I am pretty happy today as this is the first time my blog has cracked the 50,000 mark for an Alexa ranking. It took me a little over 7 months to reach this milestone. I beat my goal by 5 months and that makes me happy 
I know there is a lot of debate over the value of Alexa ranking. I believe that it is very important if you are looking to monetize your blog. It is not the only thing that advertisers look for but it is one of the biggest factors in determining the value for an ad or link on your blog.
The Alexa formula is based on the number of vistors that visit your site and the number of page views. Of course, only those with the Alexa toolbar count as votes. It is kind of like the Nielsen ratings are for television. Sounds pretty simple right, increase the number of visits and the number of pages they view and your Alexa ranking will increase, right? Yes, this is true but there are some other things you can do to boost your Alexa ranking. Here are some ideas.
What do you do to improve your Alexa ranking?
Sounds a bit weird that Alexa only gathers information from their toolbar. By doing so their statistics must be really distorted.
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I hate those tool bars applications. I don’t install any of that on my computer. Greg Ellison
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@Stefan they don’t do that any more. About a year ago they changed their way of counting rank for sites by also using other metrics.
Andreas´s last blog ..How to hide your affiliate links – part 4
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I also don’t like installing toolbars as they seem to slow down my browsing and cramp my browser. I thought I was the only one, but Greg seems to be the same.
Would be nice if you had a poll to see how many of your visitors have the toolbar installed.
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Even I don’t like those toolbar.. I think its a wrong way calculate the ranking… If what Andreas says is right…then its good..
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Thanks for the great article. I learned of some new sites to advertise on! I am currently setting my goal for a good alexa rank.
Josh H´s last blog ..Will Google Caffeine Boost Your Search Engine Results
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I’m not a 100% sure, but I think if you add an alexa widget on your blog, such as the one which shows your traffic etc, then this also sends information back to alexa on your site visits, then you don’t need the toolbar..
Karen@Blazing Minds´s last blog ..StumbleUpon Sucks!!! Big Time!!!
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Here’s how Alexa calculate rank since April 2008:
http://blog.alexa.com/2008/04/alexa-ranking-system-has-been-changed.html
As you can see they use more sources then just the toolbar, so it’s not helping that much to install it any more.
/Andreas
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Congrats on topping the top 50K! That is a big accomplishment. We are hoping to get there before the end of the year
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Sometimes I feel “Who the hell is Alexa to rank my blog?” because most of the times Alexa rankings are not trustful and show ranking which I couldn’t believe my blog can have after looking at my traffic stats but many advertisers look on that rank that is why sometimes I feel improving it can’t be bad thing.
I think this article could possibly help improve the alexa rank.
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I agree with Typhoon i found the same withe these 2 web sites,
http://www.webdesignsolution.co.uk/
http://www.alvipixels.com
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Congrats! you crossed the 50k mark i too have crossed mainly because of entrecard, twitter and also my posts that attract designers and webmasters. In the end content matters!
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Congrats !
I am also running behind the same mission you achieved.
I have beaten 800000 sites/blog and now reached on 245000 in 20 Days.
Because I started my new blog in April month and actively started on 22, of July.
I am aiming to hit 15000 within 2-3 months.
Surender Sharma´s last blog ..4 Ways to Increase Page Views of Your Blog
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I wonder how Alexa will be able to rank websites based on other sources than the toolbar. I mean, they sure as h*ll don’t get access to my google analytics or wordpress dashboard, nor my server log files. And I don’t believe I’m getting *any* hits from sources that goes through alexa (for click tracking).
So what can they do? Maybe they just know that 0,5% of all internet users use their toolbar and they multiply the number up to match the ‘average’ rank?
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Interview With World Famous Problogger Darren Rowse (video)
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@Klaus: I think they get metrics from ISPs the same way Compete does.
Andreas´s last blog ..How to setup a free blog on your own domain
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Great discussion! I agree with Gautam that content is the most important. I have the alexa add on on my firefox browser and it shows up in the bottom right hand corner. It helps me everytime I visit my own site but I like it because I like checking out other bloggers Alexa rank too.
Tycoon Blogger@Make Money Blogging´s last blog ..How to Improve your Alexa Ranking
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Great work Dan I’m really happy you managed to get so low in the rankings. Once you hit the 50,000 mark it starts getting hard to get lower as the competition is fierce.
I had the tool bar installed once but never added after I moved back to windows xp from vista.
I will look at installing it asap I find it cool how it also shows the related websites and has the little icon in the bottom allowing you to see the mini graph of the site your visiting.
I love how you still support EC
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Some how I don’t see how Alexa should be getting rankings from ISP’s – besides, there’s thousands of ISP’s out there.
Somebody should try to get an undercover job within Alexa and report back to us on how they do their ranking
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Most Popular Camera On Flickr: iPhone
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Really a nice description on Alexa ranking. Thanks for clearing the concepts.
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Congrats Dan for your alexa ranking, 50,000 is a great ranking Dan and you just took 7 months to achieve it, well done Dan! I’ve not done anything else to improve my alexa rank, I just let it grows naturally, but the improvement is slow. I’m going to install the Alexa tool since I visited my blog almost daily, perhaps it helps a little bit.
Nice tips Dan!
