Do you know that as a blogger you need Alexa.com?
Are you aware of the site’s importance?
Do you know how to use the site to improve your blog’s popularity?
Alexa.com has many benefits for you as a blogger.
This article will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using the free version of the site.
By the time you are done reading this post, you will have the Alexa rank explained.
What Is Alexa.com?
Alexa.com will show you how popular your site is! The site provides data analysis of websites for the last three months.
For fifteen years, Alexa.com has been analyzing data from websites all over the world. Amazon acquired Alexa in 1999.
Does Using Alexa.com Matter?
While not everyone agrees your Klout score still matters, many people agree your Alexa score, also called the Alexa rank, matters a great deal. (Update: the Klout website folded.)
People like advertisers and readers might actually judge your blog based on the merit of your Alexa score.
Why Should You Use Alexa.com?
- If you want to assess your blogging effectiveness, Alexa.com is the place for you. Whatever goals you set for your blog, you can see if you’re meeting them at Alexa.
- In addition to assessing your own website, Alexa allows you to assess your competition’s site. People have written me offering me opportunities. It was clear they had checked out my Alexa score. Some even referenced the score in their communication with me.
Online stalker? No. There are many reasons to check out other bloggers’ scores.
For example, if you are going to collaborate with other bloggers, you want to make sure they have a quality site.
Also, some people trade links. They should make sure the person’s site they are linking to is quality, so Google knows your site is quality. (Note: Mostly Blogging has a Link Exchange for this purpose since swapping links with similar sites improves your SEO.)
Other people want to guest post for sites with an Alexa score at least as good as their score is. Guest posting provides you with a link to your site. Links from blogs with better (lower) Alexa scores improve your SEO.
How to Use Alexa.com
When you get to Alexa.com, you will see various features.
Click “Competitive Intelligence Tools.”
Click “Website Traffic Statistics.”
Type in your website name.
Here you will find various metrics to help you assess your effectiveness as a blogger.
Alexa.com provides important information about your blog.
Global Rank:
Alexa.com is important for you as a blogger since Alexa’s metrics measure your blog’s success.
According to Kathleen Aherne, “If your Alexa ranking is 850,000 – that means for all the multi-millions of websites in the world there are only 849,000 more popular than yours. To have a ranking under 100,000 is kind of cool and more accurate data is available.”
Alexa.com provides important information about your readership.
Audience Geography:
If you scroll down, you will be able to see the percentage of people who come from your top five countries with the most readership.
You will even be able to see on a world map where those countries are located.
You might wonder why this information is important.
I once wrote a post asking whether bloggers should use idioms of their own culture. If you know your readers are from your country, and you tend to write with cultural idioms, you might be more inclined to let loose if you know your readers will understand your idioms.
If on the other hand, you see the majority of your readership is not from your country, you might choose to be more hesitant about using expressions they may not understand.
Alexa.com allows you to make an informed decision by giving you information.
Your readers’ location will also tell you what time zone they are in. You won’t be wondering why no one is responding to your latest post, for example, when you discover they are sleeping in that part of the world.
Scrolling down further, you will see Bounce Rate, Daily Page Views, and Daily Time on Site.
Bounce Rate: This metric tells you how quickly people are leaving, or bouncing off, your page.
You want this number to be low. If you would like suggestions for lowering your bounce rate, there are 15 Guaranteed Ways to Make Your Bounce Rate Look Amazing.
Daily Page Views: You want this number to be high. Backlinking to older, relevant posts will keep people on your site longer by having them view more than one of your posts or pages with each visit to your blog.
Daily Time on Site: You also want this number to be high. Spending a long time at your blog is a sign of high engagement. If you are looking for ways to increase the time your readers spend on your site, there are many ways to engage blog readers.
Alexa.com provides important SEO information.
By scrolling down further, you will see data relevant to search engines.
Search Visits:
Top Keywords from Search Engines:
By scrolling down further, you will see which keywords are getting you the most traffic. I recommend writing about these keywords again. Your articles about these keywords are getting you online attention. It’s true since these are your top five keywords.
Which sites did people visit immediately before this site?
Alexa shows you the Top 5 sites that send you traffic and the percentage of traffic your blog is getting from each referrer.
This is valuable information. Numbers don’t lie. You know without any shadow of a doubt your promotion methods at these sites are working. Continue to put your energies into those places. You are definitely getting good Return on Time Invested (ROI) if these are your Top 5 traffic referrers!
Scrolling further, you will see sites that are the most like yours. The benefit is you know who your competition is.
Do you want to hear something ironic? When I looked to see who my competitors are, I was surprised to see that three of the admin bloggers are good friends of mine!
(Note: If you look to see your competition, here is a friendly reminder to right click and open a new tab or window. If you leave my post, my bounce rate will worsen!)
Top 500 Sites on the web:
You can use these for blogging references, network with the admin bloggers and commenters (guest post and networking )
For me: Business, Marketing, and Advertising– over 4,000 choices. In the top 500, so I know they are quality sites.
