Peppered liberally into my articles has been talk of Alexa, and Alexa ranking. Some of you might be asking who Alexa is and why she is so important.

Well, from a newbie perspective, Alexa is a tool that shows how popular your website is from the billions of sites and pages out in the ether. It also shows whether you are becoming more or less popular.

As a good example, our site, www.make-money-online.co.za, and www.makemoneyonline.co.za (which goes to the same place) is gaining in popularity. This is all down to writing articles (as Richard spoke about in his article), updating articles that are on the site already, and the other SEO tips that I have given before.

Alexa has a free Toolbar that is downloaded by a small percentage of people around the world (who are typically webmasters or web developers who care about their Alexa ranking) and Alexa shows how popular your site is to those people who have got the Alexa Toolbar. So why, you ask with s hint of frustration creeping into your voice, is it so important that I harp on about it almost every time I write?

Because, say I with a patient smile remembering how confused I felt when it was pointed out to me, the more popular your site is on Alexa, the more often Google ranks your site.

In short, without the Geek, being popular on Alexa makes you popular with Google too! That’s why when you ‘Google’ make money online, our site pops up FIRST in the organic search results (typed into the search bar of www.google.co.za, and we are not one of the sponsored links who have paid to be on top, which is why I say it’s organic). (And yes, we are unashamedly blowing our own trumpets just a little bit)

Also, I have downloaded a little tool called SEO Quake so that I can at a glance see the ranking of any site that I am visiting. I am more likely to believe a site that has a low ranking (closer to zero) on Alexa, than one with a high ranking. Especially if they are claiming that many people believe in / do something that they advertise. Alexa itself has a free toolbar that does the same thing. I installed it to view in the status bar (the bottom left instead of the top of the window).

You will notice on our Alexa ranking that historical data is not available for sites ranked higher than 100 000. Alexa is very clear that information is not reliable for sites that are ranked very high (as in many more than one: the closer to one that the site is, the better ranked it is), which we are right now admittedly. However you can see by our Alexa rank (which you can get to easily by going to www.alexa.com and seeing for yourself) that we are becoming more popular. We’ve moved up the ranks, and quite considerably so.

3 months ago, we were close to 6 million... now we’re getting closer to 3 million every day, and we won’t be stopping there : )

Another reason that a good Alexa ranking is good to have, is for selling advertising space on your site. The lower your ranking, the easier it will be to pull in the bucks from advertisers. It shows advertisers that your site is popular, and their advert will be seen by a lot of people. Even though the ranking doesn’t truly represent the global surfers. Selling advertising space is a whole article by itself!

According to Dave Sherwin article on The Article Base, the following is a good guide to how well a site is being seen according to the Alexa ranking:
Over 1,000,000: Very little traffic.
500,000-1,000,000: Not bad, maybe even making some money if it's a commerce site.
250,000-500,000: A respectable amount of traffic
100,000-250,000: Good traffic. Sites in this range can be considered successful.
20,000-100,000: Extremely good. Alexa takes you very seriously once you are in the top 100,000 of all sites online.
1,000-20,000: Ultra successful. Time to quit your day job.
1-1,000: Time to sell for millions, maybe billions.

So, while Alexa may be inaccurate from 100 000 and higher, and from a limited audience, it is still a great tool to see how marketable your site is, and to see whether your search engine optimisation is working.

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