How to Improve Your Alexa Ranking?

Alexa is owned by Amazon.com and is a very useful indicator to show your relative ranking in terms of page views, reaches etc. You can use this ranking to compete and compare with your keen competitors. Below is a collection of methods you can use to boost your Alexa Rank. Most of the tips were gleaned from several fellow bloggers and webmasters who' ve experimented with Alexa.

Other tips come from specific articles and forums. Those that I have referenced are listed at the end of this post.

Do these tips work? Yes, they do. But most of them require active effort in generating traffic. They will work as long as long as you are consistently performing specific actions.

To increase your Alexa rank in the long term, I would suggest coming up with quality content which draws and maintains a large audience. This is an excellent way to passively increase your Alexa rank.

1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.



2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day.



3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers.



4. Work in an Office? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers.



5. Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.



6. Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you or visit your blog, which helps with your traffic rank.



7. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. I like doing this for a few reasons. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and get some feedback in return. It’s also a good way to give back to the community.



8. Write content that is related to webmasters. This can fall in the category of domaining and SEO, two fields in which most webmasters will have the Alexa toolbar installed. Promote your content on social networking websites and webmaster forums.



9. Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Try this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.doshdosh.com . Replace doshdosh.com with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will count a unique IP address once a day so clicking it multiple times won’t help.



10. Post in Asian social networking websites or forums. Some have suggested that Asian (Korean or Hong Kong) web users are big Alexa toolbar fans.



11. Create a webmaster tools section on your website. This is a magnet for webmasters who will often visit your website to use the tools. Aaron Wall’s webpage on SEOTools is a very good example.



12. Get Dugg or Stumbled. This usually brings massive numbers of visitors to your website and the sheer amount will have a positive impact on your Alexa Rank. Of course, you’ll have to develop link worthy material.



13. Use PayperClick Campaigns. Buying advertisements on search engines such as Google or Exact Seek will help bring in Traffic. Doubly useful when your ad is about webmaster/tech related products/content.



14. Create an Alexa category on your blog and use it to include any articles or news about Alexa. This acts as a resource for webmasters while helping you rank in the search engines.



15. Optimize your popular posts. Got a popular post that consistently receives traffic from the search engines? Include a widget at the bottom of the post, call for Alexa signups or use Alexa redirection on your internal URLs.



16. Buy banners and links for traffic from webmaster forums and websites. A prominent and well displayed ad will drive lots of webmaster traffic to your website, which can significantly boost your rank.



17. Hire forum posters to pimp your website. Either buy signatures in webmaster forums or get respected users to pimp specific articles or material in your website on a regular basis.



18. Pay Cybercafe owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as the homepage for all their computers.



19. Use MySpace . This is a little shady so I don’t recommended it unless you’re really interested in artificially inflating your Alexa Rank. Use visually attractive (wierd/sexy/funny) pictures or banners and link them to your redirected Alexa URL. You’ll get a lot of clicks but it doesn’t mean people are visiting your website.



20. Try Alexa auto-surfs. Do they work? Maybe for brand new sites. I think they are most suitable for new websites with a terrible Alexa rank. There might also be problems when you try to use auto surfs alongside contextual ads like Adsense.

Link Building Strategies

If you want to get serious about driving more traffic to your website and improving your search engine rankings you need to develop a linking strategy.

Link building is on the mouth of everyone these days. On the forums I read, and in some newsletters I receive, there are people already talking about the chance that Google will start to penalize those websites that sell links, considering buying text links for ranking purposes to be a violation of its quality guidelines.


There could be a change that this could be truth, but there are smarter ways to buy links and some rules to follow that could help you, even if Google goes this way.




There are some companies offering specific services to avoid this penalty. Repeating the same anchor text in hundreds of link, is one thing to avoid. Search engines can easily detect anything that isn’t unique. So keep it unique by varying the anchor text.

Site-wide links are good to drive traffic. Don’t buy site wide links for link popularity/rankings.
Irrelevant links are also not good. Don’t go buying links for your automotive site from a script directory site.


There are also more rules you should follow, do some research before start buying links like crazy.

Drive Traffic to Your Blog - 1

One of the most effective ways to generate traffic to your Web site is to exchange links with other Web sites. Both sites benefit from reciprocal links with sites that attract the same targeted audience. Links to your site increase your traffic, imply that your site is worth visiting, and may increase your search engine ranking. Links to other sites provide useful resources and give visitors a reason to return to your site.

When requesting a link, you will often get it -- especially if you offer a link back and provide good content. It is harder to get links if your content is strictly promotional. Link only to Web sites that reach the customers you want, provide information your target audience is interested in, and offer content and products that complement yours. For example, a Web design company may link to sites providing free graphics and diagnostic tools.

Five Ways to Find Linking Partners
- Search for Web sites to exchange links with by going to search engines and using keywords related to your own site. Email the webmaster and ask for a link exchange.
- Check out Web directories for appropriate sites.
- Go to Link-O-Matic (http://www.linkomatic.com), a directory of Web sites looking for reciprocal linking.
- Check out LinkShare (http://www.linkshare.com), a free referral program.
- Subscribe to LinkUp (email: Subscribe-LinkUp@CommerceStreet.com), a discussion list service and send messages to find link partners.

