Alexa Rank Demystified: Part 2 – How to interpret Alexa Rank

Alexa provides users with 7 different categories of information that can be used to get an idea of how their website ranks.

This information can be extremely effective when trying to determine where the strengths and weaknesses of your website lie, and how to go about fixing any weakness. However at first glance, these tools may not appear as self-explanatory as you might think, but once you understand them they can provide you the insights you require to improve your overall Alexa rank. In addition to this, these analytics can be directly compared to competitors in order to gain an idea of the areas where each website is lacking, or holds an advantage. Here is a run-down of the statistical tools that Alexa can provide;

• Daily Traffic Trend: The Daily Traffic Trend does exactly what it says it will. It tells you your daily traffic and how this trends over time.
• Daily Reach (%): The Daily Reach lets you know what percentage of internet users, monitored by Alexa (ie. Toolbar users) that you reach on a daily basis. Therefore a ranking of 1 means you reach 1% of all traffic reported to Alexa.
• Daily Page Views (%):  Daily page views are a request to load a single page off of your website.
• Page Views per User:  This takes the page views a step further. This tool tells you how many pages each visitor views once arriving at your page.
• Bounce Rate (%):  This is the amount of times that a visitor will load only a single page of your website. This is where the tools get more interesting. A high bounce rate can suggest that there are problems with your website, which need to be addressed in order to improve your standings.
• Time on site (Minutes): This once again does what the name suggests; it tells you how many minutes are spent viewing your website.
• Search Visits (%): This tool shows you what percentage of your visits come from search engines, once again this can help identify issues, especially if you have a high bounce rate.

What can these tell me?

Well these seven tools can be used to gauge where your websites strengths lie, and also what weaknesses need to be remedied. For example a website that receives huge amounts of traffic, but has a high bounce rate, and low minutes spent on the page suggests people are being drawn in, but does it not fulfil on the promises used to get people onto the page. Combine this with a high percentage of search visits and you get the message that your SEO is effective, but your content is letting you down, and letting your visitors escape.

So what’s next? If you can, search for your website’s statistics, and try to find where your strengths and weaknesses lie, so that you can determine where you need to make changes, and let us know how you go in the comments.

If you can’t see more than your page rank, the next post in this series will be all about improving your ranking, so this will be for you.