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So, I have been working really hard on increasing my rankings for this site so that I could break into the top 100 list at 45n5.com, and while my Technorati rank is looking good, my Alexa rank refuses to budge as much as I am hoping it will, and recently I saw my line dip so far down, I nearly had a heart attack.

I first started wondering if all my hard work been for nothing? Should I have spent more time promoting Alexa, and asking each and every one of you to use a browser with its toolbar while browsing this blog?

Should I have tried all the ridiculous tricks that bloggers seem to believe, like adding the graphic with my current statistic onto my site, or setting up some strange redirect in hopes that the user will get counted?

Or is this the natural movement that sites see as they grow, change and evolve? I really don’t know. Just like most ranking systems, Alexa, and its ranking system, is sometimes difficult to understand.

What I’ve Learned about Alexa

Alexa uses their toolbar as a major part of their system to track how many visitors a site gets, and how many page views they load on a single site. They take this information and compare it to other sites they track data on, and create a ranking system based on this information.

Here is a blurb about the ranking from Alexa:

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis.

The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users).

The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.

You can get that toolbar from their download page. Some people swear by putting the toolbar on their web browsers, as it can help give them data, and if you just happen to browse your own blog, you will be giving them traffic data and page view data about your own site.

What You Can Do to Improve Your Rank

Improving your rank is fairly simple as there are really only three things you can do to get it rising. The first is simply to get more traffic. The more traffic you get, the more likely you will be ranked higher.

The only way your rank wouldn’t change with more traffic is if none of your visitors have the Alexa toolbar installed, so my second tip is to ask your audience to install the toolbar. The more people that use the Alexa tool, the more precise these rankings get, and if nothing else, in the short term it should help get your rankings up a bit more.

The last tip, isn’t really something you can do to improve your rank, but instead something you should consider if you want a high Alexa rank, you should target those that will use the toolbar. Many webmasters have the toolbar installed so they can keep track of the rankings of their sites. If you target webmasters, you might get a higher Alexa rank, than someone talking about cars, even if you both get the same amount of traffic.

Does Alexa’s Rank Matter?

For me that rank, no matter how unrealistic or incorrect it is, still effects how certain others perceive this site, and for me it is even more personal, as it effects my position on what I consider to be THE listing of sites in my niche.

While the ranking might not be exact, and its ability to judge sites is dependent on a toolbar that only certain groups of people will have installed, it still is worth it to focus on improving that rank. If you are going to sell advertising, or if you are going to promote yourself as an expert in your niche, having a better ranking on every well known, commonly used system, is always an advantage.

Update: My stay in the Top 100 didn’t last long as Mark had to make changes to the ranking system. I am still working on getting back into the Top 100, but it doesn’t look like I will make my goal this month of doing so. I am currently 105th on the list.

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I just read a post on One Man’s Goal about valuing your visitors, and I have to say that from my experience, he, or rather Yaro, is very far off on what a visitor is worth.

Yaro Starak once told me (more or less) that the average number of visitors to your site in a single day is roughly equal to how many dollars you make in a month. So lets take One Man’s Goal for example. I get roughly 500 UNIQUE visitors a day so that would translate into about $500 a month right? Well… maybe.

There are so many other factors that have to be brought into this formula that the simplicity sake of saying something like “your visitors per day is how much you could make a month” is ridiculous to me. Your advertisers are going to be concerned about your Google PageRank, Alexa Ranking, Technorati Ranking, and maybe even your RSS subscribers, and so this will effect how much revenue you can pull from your blog and thus it won’t translate over to that simple formula of visitors a day equals how much you can make a month.

If that were true, some blogs would be making a much larger amount each month, and other blogs would be making far less than they are currently making. Your visitors are worth what you decide they are worth. I know it sounds kind of cold, and maybe not as helpful of a metric as Yaro’s advice, but that is really what it comes down to.

If you have a blog with a focused readership and lower traffic, you may make more per advertisement than a blog that has a wide reaching readership and higher traffic in part because advertising to a focused readership can be easier, and also produce better results.

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Everyone today is absolutely buzzing about the recent manual adjustment of some very high profile sites. It looks like Problogger.net and Copyblogger.com are just two of the sites hit with a two point drop in their ranks.

DailyBlogTips.com has a list of sites being effected in a post entitled, “Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?“.

One thing that I find odd about this whole thing is Google’s selection of sites as it doesn’t seem to just be high level sites, but a bunch of smaller ones as well, if you read the comments on various blogs, you will see it extends beyond the dozen or two blogs that are well known and rightfully concerned about this shift.

