Alexa Why You Should Be Using The To

Alexa: Why You Should Be Using The Toolbar.
by: Mark Thompson
Why on earth would anyone want to install a piece of spyware onto their Web browser? No sensible
right minded person would …unless you are a webmaster and you want to improve your SERPS ranking
that is.

The Alexa toolbar is not “technically” spyware as it doesn’t retrieve any private or personal
information. It does however log all the sites you visit and as webmasters we can use this to our
advantage. It uses this information to compile traffic ranking statistics and a relational list.
The relational list is very useful as it shows what other sites people who have looked the current
website have also visited. Alexa is owned by Amazon and it is possible to make your own Alexa
toolbar with your Amazon affiliate code included. You can then place this on your site and get
credited when anyone buys through Amazon using the Amazon button on the toolbar you’ve
distributed, it is also possible to include a link to your site in the toolbar.

Alexa ranks sites from 1 to 5,000,000 and sometimes higher. Ranking 1 has the most traffic and so
on, anything below 250,000 and you should be getting some decent traffic levels. This information
can be used to determine how well your advertising campaigns are going and how traffic levels are
growing over a period of time. This information can also be used to determine how you rivals are
doing and keep you one step ahead of them. The Alexa information is also picked up by other search
engines so you benefit from an increase in you SERPS as your site progresses up the rankings .

One drawback of the Alexa toolbar is that it only works on Internet Explorer and not the tool of
choice for most webmasters Firefox. However I personally feel this is a small price to pay for the
benefits I get when using the tool bar for research and to check my sites daily. Checking the
stats of your own site has a positive impact on your Alexa ranking as the toolbar is not generally
used by the general public so every extra hit from a browser with the tool bar installed is
valuable. I have 1 site that is almost exclusively used by webmasters , As webmasters are the
people who use Alexa more than any other group 500 page views a day are enough to get this site
into the top 500,000 Another site that has 3 times the traffic but the visitors are mostly the
general public so this site is languishing in the 2,000,000 ‘s.

Why not try an experiment for a month, Download the toolbar and monitor one of your sites, once
you see the data you get and the way it can be used you won’t know how you survived without it.

About the author:
Mark Thompson has spent a number of years traveling the World and Racing Motorbikes, when funds
got low he worked as an IT consultant In London. He now lives in Spain and runs a number of
Websites Including http://www.WorldoftheWeird.comand http://www.Links-Factory.com


Circulated by Article Emporium


©2005 - All Rights Reserved