Alexa Rank is a way of gauging your website’s validity on the world wide web. I should mention that there is also Google PageRank, but it seems a little more ambiguous and each page is only rated on a scale of 1-10. While extremely relevant the Alexa ranking is somewhat representative of your Google PageRank and more specific in its reporting.
When it comes to Alexa ranking the lower the number your site carries, the more influential it is. Having a lower Alexa number will likely bring you further to the top in searches and will also give you greater influence over the Alexa rank of other sites. Alexa rank is totally relative though, and depending on the subject of your site the rank may not carry as much weight.
For example: a new search engine would have to compete with Google, the number one ranking site on the internet, with an Alexa rank of 1. A site on the subject of Blogging would have to compete with Problogger.net, one of the top ranked blogging sites on the internet with a score in the low 2000′s (That is actually extremely good in the big scheme of things). If you ran a figurative marathon against every website owner in the world and came in the low 2000′s you would actually be one of the top runners/sites in the world. Blogging about blogging is highly competitive though, and a new site could expect to have an Alexa ranking in the 20 to 30 million range.
On another front, if you had a website with a strong niche and little competition you may not need a high Alexa ranking to be at the top of the Google search for your niche. If your site was specifically about kayak paddle tips you would probably not have much trouble reaching the top, and an Alexa score of 20 million might not be so bad.
In terms of influence if a site with a high Alexa ranking links to a site with a low Alexa ranking the low sites ranking will go up. Maybe not a lot, but probably a considerable amount. If several high ranking sites linked to a low ranking site, the low site would probably make leaps and bounds very quickly.
Anyway, with that explanation aside, the following is an ongoing tally of my Alexa ranking since I rebirthed this site in the Fall of 2009.
I will continue to update this from time-to-time as I notice any substantial changes.
- June 24, 2010 – 605,460 – Total posts = 232 – I’ve been hovering around the low 600,000′s for the past couple of weeks. The highest I got to was about 600,000 even, and on the lower end I was at 610,000. This is likely due to some new posts and some increased traffic from the Nissan Leaf post I wrote that was picked up by Nissan on their Facebook Leaf fan page. There were a couple of days here and there that had referral traffic into the 500+ visitors range, but mostly now I seem to be in the 45-70 range with 70 being on a Monday and 45 being a weekend or later weekday.
- May 17, 2010 – 687, 575 – Total posts = 196 – I finally break the 700,000 mark.
May 14, 2010 – 708,752 – After a couple months of bouncing around between 722,000 and 750,000 I seem to have broken the rut. A recent all out-post-athon where I posted about 10 of posts within a couple of hours on travel and also television seems to have led to a significant increase in traffic this week. It just goes to show, if you want more traffic, start writing more.- April 14, 2010 – 736,210 – Total posts = 131 – The last month has seen my Alexa rank drop by about 200,000 spots and for the first time I actually went backwards, but thanks to a post about product placement on 24 I have sustained a decent amount of traffic and bounced back ahead.
- March 12, 2010 – 988,305 – Total posts = 84 – I finally broke the 1 million mark! Yesterday I was hovering at 1 million + 555, but today I’m sub-1-mil. It’s a bit sad and geeky that I know and/or care about that, but it was a goal and I made it. Now my mission is to crack the top 100,000 websites in the world, which may not seem like much of a feat, but considering how many websites there are I think it’s kind of a big deal.
- March 3, 2010 – 1,084,827 – Total posts = 75 – I have been hovering around the 1.2 million mark for a couple of weeks now and am now in the low 1 millions. Woot! I’ve introduced a more mobile blogging approach and have tried to include a few posts here and there about current events. Recent posts about the Vancouver 2010 Olympics have probably helped improve my ranking. I plan to start doing a few guest posts here and there and also to start including more links with trackbacks or pingbacks in my posts.
- January 31, 2010 – 1,871,340 – Total articles = 31 – The site finally cracks the 2 million mark. Now my goal is to break the 1 million mark and eventually to be in the top 100,000.
- January 18, 2010 – 2, 810,080 – Total articles = 25
- January 12, 2010 – Alexa Rank: 4,468,552 – Not as much growth, but decent in only a couple of days and a couple more posts. Google is indexing my new posts within 20 minutes. I like!
- January 12, 2010 – Alexa Rank: 4,800,000 – I make another couple of posts which Google indexes extremely quickly and I end up gaining another 500,000 spots
- January 11, 2010 – Alexa Rank: 10 million (approx) – In the wake of the Facebook Bra Color Update Post I end up dropping about 5 million points or so
- January 7, 2010 – Alexa Rank: 15 million (approx.) Web traffic goes a bit crazy after I make a current events post before most of the high ranking sites – 600 visitors in 2 hours – Alexa ranking drops by several million points very quickly
- December 1, 2009 – Alexa Rank: 18 million (approx.) Number of posts: Less than 20
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Twitter gave me a HUGE boost in the Google rankings