How to Improve Your Alexa Ranking

Three Parts: Improving Traffic  Optimizing Your Site  Advertising Your Site

Alexa is an organization that analyzes traffic using their own tools and algorithms. They then produce a ranking of sites on the internet as to how they stack up. While the way Alexa gathers data may be questionable, there are ways that you can increase your odds of your rank increasing, as well as improving traffic in general.

> Part 1 of 3: Improving Traffic

1.) Understand how Alexa rankings works. Alexa generates statistics based on the browsing habits of users who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser. This means that the sample set that Alexa uses is very small, and also skewed towards people who tend to have lots of toolbars installed in their browser (most scanners classify the Alexa toolbar as "adware" or "trackware"). Alexa is only one small measurement for the effectiveness of your site, and has no bearing on your search engine ranking.

• Generally, you will see increases in your Alexa ranking if you are bringing in more traffic through quality content and effective search engine optimization (SEO).

2.) Focus on quality content. The number one way to improve traffic to your site is to create quality, unique content. There are a lot of ways to do this, depending on what your site is for. If you're trying to increase traffic to a blog, ensure that all of your posts are well-written and unique. If your site is photography-based, strive for the best pictures on the internet.

• Whatever your content is, ensure that it is error-free and presented well.

3.) Release content regularly. A regular update schedule will keep readers coming back to your site again and again, and will show the search engines that your site is active. If you're writing a blog, try to update weekly at least.

4.) Make your content shareable.

In the era of social networking, shareability is one of the most important aspects of increasing your traffic. This means having an attention-grabbing headline, a few captivating lead-in sentences, and a compelling image. This makes your content attractive to readers when your viewers share your content on their social network feeds.

5.) Give your site a redesign. The preferred style for websites is constantly changing and evolving, and if you're still using the same design your site had in 2009, you are significantly behind the times. A clean, well-functioning site will do wonders for your traffic and will help you retain visitors.

• Consider hiring a professional web developer to create a sleek, modern site for your content.

6.) Join an Alexa-boosting program.

If you still want to focus on increasing your Alexa rank , there are many programs you can join that promise to boost your rank. They do this by having many of their users with the Alexa toolbar installed visit your site, increasing your rankings. These programs cost money, and the benefits of an increased Alexa ranking via these means are questionable, because you are not actually improving your site's popularity.

> Part 2 of 3: Optimizing Your Site

1.) Optimize your keywords. Proper keyword use can help your content appear in major search engines. Overloading your content with keywords will work against you; they need to naturally flow with the content. Use the Google AdWords tool to find the keywords that are most important for your niche.

• Articles - This is the primary place where you need to optimize your keywords. Make sure that the keywords appear in natural places in the body of your content. Use the most important keywords a couple of times each.
• URLs - You can include keywords in your URL that may or may not appear in the article. This is a good place to include keywords that don't necessarily fit into the article.

2.) Optimize your images. Images can generate a lot of traffic from image search engines such as Google Images. Image descriptions should have several important keywords included in the alt text. Also ensure that your images are the smallest they can be without sacrificing quality, as a long load time can negatively affect your page ranking.

• Your image's filename should describe what the image is. Avoid "Image1", "Image2", etc.

3.) Builds some back links. Back links are one of the most effective ways to drive traffic back to your site.Guest posting is one way that people gain back links, but it has been criticized as a potential spam signal by Google.

• The trustworthiness of the site that contains a link to your site will affect how much weight is given to it in search rankings.
• The anchor text, or text that is displayed in place of the link address, should be relevant to the content that is being linked to.

4.) Creat a sitemap. Your sitemap will allow the bots to easily see how your site is laid out. A good site map will help your pages get indexed into the major search engines. You can create your sitemap yourself, or use a tool to generate one.

• Place your sitemap in the root directory of your web server.

5.) Check your site's structure. You'll want to ensure that search engine bots can easily crawl your site. This means that all of your links should be working and the site should be easily navigable. There are several services online that allow you to run crawler simulations on your site.

• Some of the more popular crawling simulators include GSiteCrawler, Screaming Frog and Xenu. These bot simulators will help expose any problematic areas regarding the navigation and structure of your site.

6.) Submit your site to the major search engines. The three you'll want to focus on are Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Submitting your site to these search engines will help you get indexed quickly. See this guide  for more details on submitting your website.

> Part 3 of 3: Advertising Your Site

1.) Create social media pages. Facebook  and Google+  both allow you to create social media pages for your site, and are two of the most popular social networks online. Whenever you release a new piece of content on your site, link to it on both of these services.

2.) Creat a Twitter Account. Either use your personal twitter account or create an account for your site or business. Post links to all of your new content, and use the Twitter account to interact with readers and other content creators in the same niche as you.

• Twitter is a very public forum, and care should be taken when saying things in the name of your website. If people take offense to your tweets, which happens more often than you might think, you can quickly create a public relations nightmare.

3.) Make an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow your visitors to subscribe and be instantly notified when new content is uploaded. You can create your RSS feed manually or use a variety of tools to create one.

4.) Start a mailing list. If you have a user registration system, consider having all users automatically opted in to a mailing list. This mailing list can highlight the new content you are most proud of, and can bring back viewers who haven't been to your site in a while.

5.) Give your readers options to share. Give all of your articles buttons to allow readers to submit your articles to aggregate sites. Sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg can generate a lot of traffic if the content is posted there correctly.

Warnings-

• Add your website address sparingly to social bookmarking and wiki sites. Users who over-indulge in self-promotion will be perceived as spammers which may result in your efforts to be simply ignored, or, even worse, your website being added to blacklists.