Bruno Lowagie's Online Gazette

On January 3, I started an Alexa experiment. The goal was to bring itextpdf.com from place #117,702 into the top #100,000. To achieve this, I used some tricks described in the article How to increase Alexa rank for the website. My hope was to achieve this in three months, but look at today's ranking:

I'm still in doubt if the "tips and tricks" really help. Let's take another look at them:

Register your site with Alexa:

I registered a very long time ago, and I don't think it really matters if your site is registered or not. All sites are already tracked by Alexa anyway. Of course: registering is mandatory if you want to get the Alexa toolbar and to create widgets.

Use the Alexa toolbar:

Installing the toolbar in your own browser has an effect because you're bound to visit your own web site very often, and every visit from a browser with the toolbar counts. I could see the effect by looking at the ranking of my site in Belgium. I'll probably remove the toolbar soon to see if that has a negative influence on the ranking.

Add Alexa widgets

I think this influences your ranking the most; both the Alexa and the Amazon widgets (not mentioned in the original article). I'll keep these widgets in order to try to achieve Mission #2:

Now that itextpdf.com is in the top #100,000, it would be nice to try and keep it there for a month.

I don't think this is possible just by using the above tips and tricks. One of the main reasons why itextpdf.com scored well the last few weeks, was the recent iText 5.0.6 release. In the blog post top 10 of 2010, the top blog was read 529 times. The top blog of 2011 so far, was iText 5.0.6 has been released with more than 2500 hits!

Using tips and tricks is fun, but don't lose your focus on good content!