Your Flash website will then be crawled by the bots at Alexa and analyzed and entered into their database. The site will send you a report of the analytics that they find on your website that you can then use to improve your site’s ranking. But is Alexa a true measure of success?
Search Engine Basics
Well, the answer is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no. To understand how you show up in their database, you need to understand the basics of search engines. Search engines have programs called bots or spiders that read your site and explore the links they find. If you have good quality content, a balance of keywords and search terms, and working relevant links on your website, then you will get indexed and ranked in their databases. Your quality score is based on what these bots and spiders find on your website compared to all of the other websites they go to on the Internet. Since the Internet is so huge, there is a good chance that you may end up on the third or fourth page or lower if your SEO is not up to snuff.
What You Get for Your Membership in Alexa
One of the most valuable tools you will receive for your membership in Alexa is a report that lists various ways you can improve your SEO. This site audit is not free, but the cost may be recouped if you can drive more traffic to your site. On your site audit, you receive a list of any broken links, suggestions to improve your header and link text, a list of prioritized suggestions for improving your Flash website, duplicate content warnings, duplicate page name warnings, if you have enough outbound links, search engine marketing suggestions and much more information that can help to make your website search engine friendly.
With your membership, you also get listed in the Alexa database so that when someone uses their search bar, your website is among one of the ones that is listed. Only websites that are listed with Alexa are presented in the search results when people use their toolbar so your competition is dramatically reduced. Users are also able to search for websites according to category. Alexa encourages you to share their toolbar with your visitors and friends. You can put a download offer on your website to encourage this and also include a link in any e-mail campaigns. By marketing the toolbar to visitors, you can significantly affect your website’s rank and traffic.
Why is Rank so Important?
Website rank can make or break a business. If you have a terrific Flash website but no one ever sees it, you’ve wasted money and time. You want visitors to come and take advantage of what you are offering; everyone in business realizes this concept. It is the same as a brick and mortar store being shoved into a back alley. Great merchandise, knowledgeable sales staff, and killer deals, but no one ever finds it. The same thing can happen to your website if it is not properly optimized. With the Alexa site audit, you can get a detailed report of items you need to fix and improve on your website, making your site rise in the general search engines and in the Alexa toolbar.
So is Alexa a True Measure of Success?
Once again, this is a hard answer to pin down. On one hand, if you can use their site audit to improve your website and it rises in the search engine’s pages, then, yes, it is. If you can get people to download the toolbar and use it for searches and find your website easier, yes, it is a measure of success. Keep in mind that while Alexa is an excellent website and offers your valuable information, success with their toolbar does not reflect the entire scope of the Internet. Using Alexa to measure your website’s success could be misleading. If you show up high in their searches, it is good. But you have to take into account where you rank in the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. By combining the results of both types of searches, you can accurately measure your website’s success and know where you stand in the vast world of the Internet.
