How Alexa Algorithm Determines Top Sites of the World
If your website is striving to get a high rank among other top sites on Google search engine, you should know that a system ranks the best websites on the internet. And that system is known as Alexa Rank.
Alexa.com, a subsidiary of Amazon, developed the Alexa ranking system, and it measures how popular your website is. With one being the most popular, it ranks top websites in the world on a scale of 1 to infinity. The lower the Alexa rank is, the more popular that website is.
Source: Alexa
Simply put, Alexa rank shows how a particular website is performing relative to other sites. It makes Alexa rank a good Key performance indicator, which one can use for competitive analysis and benchmarking. You should note that Alexa rank is a relative measure, so your site's position depends on its traffic and also on the traffic trend on other sites.
You can improve your site performance and get more traffic by applying some strategies based on Alexa rank.
Alexa Top Sites
You can access this link https://www.alexa.com/topsites to see the ranks of all the top websites in the world. Google and YouTube managed to secure their places among the top 10 websites in the world. These Ranks are being updated daily.
Source: Alexa
Note: You can check Top Ten websites worldwide or country wise.
There is much more to Alexa Rank, so let's discuss how Alexa Rank works without further ado
How does Alexa Rank work?
Alexa rank uses a proprietary methodology that combines visitor engagement and the site's estimated traffic to generate an Alexa ranking list. Alexa analyzes data for the past three months to create that list. Engagement and traffic are estimated using people's browsing behavior.
There is a Toolbar with the help of which Alexa access, analyzes data, and presents the results based on a sampling methodology.
You can also download and install "Alexa Toolbar" on your system. That toolbar will display the Alexa Rank of all those websites that you will open. At the same time, it will record that URL, your IP address, and send traffic data to the central server.
Alexa Rank Calculation
As per Alexa officials, rank is calculated using average daily unique visitors and page views. If a site has the highest combination of page views and visitors for three months, Alexa will rank that site in the first position. The website with the lowest combination of visitors and pageviews will be ranked for the lowest place – far away from number 1.
- Unique Visitors: Unique Alexa users visiting a site on a single day
- Page Views: Total number of URL requests generated by Alexa users for a site
As per Alexa, if the same user accesses the same URL within a single day, it will be counted as a single Pageview.
Alexa gets this information from the Traffic data panel that is gathered with internet users' help. These users use a browser extension that is available on Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Domains of most used websites: Alexa rank assigns a number for the domain only – it does not show any other ranking for various subpages under that domain or subdomain, for that matter.
Alexa says that there is some limitation to the available data. Alexa is unable to properly rank those sites that are being measured with relatively low traffic. It also acknowledged that it does not receive enough data from their sources to set statistically meaningful rankings beyond 100,000 – it means that the closer a website gets to number 1, the more reliable that rank will be. Due to the scarcity of data, websites with a grade above 100,000 are more subjected to ranking swings.
How to get a better Alexa Rank?
What to do if someone wants to include their website name in the list of best sites? Well, Alexa itself gives a few recommendations with the help of which you can improve your Alexa ranking. And they are mentioned below.
Generate original and engaging content
The most important step you can take to make your website enlisted in the top 100 websites among your country or globally is to write informative content. The content was, is, and will always be the king, so make the most use of this strategy. Ensure to hook your readers with valuable content that can give them a fresh perspective to look at things. Over some time, you can build a loyal audience if you keep on writing quality content. You can look out for the best website in your niche to get an idea of how they write good quality content.
Linking Strategy
When you write informative content, more and more people will read your content and refer to it within their articles or blog posts. It would let you get some valuable inbound links, which would increase your site's credibility. You can also create internal links between different blog posts on your website. It will keep your visitors engaged with your content and hence will decrease your bounce rate.
Keyword optimization and Competitors Analysis
Look out for those keywords on which your competitors are ranked. Try to target those long-tail keywords. Other than that, it would be best if you search for the related low difficulty keywords within your niche to use them within the content. You can run a few PPC campaigns to check what type of visitor is coming to your website.
Source: Pixabay
Apart from the above tips, it is also essential to effectively design your website to enhance the overall user experience. And to ensure if your website design is worthy enough to grab's visitor attention, make a website prototype, and put it under test. And when that prototype gets approved by stakeholders, you can handover that to your developer to initiate the development process.
What is the best tool for Prototype Designing?
Wondershare Mockitt is the best prototyping and collaboration tool developed by Wondershare to cater to novice and professional designers' needs. With Mockitt you can create captivating design prototypes within few easy steps.
Mockitt works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and also on your web browser – so you do not have to install it anywhere on your computer.
With its Collaboration feature, you can always get feedback from the stakeholders and check if your design prototype can mark its name within Alexa's top sites after web development.
Mockitt has a library filled with widgets and icons that will help you create any website, be it business, eCommerce, blogs, or more. There is an option in Mockitt that allows you to create links between various screen sizes to make them look more interactive. Without a doubt, Mockitt is one of the best tools that we have right now. So use it to its full potential.
Final Thoughts
If you aim to create the best website in the world, you have to start planning from the very beginning of a project lifecycle, and the first step is prototyping. Make sure you get your prototype ready and approved by following some best practices and design theories.
Because when you keep things simple and follow a more structured approach from the start, you become less prone to mistakes – and the fewer mistakes would pave your path to success, which is getting enlisted for the better Alexa Rank.
