Six,Reasons,Why,Your,Alexa,Rat marketing Six Reasons Why Your Alexa Rating Is Still Important.

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Six Reasons Why Your Alexa Rating Is Still Important.1. Additional Exposure For Your Site.At the end of 2003, Alexa.com's results were being closely linked into thelistings of its' parent company, Amazon.com. This currently means thatwhen someone reviews your site, it is linked to their amazon profile, whichcan be accessed when people browsing for books look to see what reviewerslike them suggest. In the future, it could mean that amazon.com willintegrate your web site in other ways, such as showing a list of websitesrelated to popular topics such as marketing. 2. Alexa's relationship with Google.comSee if you can name one major partnership that Google.com or Amazon.comhas had where the other party came out worse off in the end. Yahoo? I don't think so. Though their relationship has soured for reasonsthat aren't common knowledge, and Google.com does not supply Yahoo withsearch results any longer, it certainly didn't make Yahoo.com less popular adestination online. If anything, more webmaster like you and me, who couldnot afford the $200 fee for a commercial review to be listed, rush to Yahooto see if our Google listings really were coming up number one there, too. Can't think of any other one, can you? Let's discuss how this is relevant to you. This little known advantage to having a good Alexa rating is fairly new. I wasdoing some research on Google, at the end of last year, to see what was thefastest, cheapest way to get my brand new site good ranking and fastinclusion in Google's database. Using Alexa.com, I was able to discover oneof the biggest secrets online that showed me how to get a visit from theGooglebot spider and included in their index in under a week. TheGooglebot spider now visits the home page of my site every day,re=spidering my site when I make significant changes.While I was at Alexa, I noticed that very quietly, without a lot of hoopla orpublicity, Alexa Internet began to include a Google search right in theirtoolbar at the end of last year. Upon further investigation, I realized thatAlexa and Google were getting quite chummy. This relationship directly ledto the idea I had which uncovered a way to get Alexa and Google to help meget free, unlimited traffic for any keyword related to my site's topic.The idea was so simple, so cheap, and so profitable that I started to write abook about it, which I finished this past January. Everything was great, Iwas getting great traffic. Then I woke up one morning and checked myemail, and most of my online colleagues were ticked off about somethingcalled the Florida update, which caused many small commercial websites tohave their listings drop in ranking or disappear altogether.Of course, I went to check on my site. Not only did my ranking not drop, I had additional listings and improvedexposure. One of the several factors that appeared to be the reason for myimproved rankings, not just in spite of, but because of the Florida update,was my Alexa ranking. Further testing on other commercial sites of fellowsmall business owners confirmed this.This experience taught me to pay a lot more attention to my Alexa rating, aswell as to have a new appreciation for the ratings of all my sites. Your Alexa rating is still relevant to you because it appears to be a factor inyour page rank at Google. Generally, anything that is important to Google isimportant to me, because I wanted to learn how to make the site anexcellent source of traffic for me. And it worked. Working to have a rise in my Alexa rating helped me in my quest for freequality traffic as well- every increase in my Alexa rating has coincided with arise in both the number of keywords I rank for and the likelihood that mysite will appear on the first page of search results, first at Google, then withother search engines.You'd never know that I haven't ever submitted them my link.3.Your competitor's awareness is increasing.Those of us who have been online since the early 90's, before the graphicalinterface we now call the World Wide Web, are well aware of the Alexatoolbar, and there are many schools of thought as to its effectiveness as anindicator of your site's traffic.Whether you believe it's effective or useful, the fact remains that you canuse the Alexa toolbar and the resources at Alexa.com to give your site acompetitive advantage. Your competition knows this if they have anymarketing savvy at all.While not as compelling as the fact that Google is now tied to Alexa, it's nosmall issue that other webmasters are beginning to show interest inAlexa.com again. Now that Alexa is being positioned to have a closerintegration with Amazon, has improved their toolbar to include a free pop-upblocker and Google search results, as well as given webmasters incentive toinstall the Alexa toolbar, many site owners either offer the toolbar or displaytheir Alexa ranking proudly on their sites.So, no matter what your personal feelings about the Alexa toolbar are, itmay be a good idea to gain the advantages it offers, before your rivals do.4. Client awareness is risingEven if you're not a commercial website, and don't really compete with othersites for anything other than traffic, you still have to deal with the fact thatyour visitors are becoming more aware of the Alexa toolbar again. Alexa allows you to customize a version of their toolbar and allow you tooffer it as a free download from your site. Not only can you profit from theiramazon.com purchases, but when regular visitors return to your site withthe toolbar installed, it can help maintain your ranking. The way things are going, the situation of having clients checking your Alexareviews and ratings before they buy from you to one day be routine. Do youwant to be ahead of that possible trend, or wait, and push it when everyoneelse finally catches on?5. Alexa's Perceived ImportanceThe whole reason for this article is that in answer to the last article I wroteabout Alexa, I got a lot of feedback questioning whether Alexa Internet andits toolbar were still important to webmasters. So far, at minimum, for thelast two reasons I stated, the Perception of Alexa being an importantwebmaster tool is increasing. So even if you don't think it is important, if your visitors feel it is, then itmay be time for you to at least pay attention to the recent changes.6. Alexa's Actual ImportanceAs Alexa's perceived importance is growing, it's actual importance seems tobe moving at the same rate. Here's why.It would be one thing if all the hoopla about Alexa took place and everyoneinstalled or re-installed the toolbar, and everyone found out that both thesite and the toolbar were useless. Remember when auto-surf exchanges firstbecame popular? Everyone jumped on the bandwagon for about a month,then several articles came out about six weeks later, stating that they wereineffectual because real humans weren't viewing the sites anymore.Look around the Net for about an hour and see if you can find any newnegative press about Alexa from webmasters since November. All I've seenare the same questions there were before- is my Alexa rating important, andwhy? Are Alexa's traffic stats accurate?And I still have the same answers. Your Alexa rating is important to you ifyou have a commercial website because it is important to Google and toyour competition. And whether your site is commercial or not, it is becomingimportant to your visitors, which is why your site exists- to cater to them,you should make your site's relationship with Alexa.com a priority. As to Alexa's statistical accuracy, I can't say for sure. It's a much debatedtopic. But it's pretty much indisputable that getting into the top 100,000sites is a significant achievement, though perhaps not as difficult as somethink. And having a top 50,000 site is not something that can really becheated or faked. So perhaps it is not perfectly exact as a comparison ofyour site to another unrelated site.But it is the closest thing to a universal, impartial 3rd party measure of trafficwe have. And more importantly, it can give your clients yet another reasonto trust you enough to buy from your site. Testimonials in the form ofreviews on their site, as well as fast access to your contact information fromoutside your site can mean the difference between a browser and a buyer.If you haven't had the chance to download the Alexa toolbar, you can get itfrom http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/alexatoolbar - or you can get theAlexa Snapshot from www.alexa.com if you have Netscape or if you're noton a PC. It's a free resource, and all you have to lose- or gain- is more freetraffic. Article Tags: Alexa Rating, Still Important, Alexa Toolbar