Alexa ranking is something that anyone who is associated with the internet industry ought to be familiar with. Up until a few years back, it was considered a highly effective and important metric to determine the popularity of a website. It was second in relevance only to Google Page Rank. It has been two decades and Alexa still remains relevant for webmasters and website owners equally. In this article, we take a look at why Alexa ranking is important even today and how it can improve your website’s ranking.

What is Alexa Ranking?

As the name indicates, it is a ranking given by Alexa to your website, depending on the amount of traffic it gets. Started in 1996, Alexa is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. It specializes in collecting and analyzing web traffic data, based on which it ranks websites and blogs. The ranking is one of the important factors that determine the popularity and profitability of a website.

How Does the Ranking System Work?

In order to understand why Alexa ranking is important, you need to know how it is calculated in the first place. Alexa uses two metrics while deciding the ranking of a website – the number of page views and the number of unique visitors – over a period of three months. Page views refer to the number of times your website’s URL is viewed by users. Unique visitors mean the number of people who visit your website. If the same user visits your website two or three times a day, it will be counted as one visit alone.

Alexa calculates your website’s ranking based on the traffic received from a particular subset of users – those who have Alexa toolbar installed and those who have browser extensions and plug-ins installed. Each time a user visits your website, the toolbar, extension, or plug-in sends the information to the Alexa server, which records the user’s IP and the pages he or she visits. The information collected over a span of three months is then analyzed to determine your website’s ranking.

With Google PR, the higher the ranking, the more popular and authoritative your website is. With Alexa, the smaller the number, the more popular your website is. Websites that are relatively popular and get a decent amount of traffic regularly have an Alexa ranking of 50,000 to 100,000. If your website’s ranking is higher than 100,000, you need to optimize and market it better to bring it down as much as possible. If your ranking is lower than 50,000, it means your website attracts a large amount of traffic regularly.

Reasons Why Alexa Ranking is Important

1. It serves as a valuable metric to indicate your website’s popularity. It also serves a comparative tool, as you can compare your website with that of your competitors and see how well you are doing in terms of traffic and popularity. As a thumb rule, you should aim to place your website among the top 50,000 ranked sites.

2. It is one of the factors that advertisers consider to determine the marketing potential of your website. Websites with high Alexa ranking generally tend to be more profitable and attract more advertisers. It also helps to assess your website’s total monetary value.

3. It is one of the factors that determine your Google page rank. Higher ranked websites are indexed by Google bots regularly, which makes search engine optimization easier.

4. Alexa ranking is considered a relevant and important metric by many webmasters as well as users. This is particularly true in terms of commercial websites, as it is not uncommon for users to take a look at your Alexa ranking and rating before deciding if your website is safe and trustworthy enough to buy from.

You can download Alexa toolbar from their website. You can even customize the toolbar and offer it as a free download from your website. It is a great way to reward your user base. Moreover, if your regular visitors download the toolbar, it can help you maintain your rankings as Alexa counts the visits from users with Alexa toolbars to determine your ranking.

Now you should have a clear idea as to why Alexa ranking is important and why your website needs it. So, download the toolbar, find out your ranking, and display it on your home page proudly.