Regards,
Lee
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If you are looking for improvement your AlexaRank, you can also use some blackhat ways as: Use proxy and sock and some Alexa boost tools that was shared on Forum Digitalpoint^_^
Thanks for nice post!
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very well written. wonderful to read this.pretty useful and helpful.
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Wow bro it’s nice to see you crushing it and moving this baby up the chain, your hard work pays off.
I never really paid much attention to Alexa ranking until someone pointed out to me that I was about to break into the 100k about 2 months ago, now I am addicted. Haha.
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@tycoonblogger: I actually use a better tool that along with alexa rank shows the page rank and compete rank
@extremejohn I am too an addict when it comes to stats
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sorry i missed the link http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus this also has additional features like meta tags and all. All in all a great tool for addicts like us
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Wow 50k mark. Thats one accomplishment for a blog site except if yours sounds like Paris Hilton
Congrats!
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I also do not like very much installing toolbars as they do seem to slow down the speed performance while browsing. Nevertheless, I do have Alexa installed as I believe that it is an interesting metrics for one to have. To add, Alexa rankings improve a lot more if you get visits from different locations. If you get your visitors from only one location then it will not improve very much. Try to “get” some visitors from all over the world and your Alexa should improve faster, obviously in addition to the tips you have said above.
DiTesco @Make Money Online Business´s last blog ..Earn Money And Boost Traffic With Entrecard
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this is really important to have a improved Alexa ranking..this post is much useful. thanks .keep sharing.
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great post thanks was gathering all info to promote my site better on ranks
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I swear I was researching how to monetize blogs and all that and never once heard anyone say that I HAD to have the Alexa toolbar in it. Will have to now
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I think the Alexa ranking is very innaccurate. My main competitor is showing an Alexa rank much lower than mine, yet the site received 5x more visitors. Do advertisers still look at this?
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I’ve a;ways had the toolbar because I’ve always been interested in the traffic other blogs get.
I think that Karen made a good point about the widget and it’s probably accurate. I say this because I have the widget on wassup and it has a better rating than my Load of BS site which gets way more visits. I think I will now put the widget on all my blogs.
Sire@ WassupBlog´s last blog ..Blog Me This You Blogging Fools
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Wow, congrats to a high alexa rank. My blog is about 9 months old but the highest alexa that I got was around 300K. I think I must follow some of the tips you’ve mentioned here.
Tyrone | Millionaire Acts´s last blog ..What is an Entrepreneur?
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this is really great on Alexa ranking. wonderful to read this. thanks for sharing. its useful.
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There is something I dont understand with alexa. Does it also have a preference for certain niche?
I am asking this because I normally have between 1500 to 2500 visits per day on my blog. But most visitors are search engine ones and some are from my own country (country based news). So most of they are not too techky guys.
Yet My alexa is at arnd 160000 –
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Nice tips.. You can also add Alexa rank widget on your site. It does help you rank high quickly, if your visitors click on it. Its great to rank higher on Alexa especially if you are approaching prospective advertisers as well. And of course, if you can get more traffic from stumble, digg, shoutwire and other social networking sites, it will help boost your ranking.. By the way, I didn’t know about adgitize, will check it out..
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It’s Amazing to know that they calculate the ranking as per the information provided by the tool bar.
Right now i will install the toll bar of Alex.
Thank you very much for the information. Pls Keep on giving the updates.
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Thanks for the tips. Too bad I really don’t want to have another toolbar in my browser.
Eric B.´s last blog ..Putting Together a Web Development Toolkit
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this is really well post on Alexa ranking . you can use Alexa widget toolbar as well.its wonderful to have a less Alexa ranking.
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This is very nice! And I agree with you, ADGITIZE is very very helpful!! And as well as Entrecard
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I am surprised why Alexa will improve only on Alexa toolbar installed blogs it kind of puts me off. Still Alexa ranking is a valid means to speak about a blog, so its still a valuable tip for those newbies like me.
That apart other tips are easily implementable. I started off in the middle of June 2009 and now standing under 16,00,000 but my mission is to be under 1,00,000 within a year and I am going to achieve that before that time for sure!
Aram´s last blog ..Juan Martin Del Potro US Open Mens Singles 2009 Winner
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Thanks for these simple and easy tips. I am going to go and implement those I have already done right now. See you around.
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I have alexa toolbar hehehe!
I agree with your idea about it. but only this time I get the idea of you have to have alexa to get counted. thanks for that.
btw, your alexa is now 40,645 Congrats!
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Yes i did this one, but i don’t see much effect until and unless i get some big traffic spikes from digg, su etc
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It is rally a great opportunity for this great sharing….
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On one of their new posts, Alexa said they calculate by weighing “reach” heavily so I think if you have lots of quality back links you might help lower your Alexa faster. But who knows I still have a LOOONG way to go in reaching a decent rank. At least the rank is for your domain and not for single pages like PR.
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Bookmarking this post.
Today my head doesn’t work anymore, will read it tomorrow
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I have a website site with an alexa ranking of 93,000. Should I be able to get advertisers to pay me?
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Alexa ranking System does not impact your web reputation. As Its a Spying Technique and Could easily be manipulated.Need Not to bother about this.
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How comes Google make more money than Yahoo yet Yahoo are always on top of Alexa ranking?
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