What is Alexa Rank and How is it Helpful in SEO

Reading the title of this blog post may conjure up images of the Amazon Echo where you ask “Alexa” a question and receive an answer.

However, when it comes to its definition, Alexa rank is different from this common association. In fact, understanding the complexities of Alexa rank will assist in your SEO strategy. Like all concepts related to SEO though it will be important to understand how to leverage Alexa rank to its fullest extent.

In this article, we will cover what Alexa rank is, how it is calculated and, most importantly, what impact it has on your marketing and future SEO endeavors.

What is Alexa Rank?

Starting with the basics, we will define Alexa rank. Simply put, Alexa rank measures the popularity of a website. The lower the number of your website’s Alexa rank the more popular it is. Therefore, the websites with the best Alexa rank have a ranking of 1. You can imagine sites that people frequent such as Amazon, Facebook or a search engine have a strong Alexa rank due to the volume of people visiting those sites daily.

This web traffic data determines a site’s Alexa rank. Beyond this ranking, an Alexa ranking also measures how your site is performing relative to other sites.

How is Alexa Rank Calculated and is it accurate?

While the phrase “popularity of a website” sounds subjective, Alexa rank is calculated through a combination of a site’s estimated traffic and visitor engagement over the past three months.

The Alexa program analyzes a site and calculates the frequency of visits. If the same user visits the website multiple times in one day, it is counted as one visit.

Thus, with this combination of unique daily visitors and average pageviews, Alexa rank is calculated.

Up to this point, you may be thinking how Alexa rank compares to Google Analytics. After all, doesn’t Google Analytics track the “popularity of a website?” In studies conducted comparing these two programs, people found that due to its ubiquitous use Google Analytics provides a more thorough overview of your website’s popularity and reach to potential customers.

However, this fact does not mean that Alexa rankings are useless. On the contrary, looking at your website’s Alexa rank provides a helpful overview of your website’s popularity and presents it in an easily-digestible format.

How do I discover my site’s Alexa rank?

With this information, you may be wondering how to find your website’s Alexa rank? Finding out some basic information on your website’s Alexa ranking can be found by navigating to this link.

You can view a basic overview of your site’s statistics such as the keywords that users used to find your website, your Alexa rank, how your site compares to others in your industry and the amount of time users spend on your website.

Keyword research is one of the most important insights you can gain from checking your website’s Alexa rank. Conducting keyword research is one of the most important tactics you can employ to improve your SEO and this simple tool can help you discover future keywords to use.

One clever way you can use this website is to compare your success with your competitors to see how you stack up against your most important SEO rivals.  

In these ways, discovering your Alexa rank is highly important for your website.

Does Alexa Rank impact my SEO?

The simple answer to whether Alexa rank impacts your SEO is yes it does. Like SEO, striving for a low Alexa ranking (i.e. getting as close to 1 as possible) takes time. Employing the SEO tactics we have discussed in our recent blog posts, as well as creating engaging content on your website, will only drive your website’s popularity and contribute to a lower Alexa ranking.

It may be helpful to think of Alexa rank and SEO as a cause-and-effect relationship. If you invest time in SEO and optimize your site to rank highly on Google, your Alexa rank will improve and drop closer to 1.

Therefore, the way to monitor your progress in Alexa rankings is to devote much of your content strategy to improving your SEO rank and periodically check your website’s Alexa ranking to track your progress.

You can of course pay for more information on the Alexa website. Plans range from $79-$299 a month depending on how much information you want.

How can I use Alexa Rank in my marketing?

Using Alexa rank in your marketing strategy operates more subconsciously than something you strive for directly.

We discussed the direct ways Alexa rank can help in your marketing strategy since the website can provide you with keywords to consider in future blog posts or other outreach efforts.

However, your Alexa rank will improve if you simply invest time in a few different areas. For example, creating quality content is one way to improve your Alexa ranking.

Timely, useful content drives traffic to your website and the more trustworthy you become as a source of information, the better your Alexa rank will be. Ideally, the content you create should compel a person to share it with the people they know, especially on social media. With more unique visitors, you can thus accomplish an important marketing objective as well as improve your Alexa rank.

Alexa rank and marketing also work collaboratively when you acquire more inbound links. Like SEO, the more other websites link to your content, the better your Alexa rank will become.

Going Forward

Although it was only mentioned briefly, remember that your Alexa rank provides only a rough idea of the popularity of your website. This program works through a toolbar installed on one’s computer. Therefore, the Alexa rank provides sketches in broad strokes about your website’s performance. Google Analytics remains one of the most important programs to monitor the popularity of your website.

However, this fact does not diminish the importance of your Alexa ranking. Some of the benefits of a high Alexa rank include allowing you to charge more for advertising space on your website, checking out the progress of your competitors and conducting keyword research.

Armed with this knowledge, you can begin working on improving your SEO and Alexa rank simultaneously and start achieving your marketing objectives.