Update 2/23/11: See how much my Alexa Rank improved in just 2 weeks!
I’ve recently been working on marketing my travel blog more and trying to gain a bigger following and realize my dream of world travel blog domination. Brendan van Son of www.brendansadventures.com runs a great list of the Top 100 Travel Websites, and I’m not listed. There are a couple of reasons for that, but the biggest reason is that my Alexa ranking isn’t up to snuff.
So these tricks for increasing traffic to your travel blog aren’t actually about increasing traffic – instead, it’s a quick and easy way to boost the Alexa rating of your travel blog.
Trick # 1: Install the Alexa Toolbar.
Alexa uses a toolbar to measure the traffic and reach of your site. So if you want to get a high ranking, your users will need to have that toolbar installed on their browsers. Sites with relatively low traffic can gain by leaps and bounds by having just a few of their visitors install the Alexa tool bar.
So, dear reader – Install the Alexa Toolbar!
It just sits in the corner of your browser window and reports back to Alexa about your surfing habits. Now I know what you’re thinking – but put down the bong and the back issue of Conspiracy Theorist Weekly and listen up: It’s not “The Man” keeping tabs on your porn surfing, and it’s not malware that is going to clog or slow down your system. It’s just an innocuous little logo that helps to improve the accuracy of traffic rankings across the web.
If you install the toolbar it will increase the ranking your website because (presumably) you visit your own site. It will also increase the ranking of my site because (presumably) you are my number one fan and you visit hundreds of times each day from your cubicle. Furthermore, the sites and blogs you love and visit often will also benefit. So everyone wins!
Some sites have claimed as much as a 25% jump in ranking just from doing this – so it’s well worth a shot. I’ll do a follow up post next week to let you know how well it actually works.
Alexa Ranking at the time of this post:
- Overall: 1,001,473
- US: 180,018
- UK: 76,394
You can install the Alexa Toolbar here. Then come back and read the next trick.
Trick # 2: Write a post about increasing your travel blog’s Alexa ranking.
Okay, so you’ve got your sweet new toolbar and you’re furiously clicking away at your own website to boost your Alexa score. Slow down, cowboy – why not get your readers to do the work for you. Remember the more of your visitors who have the Alexa toolbar installed, the better. So it only stands to reason that you should write a post about this very subject to inform your readers that they should help you out by installing the toolbar, and if they are bloggers as well – they can help themselves in the process.
Title your post: How to Boost Your Alexa Score or something snappy and similar and then share it with your network of fellow travel bloggers and website owners, as well as with your general readership. Tweet it, Facebook it, shout it from the rooftops. The trick here is really to share this information with other bloggers. The average reader doesn’t care much about helping you to boost your web stats. But other bloggers do (or should) care about boosting their own stats. In this case – we can all help each other out.
Also, install an Alexa Widget in your sidebar to make it easy for your readers to see your stats and to click and install the toolbar.
Bonus Tip: Write a Follow Up Article.
Having people install the toolbar is not enough – you really want them to come back to your site once that have it installed. So a week after your first posting, write a follow up article about how your traffic has or has not increased. Reach out to the same network of travelers and travel bloggers as you did with your first post. This should bring many of them back to check your scores, compare notes, and gloat about stats in your comments.
If you haven’t already done it – install the Alexa toolbar and start increasing your ranking now!
Update 2/23/11: See how much my Alexa Rank improved in just 2 weeks!