Many bloggers have also come up with theories pertaining to the reduction in PageRanks, and they are all spreading some fear, uncertainty and doubt around the blogosphere. It would be nice to know the real reason for these penalties, but I doubt Google will share that information.

I think this is the push that bloggers, and advertising systems needed to remove Google’s PageRank from their valuation systems. Now is the time to come up with a more complex formula to decide a sites advertising worth. Take their unique visitors, add in their RSS subscribers, look at their growth, and factor in a dozen other pieces of information, and you will come up with a system that hopefully, can’t easily be gamed.

Keep watch on your blogs PageRank, and the traffic that Google is sending you. Hopefully, this is just Google stirring the pot, and will settle down soon.

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Ahmed Bilal has put up another great post on Performancing related to the attitude required to build your personal success. This is something I don’t think we bloggers have spent enough time considering.

My favourite from the list is his seventh point, which is entitled, “Find Yourself and Your Target”.

When it comes to success (and making money), it’s important to know what you want. To figure that out, you need to know what your strengths are (fields of work as well as type of work) and what impassions you. While your interests will evolve with time, getting your bearings right at the start makes it easier to make course corrections in the future.

Once you know what you want, you have to figure out what to do.

This point works well in any job, or even just with your life in general, because for some people, deciding what to do is half the battle. This is a post definitely worth checking out, and even more so if you have wondered, “do I need a personality adjustment to reach my goals?”

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I haven’t yet received a PageRank from Google, I am in a highly saturated niche, and this site is only coming up on its fourth month of being active, yet despite having so many things going against it, the growth of this site has outpaced over twenty of its competitors.

Where am I getting this comparison? Well, earlier this month, I was at the 121st position on the 45n5.com Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs list, and I made it my goal to get into the Top 100. A goal that some friends of mine said was pretty much impossible. Heck, some were surprised that once the list was expanded to over two hundred, that I was still sitting so high, but I was already working hard to build this site, and make it the best it could be.

As of today, I am sitting at a ranking of 101, and while that is still one spot away from my goal, it is still a jump of twenty positions over other blogs working hard to improve their ranks in the same niche.

Competition Doesn’t Matter

One of the biggest complains I hear from bloggers is that the niche they selected is too crowded, or that it has all been done before, and if you are going to go around believing that, then you are setting yourself up for failure.

You can’t concern yourself with your competition. They are great to help you set goals, and think up content ideas, but otherwise, you can’t let them make you feel inferior. If you have something to say, even if it has been said before, it is still worth getting your opinion out there.

Do Something New

With this blog, I added a weekly podcast, showcasing other people’s content and ideas, as well as adding my own thoughts and opinions to the subjects at hand. This lead me to stand out in this niche, and it is not like podcasting is a new idea.

Mark at 45n5.com came out with a Top 100 list, another idea that has been around for ages, but he made it his own by focusing it on a single niche, and promoting it well.

If you are going to really stand out from the crowd, you need to do something different. It doesn’t have to be innovative or new, but it has to set you apart from others in your niche, and help spread your message, and build your popularity.

Promote Your Content

If no one knows about your blog, then no one will read it. Seems to be a simple path of logic for me, but so many people don’t promote their content, and those that do, don’t always give it enough time or effort.

On some of my best articles, I will spend upwards of an hour promoting it. I contact my friends via e-mail that are willing to help me out from time to time. I have found e-mail newsgroups that help each other out with a link or an approving thumbs up if they like the article. I ask friends to submit the link to social bookmarking sites.

I come up with custom, personalized e-mails for a variety of site owners that are in the same niche as me, and ask them to look over the article and send me any for of feedback they have time for.

Sure this might seem laborious and tedious, but done well on your best posts, you can gain a huge influx of links, traffic, and new ideas. A few links, placed on really popular sites, can double all the stats on a new site, over night.

Make Friends

One of the biggest avenues for promotion, and one of the best tips I can give you is to make friends. Network with people both inside and outside your niche. Surrounding yourself with people that understand you can lead to great feedback, the occasional link, and help with every bit of your site, from the design, to the content.

Also, as a side note, friends can open avenues of promotion through their blogs, but allowing you to guest post, and I have said how amazing guest posts can be for your blogs, numerous times. It has been one of my largest sources of traffic this month.

Conclusion

So there you have it, with a little hard work, a positive attitude, and a lot of promotion, you can push your site up the rankings as well. Don’t let a little hard work scare you away. Pick a niche you are passionate about and enjoy your blogging time.

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