7 Ways to Improve Your Alexa Ranking

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In a previous post, I shared ways to improve your Alexa ranking and it was extremely well received byBucket List Publications Logo my readers. It turns out, many other bloggers are searching for answers about rankings, followers, views, and states so, after proudly reaching 10 million views, I’ve decided to re-post the article.  I’d love your feedback and if you have anything that I’m missing, please share with others. We are, after all, a community and it is that community that leads to success.

1. Alt tags should be on all of your images. Images are invisible to search engines, and alt tags are an easy way to tell search engines what your image is about. Below a recently uploaded image, there should be a section that says, “Title”, “Alternate Text”, “Caption”, and “Description”. Tuck in a keyword for the alt tags and maximize the impact of the images on your site.

Alt Tag Screen

2. Download the Alexa toolbar and use it every day to visit your own website. You can see how your rankings are improving. Alexa even gives you the ability to co-brand the toolbar with your own logo and give it away. You can download the toolbar here:http://www.alexa.com/toolbar?utm_source=top-nav&utm_medium=www&utm_campaign=toolbar.

Alexa Ranking

3. Encourage your website visitors to add their positive testimonials on Alexa’s detailed listings page for your website. This can be done by placing a link to the appropriate Alexa page on your website and asking visitors to “Click here to rate this website”. You can find a detailed Alexa page here: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lesleycarter.wordpress.com. I checked the best ranked site on Alexa, which is Google, and they have 1047 reviews! I currently have 1! My goal is to gain 150 reviews before the end of the year! It’s a lot but with your support, I can make it happen. So, for every person that adds a review at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lesleycarter.wordpress.com, I will add a review for your site as well. It will take no more than 2 minutes; let’s grow in success together! Click on http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lesleycarter.wordpress.com and hit the five star button. After you’ve done it, shoot me a quick email, [email protected], with your blog address and I will return the favor.

Review lesleycarter.wordpress.com on alexa.com

4. Link your blog to Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. Blog posts shared on Twitter get 113% more inbound links than those not shared on social media at all. Also, did you know that Facebook is now the most preferred way of sharing content – second only to email? Promoting your site through social media such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook is key to funneling more traffic to your site. You can check out my Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts for more photos and writings. It’s a great place to get to know each other better.

5. Social shares such as tweets, likes, and follows are considered a superior and lasting way to promote the popularity of your site. Meaningful comments that show the writer you actually read their writing go a long way. I usually spend my morning and sometimes my evenings searching for other great sites to “like”, comment on, and share with others. It is this connection with other writers that lead them to my site. Remember to actually read the post and provide a meaningful comment. Besides, it’s great to read the work of other like-minded writers. It’s a win-win situation.

6. Responding to comments and messages shows readers that you care about their support. Regardless of the length of the comment or the content, that reader felt connected enough to your writing to respond and it warrants a response.

7. Every link to your site is another vote in the giant popularity contest that is the internet. The more sites that link to you, the better you will rank. Keep on creating and sharing all that great content, and you’ll keep moving closer to the top of the charts.

Obviously, content is king and is the number one factor in improving your rankings. Visitor engagement looks at how many times your visitors came to your site, how long they stayed around, and how many pages they viewed. In general, ranking sites want to see that people came to your site and stayed around because of all your great content. I’ve directed you to the good practices that I use, now go make that content great. May you continue to grow with success!

116 thoughts on “7 Ways to Improve Your Alexa Ranking”

  4. Great info. I agree very much with the notes regarding commenting on other blogs and actually reading entire posts. Shows a genuine interest in the writing of others and grows interest in your own pages.

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    • Sometimes it’s time consuming, but the quality of followers and supoort you get in return is totally worth it in the long run. 🙂

      I’m now following your blog and will check back regularly.

      Have a great day,

      Lesley

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      • Thanks Lesley! Your blog is awesome by the way. What you have accomplished is really my ultimate goal. My wife and I love to travel and to be able to do so full time would be a dream come true. Any advice or lessons you can give,on how you got to where you are would be greatly appreciated. I understand with the quantity of visitors you have this may be asking a little much.

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        • My philosophy is that you need to be completely unrealistic with your dreams and goals and then figure out how to make them happen.

          I certainly didn’t start out any better off than the next person. I was a student paying tuition and trying to get by financially like most, but I used my education to my advantage and took teaching jobs in different countries around the world. (That was a great start.) I also backpacked around Europe with little to no money and made the most of it. I saw over 20 countries before I even finished university. Then, as a teacher, I worked two other job to pay for my travels. It wasn’t easy but I was determined. Now, it comes a little easier. It is possible for everyone. You just have to set your mind to it. I don’t really have a secret or any more money than the next person; I just have a desire to live a dream life.

          I wish you a lifetime of success and happiness, however you define it.

          Lesley

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          • Unrealistic is good. I sometimes think if a dream is realistic then its not much of a dream! Question, when someone follows your blog does that automatically become an inbound link in the eyes of google, alexa, etc? Just wondering because I have more followers than what I show to have inbound links from other sites. For example, I was excited to have a site with the status of yours follow my blog but was unsure if that would count as an inbound link from you as well? I downloaded the alexa toolbar yesterday from a link in your post about improving your blog and I am only seeing 2 inbound links. I am guessing that maybe it only updates as your site is crawled? Anyway, thanks again. Have a good day!

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  13. My english isn’t the best so ” Title”, “Alternate Text”, “Caption”, and “Description are the alt tags? By filling in these you ave done what is needed to optimize? Do you write almost the same on all of them or? Thx for help :).

