Tips on how to improve alexa for your websites/blogs
Apr 23, 2008 
Ever wonder how does the Alexa Rank of Balkhis dropped from millions to now a mere 162,714 ? and How am I still managing to get it to go lower and lower? Let me tell you guys a few secrets about alexa ranking that I have learned over the years I have been in the webmaster industry.
For those of you who don’t know what Alexa Traffic Rank is then this is for you. Alexa Traffic Rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach).
Why am I sharing this information? and Why should you use it?
I am sharing this information because I think it is essential for webmasters and bloggers. Why is Alexa so important? Alexa is important because when you go to sell ads people consider your alexa rank as a measure of your traffic. One of the biggest advertising networks in the industry like Reviewme, and TLA both use alexa rank to measure your page strength and determine the price. You should use this advice if you want to increase your revenue from your website.
Before I begin with the actual tips I want to make you aware that Alexa is a bit skewed toward the webmaster sites. Due to the fact that most users who use the alexa toolbar are webmasters, majority of the top ranked sites are webmaster sites. There are many blackhat ways that you can manipulate your alexa ranking by doing those which I don’t recommend anyone to take therefore I will not go into how those work.
Below are some of the tricks that you can/should use to increase your alexa traffic rank:
1) Place an Alexa widget on your site. Some people say that a click on these widgets from a person with no alexa toolbar installed actually means one visit from a visitor with toolbar (which determines the alexa traffic rank). By installing these widgets, you can surely increase your alexa rank. Atleast Balkhis’s Alexa rank and all my other projects have benefited from this. You can get these widgets from Alexa’s Developer’s Corner. It can look something like this one, or it can be a graph or any other one discussed in the developer’s corner.
2) Next thing you can do which I find is very effective is install Alexa Toolbar in your Internet Explorer, or FireFox Addon of Alexa. Once you have done that, then set your website as your homepage of the browser (Include that in tabs as well). How many times you open/close a window. Each time your site will load. One visit will count. Also, you can do this same thing with your school/work computers and increase your Alexa rank.
3) As I mentioned above that most people who have this toolbar are webmasters. So what are you waiting for? Add your website’s url in your signature of your webmaster forum’s profile. Whenever you can, abuse use your link in your posts / threads. When people click on it, then you are likely to get a webmaster visit and your alexa will increase.
4) Buying Ads on high traffic websites can also inrease your Alexa Rank. I don’t know if you heard of people who buy blog reviews on high traffic webmaster blogs actually get a big bump in their alexa graph. Also Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns also drive in alot of traffic which means higher alexa rank.
5) Add Webmaster Tools to your website. Well I don’t know if you realize this pattern, but I am basically saying attract webmasters some how. With webmaster tools you can get webmasters to keep visiting your website which will increase in your traffic / alexa rank. In my experience most tools increase traffic.
6) Use social media networks to your advantage. Stumble, Digg, Entrecard, MyBlogLog, and others will bring in alot of users to your website. The chances are that a good number of them will have alexa toolbars which will increase your alexa rank as well as your traffic.
7) This last trick is semi-black hat. You can change your url from http://www.balkhis.com to http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.balkhis.com. This redirect will count the visitor as a unique visitor with alexa toolbar on your site whether they have alexa toolbar or not. (Use with Caution)
So to summarize this post, Lower alexa ranking means better traffic on the site which will lead more adverts to advertise on your site. You can use the above tips to help you.
Alexa has recently improved their ranking , but they have not revealed how they have done so, but If you didn’t notice majority of the website’s dropped in rankings, but Balkhis has continued to gain its rank. I have been using the tricks above plus quality content, so you should use these tips above.
Thats a wonderful info bro.
Thanks
Thanks for enlightening me on Alexa a little more. I have noticed your alexa spiking recently….
yeah I have been doing the tricks above as well as entrecards which I have mention in my previous posts.
lol. I know about the blackhat technique.
But dont know about the widget thing. Thanks.
Actually Syed, you might have noticed why some major blogs like JohnChow and Shoemoney have lost their ranks from around 5000 to 18000 in a sudden as alexa has changed its ranking system, and is pulling traffic data from other external sources. Placing alexa widgets is not going to influence much, similar with the alexa toolbar.
I am still trying to figure out whether search engine and social bookmarking traffic has any effect on the new alexa system.
Yes Chetan, I have noticed that. Until alexa actually reveal some of the changes there is no way to tell. Although what I think is that they are getting data from more sources not just the two I discussed. We will just have to wait and see.
The new Alexa Traffic Ranking is ridiculous.
Sites with much less traffic is ranked higher than sites with much more traffic.
Alexa made a major boo boo with this update.
Time to switch to Quantcast instead.
Only time will tell that … I guess you really can’t tell the traffic of any site if you don’t own it unless they show you the screenshot.
Great tips. I wish I knew more about computer stuff so I could use them. I tried installing the alexa tool bar once and only once - NEVER AGAIN. It totally messed up everything and I still can’t get rid of some of the stray bits of it but they are quarantined.
But I have the worst luck with anything to do with software, computers etc. - even my home computers won’t connect to the internet (my routers are fine, they are connected, my service provider says all is fine, the laptop connects to every one’s else’s routers - so I have to wait till a neighbor turns on theirs to connect).
oh well, I know I have a lot to learn and maybe some day I’ll get the hang of it.
