How to significantly improve your Alexa ranking fast

There is a lot of speculation around the Alexa ranking. Some, like me, believe that Alexa ranking is useless, while others see it as a good traffic measure unit. The problem is, when you make money online, some advertising networks such as my favorite Text Link Ads and PayPerPost use Alexa rank as a criteria, and adjust your payout per link in according to your Alexa rank, assuming it says something about your visitors count.

While Alexa rank only measures traffic based on those who use Alexa toolbar (which is, less than half of the surfers, I believe), we all would agree that its inaccurate. However, in order to generate better revenue we need to have as low rank as possible (the lower — the better), so let’s see how we can do that, without increasing the actual traffic.

1. Using Alexa redirects. It means, instead of link in htp://www.toptut.com format, you should use - http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://www.toptut.com. This will send the users though Alexa’s site, redirecting to your URL and this way, the traffic coming through the redirect will count towards your ranking. Disadvantages: If you implement this technique, the link loses its Google PageRank value (which is much more important when it comes to making money online), because the link points to Alexa’s site (and they benefit). Another disadvantage is the speed loss, as redirect takes up to a few seconds to load on fast connection and you might not be eager on losing visitor due to slow loading time.

2. Using Alexa Widget. This technique is far better and I heard from a few friends of mine that is it’s way more helpful. All you need to do is go to this page, and choose a widget for your URL, then add it sitewide to your site or blog. Once the widget is up and running, every visitor who enters your website, will count towards your traffic ranking as having the script installed works like a stats counter for Alexa. This way, your traffic rank will be much more accurate and will “catch” every visitor, be it someone who enters though his bookmarks, feed or a link in Google. Disadvantages: You have to bear with the small Alexa banner on your site, and display your ranking to public, even if it’s nothing impressive yet.

That’s it, these are the only “legitimate” methods. Sure there are plenty of ways to game your ranking by displaying a tiny iFramed image pointing to your Alexa redirect. I very much doubt it’s acceptable by Alexa’s TOS, but there will always be faked PageRanks, Faked Alexa’s and even Fake Technorati Ranks… Still and all, there is nothing like genuine PR7 site with Alexa rank below 1000… So better start working on your rank right now!