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10 Free and Easy Ways to Improve Your Alexa Ranking
By Darrell Howell (c) 2008

Alexa, which is owned by Amazon.com, gives away a free
toolbar that you can download and install in your browser.
Alexa is then able to keep track of the sites you visit and
compute the traffic ranking of those websites, with a rank
of "1" being the assigned to the most visited site.

If you want a more technical definition, Alexa explains it
like this:

"The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated
historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar
users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data
sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users
(reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and
number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily
basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value
derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so
that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users
who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the
site viewed by those users)."

(http://www.alexa.com/site/help/traffic_learn_more)

In April 2008 Alexa revised its methodology so as to
"aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better
indication of website popularity among the entire
population of Internet users".
(http://awis.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html)

How accurately this method reflects the actual surfing
patterns of all Internet users is open to question.
However, if you bear in mind that by the end of 2005 the
toolbar had been downloaded well over 10 million times you
will realize why many people still think that Alexa offers
one of the best approximations that we have of website
ranking, especially for the top 100,000 or so websites.

That is why Alexa remains an important measure of a
website's status and is used as a quick way to assess the
popularity of a website by advertisers looking for the
maximum exposure for the their money. Websites with a
higher Alexa ranking also tend to be trusted more than
those with a low ranking, so it is in the interest of
website owners to get their sites ranked as highly as
possible with Alexa.

Here are some quick and easy tips to help you do that
without spending a single dollar!

1. Install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as your
homepage.

2. Copy and paste an Alexa rank widget onto your website.
You can get the widget code at
http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup. As well as
informing your visitors about your Alexa rank, it will also
keep Alexa updated about the number of unique visitors
surfing your site.

3. Create a customized version of the Alexa tool bar, Then
place a link on your site to the download page and invite
your visitors to download it. You will also earn Amazon
commissions every time a user shops on Amazon via the
toolbar link.

4. If you have a Wordpress blog there is a plug-in for
Alexa Ranking (wp-Alexa-redirect-0.3plug-in) that you can
use.

5. Submit your site to web directories. Although a lot of
directories charge a registration fee, you can still find
many that are willing to list your site free of charge or
in exchange for a reciprocal link. A lot of the webmasters
who browse web directories have the Alexa bar installed, so
if they click your link it will help your Alexa traffic
rank.

6. Become an active participant on Internet marketing and
SEO forums. Again, a lot of those forum participants are
already webmasters and a high percentage will use the Alexa
toolbar when they surf. Place a link to your site in your
signature and your rank will improve when any of those
people click through.

7. A lot of Asian and Australian websites feature in the
Alexa top 100,000 and you can bet that a lot of website
owners will have the Alexa toolbar installed, so it makes
sense to join social networking sites that are popular in
those regions, such as:

* http://www.orkut.com - Orkut is owned by Google and is
the second most visited site in India.

* http://hi5.com - Hi5 has an Alexa ranking of 17 at the
time of writing this article.

8. Become an Alexa expert and post articles that discuss
Alexa ranking and SEO tips. This will attract people to
your site who may be interested in downloading your
toolbar, or people who have already done so. Either way, it
will be good for your Alexa ranking. You could even build a
whole category of articles on your website devoted to this
theme.

9. Set up a freebie page on your website and post a list of
useful tools to attract other website owners to your site.
Include another link to your Alexa toolbar download page.

10. Get into the habit of using Stumbleupon and other
bookmarking sites to spread the word whenever you post a
new article on your website or blog. Set up a group of
fellow website owners so that you can have run reciprocal
stumbling campaigns for better results.

If you apply these ten quick and easy methods you will
definitely see an improvement in your Alexa rank and you
should also start to attract more traffic to your site!
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Darrell Howell is an Internet Marketer and Blogger. Check
out his Blog at http://www.blueridgemoney.info
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