internal links are links that lead users from one page or post on your site to another. These are beneficial as they help to guide visitors through your website and keeps them interested and engaged with the content on your site.

Creating a consistent and logical flow of internal links on your website can help to boost your Alexa ranking and can also do wonders for increasing the amount of time visitors spend on your site as well.

When you create internal links, they also help to contribute to site links which are the sub-links that appear in the search engine results below your main page link. These are valuable and can help your customers and other search engines to navigate your site with ease.

Because internal links help search engines to understand the content of your site and how valuable it is for readers, Alexa rankings also pay attention to this.

Of course, you don’t want to over-link as this can have a detrimental effect, but setting up internal links can help to boost your Alexa ranking as well.

Is the Alexa Ranking Still Relevant in 2017?

In the early days, Alexa was considered to be just a ranking tool but since then it has increased its power considerably.

Even though it is still mainly used for ranking, it also offers many other insights that could be relevant to your business. This is especially true if you are looking to do business with clients, other businesses and investors who want to see how your brand stacks up against its competitors.

The Alexa rank also provides insight into how your brand is faring compared with your competition, which can be invaluable if you are looking to get a leg up in the industry.

Startups should also pay particular attention to their Alexa ranking as it will not only help them to understand their market and industry, but it will also help them to stand out to potential investors.

While the Alexa Ranking is not the only measure of a great website, it should be a part of every solid marketing strategy.

The good news is that by following best SEO practices and working on the quality of your website in general, your Alexa ranking should naturally follow.

Many of the tactics to increase your Alexa ranking are all practices that your brand should be implementing anyway.

Conclusion

Boosting your Alexa ranking in just a few short months is not hard to do. Here are the main points of this article summarised  –

  • Get a more accurate Alexa rank by certifying your site’s metrics through Alexa’s certification option (starts at $10 per month)
  • Work on creating epic and engaging content that offers values to your readers and increases the average time spent on your website
  • Build back links through guest posting and reaching out to credible authors from authoritative sites
  • Analyse your competitor’s keywords so you can rank higher in search results and funnel your competitor’s traffic to your own website
  • Install the Alexa toolbar and widget/website code in order to gain more accurate metrics, (a free alternative if you don’t want to pay for Alexa’s certification option)
  • Share your content on social media in order to expand your reach, traffic and engagement rates- focus on high ranking social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
  • Create internal links in your website for easier navigation and to boost your SEO

By following these simple suggestions, your Alexa rank will be improved in just a few short weeks and you will be able to use it to your advantage in order to attract new clients or investors and to dominate your competition.