How to improve Alexa Ranking & How does it matter?

By Amit Shroff on April 23, 2015 23 Comments / 5656 views

I would like to know, how to improve Alexa Ranking and How does it matter? Please be as detail as possible to help me better understand the funda.

Please help me understand following:

How does Alexa work?
What are the factors impacting Alexa Ranking?
Does Alexa Ranking plays any role in Google Ranking? If yes, how?
Can you Share some examples and reference of site you have followed or have helped improve Alexa Ranking.
Is Alexa ranking genuine?

Can anyone tell me what I need to do to improve the ranking for our new venture Bakerykart – an exclusive market place for baking supplies.

Comments

Amit Shroff

23 Comments

Puneet Nirogam Aggarwal April 28, 2015, 1:16 pm

Alexa has been losing credibility is what I have been told by many.
Try using SimilarWeb to analyse competition.

Remember – Worry about ROKDA, Revenue matters more than Ranking !
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal April 28, 2015, 1:18 pm

I think its a nice ‘Thumbrule’ of traffic that is public and visible to all.

ComScore is expensive and cannot be shared

The challenge is to understand how to integrate mobile traffic.

How to improve Alexa? Simple – get better content on the site

Ps – Indian visited sites seem to have better alexa than other sites. Guess why?!
Akshay Jain April 28, 2015, 1:40 pm

Alexa has a tool that integrates with your browser.
So, alexa shows you the traffic from people who have that tool installed.
So, it is not an accurate marker of the traffic your site gets.
But Alexa is a great tool to check websites links.
It gives a detailed list on the number of inbound links you have on your website and it’s SEO audit is good.
I have personally used it for my website.

Factors impacting Alexa ranking : Traffic, links from other websites etc.
Basically your SEO work should be good. It has many parameters in it from site linking, duplicate meta descriptions, image alt texts, on page analysis and so on.

Alexa rank DOES NOT play any role in google ranking.

My alexa ranking had recently been hit badly and I have spent countless hours working on it only to realise it does not matter.

Keep working on content and building links.

One advice that I can give is, never use blog commenting to build links.
Many blogs have very bad SEO work and their rankings are bad.
When you use blog commenting, google checks that the links are from blog comments and considers it as spam.
These blogs themselves have very low Alexa ranking and thus having a link from a low ranked website will add to your troubles. If that happens, use the google’s disavow link tool. Worked in my case, you can tell google NOT TO consider links from these websites for your site. It’s a simple tool to use.

Alexa ranking is genuine when you are already a major player, for a startup, it has no value.

Hope this helps.
Amit Kumar Chattopadhyay April 28, 2015, 2:53 pm

Alexa ranking works on the basis of visitor traffic reported by Alexa toolbar. Simply stated, any visitor of Alexa can download Alexa toolbar in his/her browser and every time he/she visits a website, the data gets captured by Alexa. So, Alexa ranking is based on visits by people having Alexa toolbar.

Alexa ranking is a good empirical way of finding out whether website traffic is going up or down. Its a good indicator – nothing more. It does not affect search engine ranking.

To better your Alexa rank – do the following:

1. Request all your staff, friends, relative etc. to download Alexa toolbar in their browsers. There are separate toolbars for IE, Mozilla etc. – make a good mix of all

2. Make your website home page for all these browsers so that whenever someone with Alexa toolbar goes online – your website gets an Alexa ping

3. Visit your website from various IPs – as many times as possible

4. There are software that does this pinging – but I am not sure about their effectiveness

Do all above and your ranking will improve to some extent.

However, do not expect radical changes in ranking – above will help you improve your ranking to some extent. For better ranking, you must have good content, good number of back links and other SEO staff

Best Regards

Amit
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 1:46 am

Hi Puneet,

Yes Rokda is coming but some how the traffic have got stagnate at approx 350 to 400 visitors per day. I have tried all possibilities but unable to increase the traffic. Additionally the client have not added any new design since last aug 2014 and even after 400% growth, he is not satisfied. i.e. from 3Lac revenue in 1st year to 20+ Lac revenue in next year.

Additionally alexa ranking is falling day after day.

Regards,
Amit
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 1:51 am

Thanks Alok, So what is the definition of content. Do you keep refreshing or generating new content every month on month. The site has good content and have been received well by people and fellow TRHS. I am talking about http://www.printawallpaper.com. How do i improve the traffic. Its not growing and stagnant.
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 1:55 am

Hi Akshay,

If Alexa don’t have any role, then why do people give it importance. I have used their paid tools didn’t find much help and I don’t know how many of us would be using the Alexa toolbar. I really don’t prefer to use it. May be the only people using it are the one into SEO and stuff.

Yes I know. We neither do nor encourage any 3rd party linking. So our primarily back-link comes from Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Regards,
Amit
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 1:58 am

Thanks Amit, do you really think this would matter much since it is as good as spamming. I think this would not help me improve my google ranking. The problem is my ranking is also not improving and stagnant. https://www.printawallpaper.com
Akshay Jain April 29, 2015, 2:03 am

Hello Amit,

you can get your rankings increased by getting backlinks from other good blogs in the same niche.
As I said earlier, for startups or small corporations who have less website hits, the alexa rank does not matter.
Once you start getting website hits in the range of thousands everyday, then you should worry about it.