Gaming Alexa this way is exactly why nobody believes it is valid and also why Amazon is trying to improve it finally.
Compete.com offers a toolbar also and their rankings are at least less skewed to give a great ranking to a site that has only 1 or 2 users who visit the site 20 times an hour, LOL.
Yes I am glad that they are improving as well. Blackhat tricks to manipulate alexa are gaming not the tricks like add webmaster tools and others…
If such things were gaming then everyone who buy textlinks on their niche related sites will need to stop because they are gaming the google system.
Every action can be classified as gaming such as a blogger writing quality posts is also gaming the system because he will increase his traffic which will indirectly increase alexa rank….
I guess this gaming will never stop
Alexa would not open the things this time as people would again try to manipulate the rankings if the sources of the new ranking system are known. Let them keep it a secret.
hehe yeah thats what I think also … most likely they are not going to share anything and just rank ..
I don’t think placing the widget, the toolbar and redirecting work much anymore..
I’d prefer the rest of the tips on keep posting useful contents PLUS promoting them to get people interested and link you back.
I started a post on Alexa’s update and I’d love to read what you think about what Alexa would become either the update makes them better or worse in the future.
I like your post
I have left my words there. I think the update could possibly make alexa a more reliable system, but since they haven’t put anything out in public yet, and presume they would not in the future either. Only time will tell whether these tricks above will work or not 
I appreciate that you have taken your time out to comment on my small blog
Thanks for sharing the tips…
I wrote a thing with screen shots and everything
I Jumped Over 1 Million Websites in 14 days. The Case for Alexa
And I’ve heard the redirect hasn’t worked in a minute. It’s working for you?
to tell you the truth the article you wrote is not that hard to do. It is not hard to jump a million when you are in 2,569,390
This just says that I jumped about 4 million in 6 weeks…. The technique you shared as well as I did about the widget won’t get anyone over 1 million … you need to have real traffic …
All new sites start out at that point and with mere 100 uniques a day any site can go in 500k… I have a site that is in that range which only gets 100 uniques a day …
I liked the screenshots, but if you ever use that technique to go under 50k … do share it here ..
About the redirects, I have heard it work and it has worked for me in my past sites.
Thanks for visiting and reading some of my post. I did specifically mention in the comments that as you get into the lower number it would be more difficult. It’s a little like being in a room, and somebody yells fire. When everybody rushes for the exit it’s no longer easy to get out.
And there are people stuck above the million mark (even with 100 uniques a day), that’s why there are about 30 comments with people saying they had been stuck and this got their numbers down. I’ve been dropping about a 100,000 every week, and now a little over 700,000.
I’m not exactly sure why you refer to what I’m doing as “that technique” it’s the exact same thing you’re doing over here. Toolbar and widget. All I’m doing is agreeing with you.
I think if you read the complete sentence of that technique it goes something like this “The technique you shared as well as I did”…. So I do acknowledge the fact that I am using it also.
It is a technique which many of us use including myself.
Also about the 100 uniques a day.. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/wordscrawl.com
The site above is own by one of the crew members of Balkhis and it gets around 100 uniques a day. This site has an alexa of 441k … which is well below half a million with no widget placed…
While you agree with me all I wanted to stress in the comment above was that getting down to a half million even below that it is fairly easy for a webmaster base audience site, but once entering 100k it becomes harder and harder below 50k.
I am not saying anything against you either … I was just stressing the point about your post title it was a bit exaggerated
I liked checking your blog out. I try to visit the sites of all users that comment on my site.
Ok. Understood.
Some minor differences in wording may have made some things unclear, but we’re all working toward the same goal; getting more traffic. And I think we all want to share what we’ve learned. I appreciate the work you’re doing.
And I would like to contribute to your list of social media resources. Squidoo. How that site can be used to benefit a blog’s traffic is amazing.
True .. English is not my first language so sometimes I have difficulties in the selection of words. You got the ultimate goal right … get more readers.
I am glad that you liked my work at Balkhis.
I will definately do my research on squidoo and post about that in upcoming posts.
I hv a site receiving around 300 UV daily by its serp on SE’s …
but still the Alexa of this site is around 250k … i don’t have Alexa widget on it … the site is around 10k pages … shall i place Alexa widget on it to get under 90k ? I don’t think it wud b helpful .. as the visitors on it are not webmasters (so they do not have ALexa toolbar), so not good ranking.
Try it for one month, and if it doesn’t work then you can take it off, but most likely than not I think it will work.
Adding the Alexa sidebar definitely helps so if youre thinking about it then go for it!
They said putting the alexa widget in your site would increase your rank. I’ve tried it, but there seems to be no difference @_@ They have lately changed their algorithm. My site’s traffic is higher than the others but my ranking is much lower. Weird
yeah the change in algo is kind of messing all these tips up
Hi Khyle
When you said “they” do you mean Syed or you heard it from some other people also? When it was working for me I used the widget and the toolbar.
And yeah Alexa changed their stuff, and I was ready to take the widget off (but keep the toolbar) but then I dropped another 500,000 points 2 nights ago, with the same amount of traffic (and possibly about 50-100 uniques less per day).
So I’m going to give it another month so I can see what happens trying to get into the top 100,000.
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Good info, keep on posting these tips are really helpfull.
I have noticed that adding the Alexa widget definitely helped in raising up my Alexa rank. I used to be 80,000 at one point but sadly thats not the case anymore!