Find Similar Sites:
You will be able to see the top 5 sites most like yours. Alexa.com even shows you the Alexa scores of the sites that share your audience. These are good sites to visit for networking purposes. Comment on their blog posts. They are like-minded bloggers who share your audience.
Of all the Competitive Intelligence Tools, only Audience Overlap is not available with the free plan.
Audience Demographics:
You will see the gender and educational level of your readers.
If advertisers like your Alexa score, they may wish to place ads on your site. If their ads appeal to one specific gender, advertisers may wish to know the percentage of each gender that read your blog.
Browsing Location:
Whether your audience reads your blog at their home, school, or work is reflected in this data.
Testimonials
According to the Blogwarn blog,
Yes, improving Alexa rank is very important for any blog. If you are a blogger, then it is very necessary for you to improve your Alexa rank. Because it proves better authority, makes a good impression on advertisers and readers, can increase your revenue, and much more.
Many readers first see your blog’s Alexa rank and if they find your Alexa rank good, then they start following your blog and also they start commenting on your blog to get the backlink, which in turn improves your blog comments and hence improves your page rank in Google.
Pros and Cons
These are the advantages of using Alexa.com
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- You can learn about your blog’s success and your competitors’ success.
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- You can learn about your readers and your competitors’ readers.
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- You can learn which keywords are bringing you search engine traffic and which keywords bring your competitors search engine traffic.
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- Alexa has a blog with quality articles.
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- Advertisers may ask you to promote their product or service if you have a lower Alexa score.
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- Tools are available like an Alexa widget, plugin, and a browser extension.
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- Paid accounts are available if you want more detailed information about your site.
- Alexa takes rejection out of the equation. If an advertiser is considering offering you a financial proposition, they will go straight to Alexa.com to plug in your blog’s URL. If they aren’t impressed with your Alexa score, they won’t bother approaching you, and you will never know that you were passed up for a financial opportunity.
Disadvantages to using Alexa.com
Some bloggers like Yaro Starek and Harsh Agrawal insinuate that the Alexa score does not have the influence it once did. For example, if the Alexa browser extension detects traffic, and hardly anyone has the browser extension, how can the Alexa metrics be an accurate indicator of traffic?
The Mom$ Make Money blog agrees the accuracy of your Alexa score may be in question.
Alexa cannot possibly track all information for all websites. So they have published a tool called the Alexa Toolbar which is free to download. And the browsing activities of the toolbar users are tracked to provide their information on keywords, traffic and more.
So the important thing to note is – the only traffic counted is that from Alexa Toolbar users. So the more visitors you have who are using the toolbar, the more traffic is registered with Alexa and the lower your ranking will be.
You can get a better Alexa Ranking than a website with comparable traffic if a greater percentage of your visitors are using the toolbar than theirs. So websites with very different traffic numbers may have a similar Alexa Ranking.
Also, a final disadvantage: If you don’t like your Alexa rating, your morale could be hurt.
Update: June 2020
Alexa revealed a keyword gap to me. When I went to the site, it said my competitors were writing about blog commenting sites, but I’m not.
Therefore, after conducting keyword research confirming I could rank for the keyword, I wrote a post about blog commenting sites.
This post outperformed expectations. The article has 67 comments, more comments on it than most I publish. Also, in the last year, the post about blog commenting sites is my 11th-best-performing post.
Conclusion: Alexa.com
Takeaways:
This post explained: Alexa rank meaning, answered, “What is Alexa rank?” and told you how you can check your Alexa website ranking and those of your competitors.
You should check your competitors’ Alexa rankings. You want to outrank them for keywords on Google.
In closing, although the accuracy of the Alexa site metrics may vary depending on whether you have the Alexa browser extension, Alexa.com is extremely valuable to you as a blogger or any website creator.
I visit Alexa.com often to check my Alexa web metrics. The red metrics motivate me to improve and give my goals direction. When the numbers turn green, my confidence soars.
Knowing the top five keywords that send visitors to my site give my editorial calendar focus.
Also, when an advertiser approached me and inquired about my demographic, the numbers were at my fingertips since Alexa provided them for me.
Even if Yaro and Harsh are correct, and the numbers aren’t spot-on accurate, the metrics still give me a benchmark to judge my progress.
The best part– in addition to finding out Alexa’s analysis of your audience, traffic, and SEO, you can discover the same information about your competitors. Alexa gives you all of this for free.
Have you checked your Alexa website ranking? If you are not pleased, the numbers change regularly. Check Alexa rank to ensure your site metrics are movingin the right direction.
2020 Update: I check my Alexa ranking once a month. I still consider the Alexa page rank an important metric.
Readers, please share so other bloggers and website creators know the Alexa rank meaning and the value of Alexa.com to their blog or business. If you share, other bloggers and search engine marketers will know the answer to the question, “What is Alexa ranking?” when they hear it.
Had you heard of the Alexa score before reading this article? The score is a measure of how popular your site is. Does your Alexa score matter to you? I look forward to your opinion in the comments section.
Related Posts:
Tutorials about more competitive intelligence tools:
How to use SpyFu to spy on your online competitors
How to Increase Your Blog Traffic Using Google Analytics
Source:
5 Cool Things You Can Do For Free On Alexa
