I have decided to try and increase my Alexa ranking by implementing the redirect feature in various parts of my website and when filling out forms and comments.
For the people who have never head of Alexa I'll give a brief explanation here. Alexa is a web ranking too which tries to put together an ordered list of websites in their popularity! i.e, my current alexa ranking is 754,668 which means my blog is the 754,668th most popular in the world. Alexa calculates this by combining the amount of Unique visits and number of page views each day and giving a score depending in the total for that day.
The Problem With Alexa
Alexa only collects these records, (hits & page-views) from people who have the Alexa toolbar installed (only available for IE) or when people access your site through a REDIRECT which I will be coming to. (For Firefox options click here)
This means if only 50% of the people who visit your website dont have the Alexa toolbar installed you will only get half the ranking you are deserved! The other option to to get those hits you deserve is to use something called an Alexa redirect. This is a url which when people click on it, it sends you past alexa and to the site you specified, so even if someone doesn't have the tool-bar installed Alexa will still give you that hit!
Here is an example this is the alexa redirect address for my blog:
http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.andy-coates.com/blog
When you click on it it will take you past Alexa and straight to my blog without you even knowing you have been to Alexa! Try it and see what happens! (not much) But each time someone clicks I will get a page-view resisted by Alexa which will contribute toward my rankings! To use this for you site just copy the url and replace my web address with your web address, easy!
Heres is another copy so you don't get the url gunk in the background:
http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.yoursite.com
How to implement Redirects
- If you are a member of MyblogLog (and you should be
) you should inset the redirect where you have put the address for your website. You will be surprised how many people will probably get toy our site through MyblogLog. - Each time you post a comment on someones blog use your redirect, comments again are a good source for people to visit your site.
- If you are a member of a forum use the redirect for the url in your signature. For more on this check out my post: Check your signature - get instant backlinks
- Use the redirect on internal links to your website, for example in the above URL "Check Your Signature" I used the redirect, if you hover over it you will be able to see the url address in the bottom left of your browser.
- Lastly, this is a bit of an experiment but I have added a button to the sidebar which you should be able to see –> it is just the url of this blog with a redirect, if people want to help improve my rankings they can click and if I see a similar button on anyone else's site I will do the same. Go-one add a button like this to your sidebar and you never know who might click!
Including the redirect can be a little time consuming and tedious but in the long term if you have a good alexa ranking this makes your site more attractive to advertisers! And that means more money for advertising space on your blog!
NOTE:
It has been said that Alexa redirects dont work logging clicks, this is still a grey area and after much searching I cant find a definative answer. After adding the redirect to MyBlogLog my Alexa rankings did increase and many other people have reported the same. I just thought i would clarify this after reading Daves comment.
Andy
If you enjoyed this post please feel free to buy me a gingerbread late! mmmm!
Tags:
Hey Andy!
This is unrelated to the post, but I wanted to let you know that I've started a new kick-ass meme…this one will boost your RSS subscriptions.
I obviously tagged you due to the recent success of ViraLink.
Come check it out if you get a chance.
http://ryanshamus.com/memes/rss-subscriber-meme/
Thanks Andy!
This is really clever!
Thank you!
Hi, nice post.
)
I like the idea of put the redirect on MyBlogLog, so I "stole" your info and wrote a very minimal howto.
I gave you credit about it (once with alexa redirect too
Here is my small tutorial:
Oops. I can't write links. So here is the url:
http://blog.nafurai.com/2007/06/improve-your-alexa-ranking/
Uhm.. better with alexa redirect:
http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://blog.nafurai.com/2007/06/improve-your-alexa-ranking/
Sorry for the double comment.
woops, posted in the wrong post. You should use a redirect on the "home" link too as lots of visitors from search engines click these.
Hi Maurizo, Your article looks good, I'm glad you are getting some benifit form the Redirect!
All the best
Andy
I'm sorry, but this is absolute marbles. You are 100% wrong.
Alexa does not register pageviews or alexa rank trough their redirect. It is all done through the toolbar. You are completely wasting your time and above all wasting direct links to your site.
BTW, your MBL link is broken.
Finally, giving out false information is not "clever".
@Dave, have you got information to back that statement up ?
Yes. When Yaro Starak brought this up a few months back, I took a test domain that was not indexed in any search engines and ran tests on it with the redirect AND with the widget. I am not going to bother going through it again.
Besides, What evidence does Andy have? He "Read it" on another website so it must be true? I'm sorry, but it is not. I'm not trying to to be smart here, rather prevent you wasting your time with the redirects.
Nice post there, thanks, mate!
Actually read this on several other websites. It must be a coincidence that my alexa rankings have improved since implementing these redirects. Why create the redirect protcol in the first place if it doesnt do anything?
Im going to reasearch this deeper.
With all due respect your ranking has improved from YOU using the alexa toolbar. You can get your site into the top 100k if only ONE person visits the site with the toolbar for a few days.
Great article! I'll be gradually implementing this over the coming days/weeks/months…
Thanks!
–Steve
Steve,did you actually read any of the comments?
Andy, have a read of this:
http://andybeard.eu/2007/06/linking-mistakes.html
Andy covers it well.
Also, I suggest you research your topic before posting and dishing out misleading advice to sheep like Steve.
I tested the redirect a few weeks ago. I wasn't impressed so I stopped using it. When I started getting serious about my website (about five wees ago) my Alexa was close to 1.9m. It's now down to 183,487. I got down to under 400k without the toolbar, widgets, or alexa ranking.
I'm a Mac user so I don't use the toolbar and honestly I wouldn't use it if it was available for Firefox. I installed the site widget at the 300k mark. I tried redirect for two days. I didn't like it so I stopped using it.
I think what helped my ranking drop was visiting a lot of websites,
leaving comments and those people were interested enough to check out my website. I imagine number of them use the toolbar. I also added my info to a variety of directories and social networking engines. I imagine some of them used the toolbar also.
About three weeks ago I created two new websites. They weren't even ranking for a little while. One of my websites is now under 800k and the other is under 900k.
I found your site because of the Viralink. I'm always looking for ways to meet other bloggers so I added it to my website. I'll definitely be visiting and commenting on a number of those websites.
Thanks for the tip. I've read the comments and see not everyone agrees, but I'll give it a go and see what happens !
P.S. If you are interested in knowing if there is any connection between blogger revenue and Alexa ranking then check out my post http://www.netmonetization.com/2007/07/blogger-revenue-and-alexa-rankings-are.html
Hi Yeah, I read your post, very interesting and thanks for the kink!
Yeah, there is no conclusive evidence that redirects do or dont work I say everyone should experiment and make their own decisions. Let me know if there are any chances to your ranking.
All the best
Andy
好文章！good article！
Nice trick, hope it works!! can i implement same on my blog ?
Eliena Andrews
Of course, give it ago and see how it affects your rankings, you may also be interested in my post - Do alexa redirects work?