Alexa rankings are always changing.  Since many companies we speak with ask us if we can help them get their site to have an Alexa ranking below 100,000, i’d like to clear the air a bit of what an Alexa ranking is and is not.

What it is not.
It is not what Google uses to determine which sites show above or below other sites in it’s organic space.

What it is.
It is an indicator of how much traffic is coming to your site from computers that have installed the Alexa toolbar.  In addition, it also values how old your site is, how much content is on the site, how well it’s built and finally, who’s talking about you.  They measure “who’s talking about you” by the amount of linkbacks you have and the strength and weight of the link.

As an example.  We strategized and built 2 different sites this past month.
One site we built, www.continuitycompliance.org has received 592 linkbacks from other sites in it’s first 7 weeks.  That means that 592 blogs, forums and other websites have made a mention of the site we built, somewhere on their website.  This gave my client an Alexa ranking of 892,000 out of the roughly 40,000,000 registered websites in the U.S..
That means that Alexa is telling the world that based on the content of the site, the construction of the site and the 592 other sites talking about the site, it believes it is the 892,000th best site in the U.S..

Another site we built this past month www.emovingstorage.com has less content, has only been live 3 weeks, and has an Alexa ranking of 1,600,000.  Again, very impressive considering it only has 1 linkback.  The reason why this has such a strong Alexa ranking, right out of the gate, is because we spent 3 months strategizing the site.  We know that Google and Alexa weigh the linkbacks.

Government links weigh more than University links.
University links weigh more than business links.
Business links weigh more than blog links, etc., etc.

Knowing the above weight factors, we built the site “AFTER” calling the state of Indiana and the state of Illinois governments asking them what they’d like to see on our site that might help them in their efforts in communicating with the citizens of Indiana and the citizens of Illinois.  They told us exactly what would help them.  We then spent 3 months building it and you can find the link to what we built at the bottom of the page right here http://www.in.gov/dor/3398.htm.  Once you follow the link to the site, double click the state of Indiana.  The amount of information we will keep updated for the state of Indiana will be very useful to them, that’s why they will give a shout out to us on their website.  Was it a lot of work, YES.  Was it worth it, HECK YES.  As of righting this we have the commitments of 4 other states, with 5 other states considering linking to us.

As you can see, there is a lot more to building strong websites than good content and search engine optimization.

If you’d like to see some great information on Alexa, and how to best use this tool and this website, check out this great article http://www.doshdosh.com/20-quick-ways-to-increase-your-alexa-rank/.

-Ken
Growth Consulting for Today