1 Comment Written by Robert on July 30, 2008 – 3:51 am

The Alexa Toolbar has been commonly used as the barometer of Web site popularity. The Alexa Toolbar’s main function has been to act as a gauge of Web site traffic levels; however, it includes other information that can prove useful.

The most important is related links, a list of sites that Alexa has grouped together into a community. This grouping is often due to common backlinks being shared across the Web sites. This information is essential when you attempt to break into a community. By making connections with the known Web sites in your market, you stand a far better chance of becoming an authority.

The Alexa Toolbar allows you to perform competitive analysis and community research throughout your SEO campaigns. The Alexa Toolbar offers a shortcut to the information that is provided on the www.alexa.com Web site. This information includes an estimate of traffic numbers and patterns, as well as a list of related pages in the same topical community.

This information can assist you in spotting seasonal trends, as well as in discovering who is who in a particular industry or niche market. You can effectively monitor your competitor’s Web site and marketing campaigns by carefully evaluating an Alexa traffic graph provided through the Alexa Toolbar. If a Web site shows a spike in traffic, followed by an increased daily average, what happened? Did the Web site get listed on a social media page like www.digg.com? Did the site begin an aggressive PPC campaign? If you want to compete with other Web sites for top rankings, you need to stay on top of what your competition is doing.

You can also use the Alexa Toolbar to help you ask questions about traffic-generation strategies that may prove successful for your Web site. Positioning your site as the authority in your community is important if you want to secure top organic positions. The Alexa Toolbar offers data on related links, a list of sites that Alexa has grouped together as being related. Research these related sites and establish relationships with the owners. These relationships are the fast track to picking up valuable citation links.

Alexa requires separate downloads of the Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. Although the process of installation is the same, you must visit the Alexa Toolbar download page using the specific browser you want to install the toolbar. For example, if you want to install the Alexa Toolbar for Firefox, which is also referred to as Sparky, you must go to www.alexa.com/site/download/ from your Firefox browser.

The Alexa Toolbar has been commonly used

When you install the Alexa Toolbar, you become a member of the Alexa Community. The Web sites you visit are tracked; this tracking helps to increase the relevancy and accuracy of Alexa’s data. This information is detached from any personal information regarding your identity and is strictly used for the purpose of accumulating a large sample of data.

With that in mind, Alexa numbers tend to slant in favor of technology or Webmaster-oriented Web sites. Compared to the average Internet user, a larger percentage of technology site readers have the Alexa Toolbar installed, which makes the technology sites look more popular than they actually are.

Consider this potential bias when you perform competitive research on Web sites that are technology or Webmaster oriented. Another competitive research tool that is quickly becoming popular is www.compete.com. Unlike Alexa, Compete.com is not entirely free you must pay for access to Compete’s advanced features.

However, Compete.com provides supplemental data to Alexa and is a worthwhile tool to evaluate your competitor’s and your own Web site. Using both Alexa and Compete.com allows you to consistently make better decisions regarding your SEO and traffic generation efforts.