Although this ‘achievement’ is nothing to shout about, it serves as a point for me to begin an experiment in increasing my blog’s Alexa Rank.

You may ask.. what is Alexa Rank?

Alexa Rank is a ranking system that basically audits and makes public the frequency of visits to various Web sites. The algorithm by which Alexa traffic ranking is calculated, is simple. It is based on the amount of traffic recorded over a period of three months from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed.

I stumbled upon an interesting article from Maki on how you can improve your Alexa Rank and decided to give it a try. He listed 20 quick ways to improve the ranking.. some which require monetary investment. So, using “new blogger” as an excuse , I will try out 6 of the methods that are FREE of charge :-

1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website.
3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers.
4. Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking. (which I am doing it now)
5. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer useful feedback.
6. Create an Alexa category on your blog and use it to include any articles or news about Alexa. This acts as an easily accessible resource for webmasters or casual search visitors while helping you rank in the search engines.

You can read the rest of the methods at Doshdosh.

As Alexa Rank is used to gauge the value of advertising on a site, so it is important to have a “healthy” rank for your site. It is good if you could join me and take part in this experiment to see if it works for your site as well.

My current Alexa Rank : 1,784,808 (as of November 9, 2007)