Tips for Creating Links
- Create a separate page containing links to other sites.
- Include a benefit in your listing to motivate people to click on your link.
- If you don't know how to create links to other sites, have your webmaster set them up for you. You'll need to provide the Web addresses of the sites you want to link to and a short description of what they offer.

How to Get Other Sites to Link to You
- When asking for a reciprocal link, provide a link first to their site and mention it.
- Then email a personalized message to the webmaster of the sites you want to get a link from. Provide the following information in your link request: Mention that you visited their site; compliment their site; invite them to visit your site; provide an incentive for them to link to you; mention how a link to your site will benefit their visitors; ask for a link; provide a suggested listing for your link.

Sample Link Request

Thank you,

Hitech Blogger

Traffic Building Strategy - 3

TrackBack may not be a popular thing to most bloggers. Many do not even know about it and among those who are knowledgeable about TrackBack, never used it on their blogs. But, I will tell you that if you only know how to effectively use TrackBack, it will certainly bring you good blog traffic. So you have an idea by now on what exactly this post is all about. Let’s get started.It is best to start with what exactly a TrackBack is, how to do it, and making a test before we proceed to discuss on how to use it effectively to increase blog traffic.What is TrackBack?TrackBack is a system implemented by Movable Type and later adopted by many blogging tools, including TypePad, BoastMachine, WordPress, and Nucleus.

Essentially, TrackBack is a mechanism for communication between blogs. If a blogger writes a new post commenting on or referring to the post found on another blog and if both the commenting blogger’s blog and the other blog has TrackBack mechanism support, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a "TrackBack ping" which means the other blog will automatically display a backlink and summaries of the commenting blogger’s new post at the post which had been cited to.

How Do We Notify The Other Blog with a TrackBack Ping?First, understand that not all blog has enable TrackBack functionality. When they do, you should see a TrackBack link at the bottom of the post. Once you find the link and you wish to talk about the post made by another blogger, click the TrackBack link of that post and copy the TrackBack URL.

Once you have that TrackBack URL, go to your own blog and create a new entry related to that post. Before posting your entry, paste the TrackBack URL in the space provided for TrackBacks. This will send the notification to the blog you referenced once you publish your entry. So, there, you’ve sent a TrackBack.Just make sure when you're sending TrackBack URLs that your blog entry is relevant to the one you are referring to. Otherwise, you will be perceived as a TrackBack spammer.

Send a Test Trackback! As a way to try this out, you can send a TrackBack ping to this post. Just click the TrackBack link located at the end of this post. There, you'll find the TrackBack URL for this entry, in this case (http://haloscan.com/tb/ru8en/8505413345883737052). Go to your blog, make a new entry talking about this post, paste the TrackBack URL and publish. If your ping worked, you should find your TrackBack reference the next time you click the TrackBack link of this post. If there are people who already sent TrackBack ping to the blog entry, you will find references to these TrackBacks as well.

How to use TrackBack Effectively Increase Blog Traffic?Remember, sending TrackBack ping to other blog will automatically create a backlink and summaries of the commenting blogger’s new post at the post which had been cited to. Unlike usual backlinks, backlinks made by TrackBack ping may not increase your search engine ranking but will still served as a doorway to your blog.To increase blog traffic using TrackBack, send TrackBack ping to high traffic blogs and popular blog post. This will cause a portion of their traffic flowing to your blog. Also send TrackBack ping to blogs whose theme are closely related to your blog as their loyal blog traffic will certainly be interested in your post.Again, just make sure when you're sending TrackBack ping that your blog entry is relevant to the one you are referring to.

Also, if you want to let people send TrackBack pings to your weblog, make sure that you have it enabled. Some blogging systems like Blogger need extra plugins or third party services to have TrackBack feature. To have this blog a Trackback feature I used a free third party services by HaloScan. I will talk more on HaloScan next time. Stay tuned!

Traffic Building Strategy - 2

Good Day! I'm here again. As stated in my previous post, this blog implemented Technorati Tag to get some traffic. So, maybe you might ask, how was it? What's the traffic? Honestly, I still don't no. It's too early to track the traffic and this blog is just 3 days old. But I will start telling you about the traffic maybe after 10 posts. Today, I visited high traffic blogs and try to list down their common features. There are a number of which but for now, I will just tackle one - RSS feed. Yes, most high traffic blogs publish RSS feed.

Every serious blogger publishes an RSS feed of his posts and readers aggregate all their favorites blogs feeds in an aggregator. When you publish your RSS feed, your viewers will thank you, and there will be more of them, because it allows them to see your site without going out of their way to visit.While this seems bad at first glance, it actually improves your blog's visibility; by making it easier for your users to keep up with your site - allowing them to see it the way they want to - it's more likely that they'll know when something that interests them is available on your site.

