Alexa is one of those websites that, on you first visit, you”ll think, ‘that’s useful!’ As time goes by and you learn more about the Internet and how it works (especially as a website owner) you will start seeing Alexa’s resources as an essential tool in your webmaster’s toolbox.

I am going to share with you the useful things you can do with Alexa.

1. Traffic Rank

Alexa allows you to input your website’s URL (web address) and pull back your current traffic rank data. The lower your score the more traffic your website is receiving. Facebook (at the time of writing) has a traffic rank of 3. The traffic rank is measured by using data collected by people with the Alexa toolbar installed (more about that below).

2. Reach

Alexa collects the percent of global Internet users that visit your website. This is useful if you are targeting a particular geographical region to see how effective you currently are in that market.

3. Pageviews

This is a great statistic to know as it is an indication of how relevant your content is to your visitors. The more pageviews you have (visitors that move deeper into your website than just your homepage) the lower your bounce rate will be.

4. Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate is effectively how well your website’s content matches the search query that brought the web surfer to your page. If the bounce rate is high it may be deemed that your content is not relevant to the search term. Alexa allows you to check your bounce rate and to see whether it is increasing or decreasing over a set period of time.

5. Time On Site

How long are your visitors sticking around on your website. Alexa gives you the statistics that will allow you to see how long, on average, your readers are on your website. The longer they stay, the more of your content they will read and see and this will increase your chances of your sales message being viewed.

6. Search

Alexa records the percentage of visits to your website that come from a search engine. This is the information you will want to see increase especially if your website has been optimised for the search engines.

7. Contact Information

You can register your website details and share your contact information, this may bring you targeted visitors who want to partner with you on a project or bring you actual customers. Add your website information here.

8. Related Links

Alexa has a related links section that allows you to find similar websites that are related to the website you are analysing. This is great for finding joint venture partners, finding similar sites in your niche or for seeing the related sites to your competitors.

9. Keywords

The keywords section shows the top keywords driving traffic to a particular website, be this your website or a competitors. This will give you ideas of extra search terms to target when optimising your website and creating content.

10. Clickstream

Alexa tracks the percent of total users that come to your website and leave your website. This is handy for finding your upstream sites, what sites are referring people to you, and your downstream sites, where your visitors go to when they leave your website.

11. Demographics

Alexa tracks how popular your website is with a particular audience. This is handy for ascertaining if your website is actually being visited by the demographic audience you are targeting.

12. Movers and Shakers

Alexa allows you to find the latest trends by sharing the statistics of the websites that are on the rise and on the decline. This is ideal for finding emerging markets to target. The link: Alexa Movers and Shakers

13. Hot Pages

Alexa shares the most popular pages on the Internet right now. This is a great way for finding the latest buzz topic to write about related to your niche. The link: Alexa Hot Pages

14. Website Comparison

Alexa allows you to input the URL of a few websites and then compare the data. This is great for checking on your competitors and how they well they are performing in comparison to you. You can also find who is linking to them to see if it is somewhere you can also get a link from.

15. Sparky

Alexa also has a free toolbar (for Firefox browsers) that you can download that will tell you the traffic rank of a website (and other data) without having to visit Alexa again.

I’m sure you’ll agree that Alexa is a great resource to add to your collection of online tools.

To your success,

Karl Foxley