Although a lot of bloggers and webmasters will argue that Alexa Traffic Ranking is not an accurate representation of your blog’s actual traffic rank, it’s still very important because most advertisers depend on it to measure the value of a blog. If you are one of those people interested in monetizing your blog, then you should work in improving your blog’s Alexa Traffic Rank.

improve your Blog's Alexa Traffic Rank

Recently, I made a challenge to all bloggers who are monetizing their blog to improve their Alexa Traffic Rank in the coming months. In my post, I’ve linked to some useful articles discussing how a blog’s Alexa Traffic Rank can be improved. You can also use Google to search for tips on how to improve Alexa Traffic Rank and you’ll certainly find plenty of it. Sometimes, you can even find articles on how to cheat or manipulate your Alexa Traffic Rank but I would suggest that you stay away from these tricks as it may adversely affect your blog instead. Since most of the tips on improving Alexa Traffic Rank are second hand information, I’ve decided to email Alexa Customer Service to directly ask them about how a blog’s Alexa Traffic Rank can be improved. This is the email I have received from them.

Dear Rocky,Thank you for contacting Alexa Internet.

Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of Reach and Page Views. Reach is the percentage of internet users who visit a site. Page Views are the average number of Alexa user URL requests for a site, per Toolbar user. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single Page View. The site with the highest combination of users and Page Views is ranked #1. (Currently, this is yahoo.com.)

There are three possibilities that might increase the number of Alexa users who visit your site.

First, you will want to see that your site is properly categorized in our Directory so it may be easily found by our users. The Directory (browse subjects) on www.alexa.com is a copy of the Open Directory (www.dmoz.org).

To add your site to the Open Directory, go to www.dmoz.org, find the category your site should be listed in, and click the “suggest URL” link at the top of the page. We highly recommend reading their submission guidelines first at:

http://dmoz.org/add.html/

Adding or changing your site through the Open Directory is the most efficient way to modify your listing, as the Open Directory is used on thousands of major sites across the web (like Google and Netscape).

Secondly, you can submit your site as a Related Link for sites with similar content. Go to http://info.alexa.com/data/details/editor?type=rl/ and enter the URL of the site whose related links you wish to be included in. Enter your email address and your URL in one of the empty boxes, and then press submit. These submissions are reviewed by an Alexa editor for relevance before appearing in the service (with our current load, approximately 8 weeks if approved). We do not guarantee that we will accept or display these submissions.

Finally, you may also want to promote the Alexa Toolbar to your users. If your regular users choose to download Alexa, that may lead to more Alexa visits and a higher ranking. You can learn more about this at:

http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/associatetoolbar.html/

We appreciate and thank you for your interest in Alexa.

Best regards,
Alexa Internet Customer Service

I’ve asked the Alexa Customer Service representative about whether Alexa redirect is a legitimate and effective way to improve your Alexa Traffic Rank but haven’t heard an explanation from them. Even Maki of Dosh Dosh in his post on improving Alexa Traffic Rank was not certain about whether redirect is effective or not. It would probably be a good idea not to engage in this activity as it has not been proven to have worked and it may compromise your blog’s search engine optimization.

Submitting your blog to the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) on the other hand which is used by Alexa will usually take sometime. Submitting your blog to the Open Directory Project does not only improve your Alexa Traffic Rank but it also improves your blog’s search engine ranking. I’ve made an article about how to improve your blog’s search engine ranking by submitting to the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) that you might be interested of. The post summarizes some of the key aspects of the submission process that you should know before attempting to submit your blog.

In my succeeding posts, I will be writing something about the Alexa Tool Bar and I’ll have it promoted to my readers to see how it will help improve Blogging Mix’s Rank. For now, I would like to hear from you. How far have you been in improving your Alexa Traffic Rank? So far, which of the tips have worked for you? Feel free to share it through the comment.

Thank you for your time. :)

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