For example, imagine your blog announces a new product or feature every week or two. Without a feed, your viewers have to remember to come to your blog and see if they find anything new - if they have time. If you provide a feed for them, they can point their aggregator or other software at it, and it will give them a link and a description of developments at your blog almost as soon as they happen.By providing a feed, you are in front of them constantly, improving the chances that they'll click through to a post that catches their eye and visit your blog.Here, this blog now provide a feed for which anybody can subscribe. There are various formats or protocols of feed available such as RSS and Atom. However, my feeds are readable to any format the subscriber is using because of SmartFeed service by FeedBurner.

So what is FeedBurner?FeedBurnerFeedBurner is a service that takes a normal, everyday RSS or Atom feed of any kind and turns (burns) it into a FeedBurner feed that you can then distribute to readers for use in any RSS reader. The company currently hosts more than 470,000 combined RSS and Atom feeds for over 280,000 content publishers and delivered feeds to 19 million subscribers.One reason a blog owner would want to use this is because it simplifies the RSS feed.

The Feed URL for this blog, for instance, is http://feeds.feedburner.com/HitechBlogger, which is a much simpler format that standard RSS feeds. Also, most blogging software offers a variety of RSS feeds - Atom, RSS 1.0, 2.0, etc. Sometimes these feeds don’t work properly with some readers. And if a blog can get most of its readers to use the single Feedburner feed, they can take advantage of the great statistics and tools to see where readers are coming from and what they are clicking on.Another big reason for using FeedBurner, however, is that it can automatically add Google Adsense ads to your feeds, allowing you to easily generate revenue if you have a large enough audience. For more information, come and visit Feedburner.

Traffic Building Strategy - 1

In order to turn your blog as well as this blog into money making machine it needs to have traffic. No traffic simple means no money. The higher the traffic you get, the higher the chances of you getting big money. So getting traffic is all important. Many first time blogger automatically assume that once their blog is setup and they put a few posts on it, they will get some hits and regular readers. This is definitely a wrong impression. You won’t get any traffic if no one knows about your blog. So at this early, it is good to focus on how to boost traffic for your blog.

I took a look around at what some of the successful blogs were doing and came up with a number of traffic strategies that help them increase their blog traffic. As we go along, I will discuss these strategies one by one. For now, let me talk about boosting your blog traffic with Technorati.

Technorati is one of the best traffic providers for bloggers. People find your blogs easily when people search by technorati tags. Technorati will rank your blog based on the number of links from other websites.

The higher your rank the easier your blog is to find when people search for things.Again, how will Technorati give you great traffic? Basically, you need to do three things: First, add tags that are specific to your blog. Next, add tags that people are likely to be searching for that also apply to the things that you are writing about. Lastly, actively recruit links from other blogs to your blog by asking other bloggers to link to you.

Simple Intro to Increasing Traffic to Your Blog

Increasing traffic to your blog is fundamental to your blog's success on the Internet. As you'll soon find, it isn't all that hard to increase traffic to your blog, but it does take time.

The first and most important rule for increasing traffic to your blog is to post, post and then post some more. Posting new and unique content on a regular basis to your blog is crucial to success.

Another critical method for getting traffic to your blog in through by establishing links to your site on other people's webpages. This servers two purposes for your blog. First, a link on someone else's site can be clicked on thus bringing a visitor to your site. Secondly, links on other sites pointing to your site factor into the equations that Google, Yahoo and MSN use to determine the order in which sites are listed in searches conducted on their site. These types of links are referred to as "inbound" links.

When you try to develop inbound links it is important to make sure that the links are relevant. For example, if your blog is about cars then it doesn't do a lot of good to have an inbound link from a website about vacation spots. Your goal is to get inbound links on sites similar to your blog or, at a minimum, sites that target the same type of people (age, gender, interest, etc.) as your blog.

To begin developing inbound links, do a search for other blogs that are relevant to your blog. If your blog is about cars then search "cars" in Blogger Search or Technorati (two of the bigger blog search engines). Browse through the results that you get and make a list of those that you think are well designed and interesting. In order to get a link on those blogs you will most likely have to give something in return and usually the easiest thing to give is a link to them. So from that list add a link on your blog for each of the blogs that you liked. Then, after doing so, email the owner of each of those site and write something along the lines of:

"Hello, my name is John and I write for Crazy Cars, a blog about cars. I've recently added a link to your site on my homepage because I feel that my readers are in a very similar demographic to that of your site. If you get a chance check my site out and if you like what you see please link back.

Thank you, John"

Remember that these blog owners don't owe you anything for you linking to them, but often if you ask nice you'll get a link back.

Another way to build inbound links to your blog is by submitting your blog to blog and web directories. These directories contain literally thousands of websites and very rarely will someone come to your site by clicking on a link in one of the directories. However, including you blog in these directories can in many case help your ranking in search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc). Don't spend too much time doing this but if you have a little free time they are worth looking into.

Finally, and maybe the biggest key to increasing blog traffic is to write interesting and excellent content. The most powerful way to get people to your blog is to write content that your readers want to read. This will not only make people want to come back but it will also make them want to tell others about your blog. Anyone can get someone to come to their blog once but getting someone to come back again and again, that is the key to increasing your blog traffic.

So post often, build links so people can find you and then make sure to keep it interesting. They'll come...for now, work hard and be patient.