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You might have said to yourself, what is Alexa Rank and why should I give a crap? Well I’m here to tell you, if you want more people to read your blog and someday make money blogging, then its time to suck it up and learn about Alexa Rank.

If you have been reading the Give And Receive Series you might have noticed a running theme. It is better to give than receive and in the end your giving will be rewarded. This giving idea fits so perfectly with Alex Rank that you will be blown away with how easy it is to give your way to a higher Alexa Rank. Strap on your passionate helmet as we dive head on into the wonderful world of Alexa with 2 easy steps.

But Alexa Rank Is For Webmasters And Tech Geeks

If you have read anything about Alexa in the past you have most certainly run across the naysayers.

While not necessarily a naysayer DoshDosh has a perfect example of what you might read about Alexa on other websites.

…many have indicated that Alexa is a vastly inaccurate method of measuring a website’s reach, traffic and potential. I don’t disagree.

Alexa is a silly way to measure web traffic but unfortunately, in an imperfect world Alexa is still heavily used by webmasters and ad networks when measuring the value of advertising on your website.

(from their post - 20 Quick Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank)

I do not disagree with DoshDosh’s take on Alexa. Alexa Rank is not the most perfect way of ranking a website, however if you choose to ignore Alexa you might as well be saying, “I don’t really want to improve my blog and I’d rather have a traditional job instead of improving my online efforts to eventually make a living online!”

If you only have a blog so that you can write posts that 10-50 people will read and think making some money while you practice your passion for blogging is not for you then stop reading now. I truly believe you can find a happy middle ground where you can make money blogging and give your readers content that is not just a sales pitch. Alexa fits into this happy middle ground.

What is Traffic Rank? (in 160 words or less)

From the Alexa website:

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.

Alexa Makes Giving Easy With The Alexa Toolbar

The Alexa Toolbar makes giving so easy once you have installed it you give each website you visit a vote that helps them get a better Alex Rank (including your website.)

Here is what the Alexa Toolbar looks like for the 2 most popular web-browsers.

Alexa Toolbar for Firefox sneak preview

Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer sneak preview

If you still want more information about the Alexa Toolbar take the quick tours at their website.

• Alexa Toolbar (Sparky) for Firefox Quick Tour
• Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer Quick Tour

Step 1 - Installing The Alexa Toolbar

Now we come to the super easy first step installing the Alexa Toolbar. Click on the picture below, follow the instructions, and install the toolbar.

Now that you have the toolbar installed you are already giving. How is that possible?

Automatic Giving With The Alexa Toolbar

From the Alexa website.

Making a better Internet

Alexa could not exist without the participation of the Alexa Toolbar community. Each member of the community, in addition to getting a useful tool, is giving back. Simply by using the Firefox and IE toolbars each member contributes valuable information about the web, how it is used, what is important and what is not. This information is returned to the community as Related Links, Traffic Rankings and more.

The toolbar helps increase the Alexa Rank for each site you visit (including your site.) As your rank grows you will notice an increase in site visitors. Some first time readers come to your site see a low Alexa Ranking and then quickly hit the back button, I’m sure you don’t judge a website by its stats unfortunately all blog readers are not as great as the readers here at Passionate Blogger. Also Advertisers use ranking sites like Alexa to determine how much they are willing to pay for an ad on your site.

One more step and your site will be setup to receive Alexa love.

Step 2 - Update Your Site Information On Alexa

Goto http://www.alexa.com/data/details/contact_info? you’ll see a page like this:

Enter your website URL and you will be taken to a page where you can enter information about your website that helps to personalize your Alexa listing. You can enter as much or as little information here as you would like. I don’t know if I would suggest entering your phone number or home address. Now hit the coutinue button at the bottom of that page and you are ready to claim your site.

Alexa wants to know that you are the actual owner of the site and it gives you 3 options to prove it.

Option 1

Enter an e-mail address where Alexa can contact you. This option will only work if you have an email address that ends with you website address. Like this @yoursite.com (yoursite would be the name of your site)

For most people this option will not work, if not move on to the next option.

Option 2

Place a file called info.txt on the root of your site

You may place an info.txt file containing your contact info in the root of your site for Alexa to fetch.

1. Right-click the link to the file: info.txt. that Alexa gives you and save it to your computer. Do not edit the file!
2. Copy the info.txt file from your computer to the root of your site. (you will have ftp this file to your website’s server. If your site is on blogspot you will not be able to do this. Move on to option 3)
3. Verify that the info.txt file is there with your browser. (Go to http://www.yoursite.com/info.txt.)
4. One last step! Once you have verified that the file is there, tell Alexa to fetch it by clicking on the fetch link that they give you:

If you cannot complete this step for some reason let me know and I will try to walk you through it. If you have a blogspot blog you will not be able to upload the file to the root of your website. Don’t worry there is a way for you blogspot bloggers to update your information.

Option 3

Open Directory

Alexa displays site names and descriptions from the Open Directory. If you would like us to display a site name or description for your site, please go to the Open Directory, find the appropriate category for your site, and click the “suggest URL” link at the top of the page. (We highly recommend reading their submission guidelines first.) Once Open Directory updates their data, your changes will be reflected in all Alexa services when we next receive a periodic update from them.

I highly suggest every blog owner submit their site to the Open Directory. This adds another link to your website and helps readers and search engines better find your site.

Go About Your Blogging Life

That is all you really need to do to start giving and receiving Alexa love. Growing your Alexa Rank will take time, however you should start seeing an improvement fairly quickly.

In a little over a month my Alexa Rank here at Passionate Blogger went from nonexistent to 385,159 (as of August 29th, 2007.) That is an incredibly quick climb for a new blog. I owe it all to the regular readers that have been kind enough to give Passionate Blogger a vote each time they visit by simply having the Alexa Toolbar installed on their browser.

In the next installment of the give and receive series we will focus on links.

Give And Receive Series

• Part 1 — Technorati Favorites
• Part 2 — StumbleUpon
• Part 3 — Alexa Rank