I have spent the last one month only trying to work on my alexa only to understand it is of no use.
Puneet Nirogam Aggarwal April 29, 2015, 2:20 am

Hi Amit, For PrintAwallpaper.com – who are the competitors. Find out what they are doing. How are they getting the traffic ? See your stats on Similar Web at : https://www.similarweb.com/website/printawallpaper.com

And compare these stats to other competitors by doing a similar search, so that you can deploy techniques which they are using to get more traffic. Find some specific growth hacking techniques in your domain, and test them out.

Rankings are just a measure. 3 Lakhs to 20 lakhs is 600% growth, isn’t it ?

Are you acquiring / adding visitors to your email newsletter ? Do you have a newsletter ?
Do you have a blog ? How do you ensure visitors keep coming back ?
Read more on drip feed email marketing, and use it.
Mansoor Shaikh April 29, 2015, 5:52 am

Most of the answers covered by our expert members though I would like to shed some lights on same.

1. How does Alexa work?

First of all Alexa is old school tool to check where your website stand right now. It uses alexa toolbar to determine the traffic you are getting for your website (just like google analitics for google search engine.).

2. What are the factors impacting Alexa Ranking?

Traffic fluctuation is one of the main factors that impact alexa ranking.

3. Does Alexa Ranking plays any role in Google Ranking? If yes, how?

NO, It does not play any role in google ranking.

4. Can you Share some examples and reference of site you have followed or have helped improve Alexa Ranking.
Is Alexa ranking genuine?

https://www.megavenues.com/ – this site I’ve done whole SEO from the scratch. From no where the reach 7 k ranking is not that easy. Although I left that website and company but I am still happy to see alexa ranking is stable.

Last and most important thing: Alexa is not accurate when it comes to updating data and ranking. So I would recommend not to trust 100% on this tool. As long as you see good traffic coming to your website and bounce rate low you are good.

Hope that helps..
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 6:30 am

Hi Puneet,

Yes we have newsletter, blog (started a month back) etc and we often run mailing campaigns. Yes close to 600% growth still the client is not satisfied and moving to shopify. You specially talk about completion, don;t have any in India, if you search you would find pepperyfry, fabfurnish etc but they are basically selling standard wallpaper and don’t offer what Print a Wallpaper does.

I did advise to client to introduce more content on how the product can be used for varied implementation etc but he doesn’t have budget.

We did a discount for April and have already cover 2.75 Lac and investment is 15% which include marketing, maintenance and creative banners, which I feel is not too high for the kind of engagement and effort.

Regards,
Amit
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 6:42 am
Additionally, If i compare it with international competition muralsyourway there is lot of difference:
1. Size – PAW is 4000 pages where as MYW – 50000+ pages
2. Content Page – Max 10 on PAW – MYW has close 5000 to 10000 + content page.
3. MYW is very old and leading where as PAW is just 2 yrs old.
Regards,

Amit
Puneet Nirogam Aggarwal April 29, 2015, 7:30 am

There is the answer. You lack Content.
Content is what is going to bring about traffic. Content is what feeds Google and you will get Google-Love.

Write more blogs on various topics regarding Home Improvement.
Don’t undercut yourself by reducing your price, just because you have a difficult customer.
Its sometimes good to fire your client.
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 8:47 am

Yes Puneet i know, but he doesn’t have budget and now shifting to shopify, without even understanding that all links and backlink created in last 2 years will be lost. There would be a heavy impact on SEO and it might take close to 6 months to recover, if handled well.

I have not cut down my cost, instead have told that I will not be working on performance model now and it should be purely on fixed cost. I have tried all possibilities but he still feel that we are capable. Could be that he would be thinking of close to 1 cr of business in 2nd year and we couldn;t deliver it.
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 8:48 am

Thanks Mansoor for the response.!
Puneet Nirogam Aggarwal April 29, 2015, 8:59 am

I sense that he has been influenced by someone to shift to Shopify. What is the platform that you are using right now ?

And by the way, how does Shopify ensure him more traffic and more business ? Try asking him this…
Amit Shroff April 29, 2015, 2:09 pm

Yes I know that. He is not hood to answer. Additionally, he think since shopify would help to enable international shipping it would offer more business and help him scale. The solution I offered was based on geo-targeting, which mean separate banner, promotional and offers for international customers along with rate. So that they don’t see the Indian price.

We have a custom Platform, tailored to meet customers requirement. It had been working fine.

Lets see what happens.
Rahul Bohra May 1, 2015, 5:13 am

therodinhoods.wpengine.com Alexa rank :
****************************************

World Rank : 25,611
India Rank : 2,180

PS : “How to improve Alexa? Simple – get better content on the site: – Sir Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal

Thats TRUE sir, If the content is genuine and you work hard to spread your content across various platforms. Alexa will move up.
Amit Shroff May 1, 2015, 5:29 am

Hi Rahul,

Even I know this. But my question is what do you plan and how do you do it? Since Google traffic have increased in last 2 years but alexa ranking have not. This is quite strange.

Regards,

Amit
Amit Shroff May 1, 2015, 12:10 pm

So If Alexa ranking don’t play any role in google ranking, then why should we be bothered about it. Any specific reason to be bothered about Alexa Ranking!
Mansoor Shaikh May 2, 2015, 4:30 am

Hi Rahul,

This is not strange at least for me. As I mention earlier Alexa dont update their data frequently. its unpredictable when they update it. So if you care to see your ranking bring traffic to your website and then wait, watch. It will increase.
Amit Shroff May 19, 2015, 11:16 am

Rahul, I had got Alexa Tool Bar installed and within a weeks the ranking improved from 90K to 41K. But as everyone said, there is hardly any difference in traffic, so I believe that Alexa ranking doesn’t really matter these days.

Regards,
Amit