The Alexa traffic rank is a good way of gauging how much traffic your website is receiving and analysing where your website appears in the grand scheme of things.  Although the number isn’t official many website owners like to check their Alexa traffic rank on a regular basis to determine whether their implemented SEO efforts are working.  A website’s Alexa traffic ranking improves when visitors with the Alexa toolbar installed visit the site.  So why is it important and how can you check it?  Let’s take a look.

The Benefits of Alexa

The main benefit of Alexa is that it gives you an estimated tally of how much traffic your website gets in relation to other websites online.  Many people also use Alexa as a way of determining whether a website is legitimate or not from an advertising point of view.  For example, some advertisers will check a websites Alexa ranking before deciding whether they want to pay for advertising on a site or not.  High rankings tend to mean high trust – at least on a basic level.

The Downsides to Alexa

The main downside to an Alexa traffic rank is that traffic is only counted if the people who visit a website have the Alexa toolbar installed.  What this means is that sites that talk about SEO strategies or websites that are more technological in nature tend to have higher than average traffic figures whereas sites that are less tech orientated tend to have lower than average traffic figures as the majority of people who use the Alexa toolbar are either webmasters or people who are into technology.  In addition, it is very easy to skew the Alexa traffic rank figures as many websites have found out (take a look on Google you will find lots of articles telling you how to break the top 50,000 within a month).

Checking Your Alexa Traffic Rank

Although the Alexa traffic rank isn’t a true measure of your website’s place in the online world, it’s still worth checking from time to time.  If you don’t purposely skew your Alexa traffic numbers, the information can be useful in determining how well your site is performing to an extent.  It is also a good way to check on your competition if you keep in mind that the figures are only an estimate.  If you want to check your website’s Alexa traffic rank the easiest way to do this is by clicking here and using the Alexa Traffic Rank Checker tool.  You can use this for free on Pingler and it only takes a few seconds.  The lower your Alexa ranking, the more popular your site is with sites ranked under 10,000 thought to be very popular.

The Alexa Traffic Rank Checker tool can help you to estimate your website’s online presence.  There are numerous uses to the software but it’s important to keep in mind that the figure is only an estimate and should not be taken as fact.