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      • You know Lesley.. I just do what I do… I write from the heart and what the people want and are searching for. I comment on the blogs that I like, I share them.. I do that for the people that believe in me. That’s what it’s all about support for the people you truly learn from. Thanks for LIKING… I do see it all the time. Mr.CBB

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  18. What a great milestone – fantastic! .And thanks very much for the insights too. You clearly follow your point 5 – and it clearly works! I try to do it too, and have read some fascinating blogs – but should definitely do more.

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    • Many thanks for this and the review, I’ve spent the morning just about getting to grips with the Alexa Ranking site and I think I’m almost there, I just can’t get the url from my RSS feed link to load as a tab…….grrrrrr!

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  25. Absolutely great advice! I am very active on Twitter but I need to tie that in more with my own blog… push my own writing as much as I do other things. I think you tagged a great deal of very valuable information here. Thanks! Tracy Solomon

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  27. This “blogging” journey is a constant discovery. Although I admit to checking my stats daily, the real joy is the community of photographers and writers that I’ve found and joined. Your post is especially timely with questions about ranking. It’s obvious that the lower the ranking the higher the traffic (your ranking is amazing). You’ve done a stellar job, building devotees. Your suggestions are good, because it takes enough time to keep a regular posting schedule. Any proven hints are appreciated.

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  31. Awesome post. Just started focusing on driving the Alexa ranking recently… +10,000,000 in a couple of weeks (but to only 13,000,000ish so you’re certainly in no danger). I use some of these, but was completely unaware of other suggestions, so many thanks. Will definitely be providing a positive review for you on Alexa…

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  36. Thanks;I had read this earlier but did not follow through on all,(I just got the Alexa toolbar). I found that going to sites and checking out the type of blog like the one I wanted to promote has been very enjoyable for me,and gotten a lot of ‘likes’ and subscribers. You really do need to get out there, but you also have to follow a path and not hit everyone willy-nilly , (although I may not have found you if I followed that to the letter!).I have found many followers by looking at the comments on other blogs that I enjoy.Thanks for all of your help.

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  41. I’ve been using the Alexa toolbar for a few weeks now. It’s fun to see how all kinds of sites rank, but it’s also gratifying to watch how my blog’s own rankings keep rising over time as I keep generating new content every day. It’s a neat encouragement tool.

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  42. I know I appreciate it when people comment and have taken the time to read what I write. It is something I don’t take lightly because I know how many other sites there are out there. This is all very good advice. I was not aware of the picture tagging. It does make sense.

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  43. I went from 10million to 655k worldwide in a short time. Now US is hovering 65-88k. Since I’m pretty provincial (mostly one county in CA.) not sure why those numbers are what they are. In the time they dropped so much, my hits aren’t that much bigger. Maybe links in and more subscribers and twit followers?

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  45. Thank you for sharing these pointers. As a new blogger I am thankful for basic reminders such as alt tags on photos. Basic, yes, but missed on my photo load ups.

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  48. This is a fantastic post. I knew a bit about Alexa rankings but the was excellent information. Thank you so much. I left a comment on Alexa for you because your blog is awsome, and congrats on the 10 million views. Did I say, I want to be like you when I grow up. 🙂 You go Girl!

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  49. Number 1 is a great tip, that many people overlook. Its also worth checking for other images on your site that dont have alt tags. Many wordpress theme developers leave alt tags blank for basic images through out the theme. The most recent update to the google penguin metrics reduce the rank of sites with blank alt tags.

    Another big factor for google is code validations. You can do a validation check on your website code by visiting: http://validator.w3.org/.

    I am surprised to see your including Alexa.com in your list of tips.

    I have always found the amount of importance that people place on Alexa.com rankings to be interesting. Per Alexa.com’s own documentation (http://www.alexa.com/help/traffic-learn-more) the primary factor in determining you ranking is the users who have the Alexa Toolbar installed.

    So essentially if you are able to get the majority of your visitors to install the Alexa toolbar and visit your site daily your alexa ranking will sky rocket. Data shows 44% of internet users use Google Chrome browse the web and based on the google plugin database the Alexa Plugin for chrome has been installed 206,144 time. By the numbers its safe to assume that there are around 500,000 people who actually have Alexa toolbars installed.

    To put that into comparison Apple sold around 20 million iPads and 32 million iPhones (all which run on Safari and don’t support Alexa), so when put into perspective Alexa rankings are basically useless.

    I did a bit of an experiment in the beginning of this year, when everyone in the blogging world was all about Alexa.com rankings. I setup a test site and turned off search engine indexing in the .htaccess file (for those who don’t know this blocks search engines from seeing your site). When the experiment started the site was unranked with Alexa.com. I had 100 people people install the Alexa toolbar and commit to visiting the test site twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Every week they reset there routers and cleared there cache to obtain a new IP address and be considered a new visitor by Alexa.com The experiment was run for 90 days.

    By the end of the 90 day period Alexa.com was ranking the site in the 70,000 range. While Google.com, Bing, and other sites still showed the site as being unlisted. At the end of the 90 days everyone was told to remove the tool bar and not visit the site again. Now I can not be sure if they actually removed the toolbar or not, but with in the next 30 days the alexa rank for the site dropped steadily and after 45 days was once again shown as unranked.

    The point of all of this is an Alexa.com ranking is effected mainly by those who use the toolbar, around 500,000 people. Considering usage reports show around 2 billion people have internet access, an Alexa.com ranking only reflects the usage of less then 0.025% of the internet users around the world.

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