Alexa traffic rank: what it is and why you should care (or not)

Alexa traffic rank is a metric that measures the popularity of websites in relation to their competition. It is an indirect measure of how many visitors are visiting a website, but it is not necessarily relevant for the quality of what is being offered by the website.

Alexa ranking information can be found on sites that offer Alexa rankings, which include Wikipedia and Amazon, among others. There are also certain tools and resources that provide Alexa traffic rank information for particular websites. 

It may be best to be aware of this metric if you're running your own site and want to see how well it's doing in relation to others in your industry or category. However, it might not be so important to be obsessed with traffic rank in the early stages of company development because you shouldn't expect a massive amount of traffic to your website.

Here are some questions that might help you determine if Alexa rank is something that deserves your attention:

* What is the Alexa rank for my website?

* Is my site's Alexa rank higher than my competitors? * If it is, does this suggest that I have a better site than they do? * Does this suggest that I have a significantly larger market share than they do? * Does a higher Alexa ranking imply anything about my search engine rankings or other metrics for measuring business growth (e.g. leads, sales, etc.)? * What can I do to improve my Alexa ranking?

A few of the answers that might come to mind include:

* The Alexa traffic rank is irrelevant unless you care about website visitors and web traffic. * You don't necessarily have a better site if you have a higher Alexa traffic rank. It's just that your site has more traffic than other sites in your industry. * A higher Alexa ranking probably does not imply anything about search engine rankings or business growth metrics because there is no correlation between these measurements. * You cannot do anything to directly improve your Alexa traffic rank because this metric is not determined by what you can control.

While you probably don't want to spend a lot of time worrying about the Alexa traffic rank of your website, it is good to know what information could be found on your site with a quick online search. If you are interested in knowing more about your own website's Alexa ranking, there are many tools and services out there that can provide this data for free or at very low cost. What do you think?

Howie Jacobson is an Internet marketing consultant and technology writer based in Chicago. His work has been published by organizations such as Search Engine Land and PC Mag , as well as dozens of smaller sites. Follow him on Twitter at @HowieJacobson or check out his latest articles here .

A quick search of Alexa.com may reveal that your site has a high ranking. But it may not tell you much about your website's traffic, according to Howie Jacobson, a blogger and consultant in Chicago.

Alexa Traffic Rank is a metric that measures the popularity of websites in relation to their competition. It is an indirect measure of how many visitors are visiting a website, but it is not necessarily relevant for the quality of what is being offered by the website.

Conclusion: I want you to consider the following when assessing your website's performance:

a. Traffic b. Rankings

Alexa traffic rank is a metric that measures the popularity of websites in relation to their competition. It is an indirect measure of how many visitors are visiting a website, but it is not necessarily relevant for the quality of what is being offered by the website. Alexa ranking information can be found on sites that offer Alexa rankings, which include Wikipedia and Amazon, among others. There are also certain tools and resources that provide Alexa traffic rank information for particular websites.