Useful Information You’ll Find at Alexa
Understanding your traffic patterns is useful, particularly given the fact that advertisers or others who wish to purchase links on your site will consider your traffic rank reported at Alexa.
As mentioned yesterday, there are a number of ways that you can quickly access your Alexa data. Today we’ll take a quick look at the information reported on the Alexa site at the traffic rankings page. You can take a look at your website’s traffic data at http://www.alexa.com.
The first thing that you will see is your traffic rank:
CAPTION: You'll see your traffic rank at the top of the screen. This changes regularly. This image was captured on December 2, 2008.
Every blog owner covets a Top 100,000 Ranking — but this blog is not there yet! It started out somewhere around 10 million six months ago and is now in the 324,000 range. Useful, unique content and great traffic are what will create a winning website or blog.
In the next screen, you can compare your site with other sites, whether they be your competitors or sites that you own and are testing.
CAPTION: This site is currently not in the top 100, although that is definitely a goal! You can compare your traffic with other sites.
Alexa’s next screen is quite useful, showing your site’s “reach” and whether traffic is going up or down. The only thing for this blog that has gone down are page views. I think this is because the blog is now at a point where there are subscribers who’ve seen whatever they are interested in looking at and are watching the newest post only.
CAPTION: Here's the good stuff ... detailed traffic stats.
You’ll notice on the left hand navigation menu a couple of links that are useful. One is the “Way Back Machine” that will let you look at old versions or your site or others’ sites that have been cached. If you’re bored and looking for something to do today, take a look at the Libertarian, Republican and Democratic Party web sites — it’s a hoot! These “Way Back” pictures reveal how the web has evolved over the years.
One of the things that I find significant is the report on sites linking in.
I know that there are at least 300 or 400 sites linking in, but Alexa is reporting only 14. This number will go up and down.
When you click on the sites that are reported as linking in, you’ll discover a common factor: Each one of these sites has a traffic rank that is less than 500,000. I think that this is a key component to Alexa’s reporting and traffic evaluation for your site.
If you can, try to get back links on sites and blogs that have a traffic ranking of less than 500,000 and see if that will boost your traffic rank. For starters, you can add a comment in this blog and include your link. I’ll accept most any comments except for outright spam.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at how to increase your Alexa traffic rank.
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