How I Destroyed My Blog’s Alexa Rank – And I Couldn’t Be Happier!

Bye Bye Alexa Rank!

Wait? How could a guy be happy about a drastically declining Alexa Rank? I thought Alexa Rank was the key to blogger success and notoriety? (I’m being facetious here.)

I think when most bloggers, (well, the ones who blog about blogging) get started, there is highly competitive nature to stand out amongst the crowd. There are typically 3 tell-tale signs that clue us in on our progress: Subscribers, Comments, and last, but not least, Alexa Rank.

Alexa is a company that offers a proprietary tool bar that web users download to report their web usage. Ultimately, with millions of worldwide users using this toolbar, Alexa ranks the most popular sites based on everyone’s usage data. Remember though – no Alexa Toolbar download means that your visit is not conveyed to Alexa and does NOTHING for your Alexa Rank!

Keep Reading: How I Destroyed My Blog’s Alexa Rank – And I Couldn’t Be Happier! 

The Importance Of Alexa Rank In The Blogging Community?

In my opinion, as an indication of your blog’s statistical performance on Alexa, your blog being in the top 75,000 sites worldwide is pretty good, Top 50,000 is great, and top 25,000 is awesome. In Source Blogger’s heyday (which is funny because I have been breaking personal records in pageviews and visits this year), my highest Alexa Rank was like 52k. — As of right now, my rank is 310k.

Before I go on, let me explain to you the importance of Alexa Rank (or what it was perceived to be back then). When blogging truly took off, a few bloggers were fortunate to have some financial backing (investors), a few corporate sponsorships, and got some media attention. The word got around that one of the easiest methods for a blog to show up on some company’s radar was Alexa Rank.

So, about 6-8 years ago, an explosion of blogs claiming how to make money online, how internet marketing and affiliate marketing was performed, even how to quit your day job and make blogging a career hit the scene. And as these blogs began losing steam, social media arrived and breathed new life into these blogs with the opportunity to write new content.

Surprisingly, there’s only so much you can write about these topics, before they get a little redundant and stale. Plus, everyone is copying and pasting each other’s content. It’s not a surprise to see elements of the same original post on 3 or 4 different blogs! You have to remember, as bloggers we are supposed to be RULED by Search Engine Optimization, anyway – not content.

Alexa Rank does not put money in anyone’s pocket, nor reflect traffic accurately (since only certain blog niches, like tech blogs,  have a lot of Alexa Toolbar users) – which is why more and more bloggers abandoned it .

The Winds Of Change 

Part of your growth as a blogger, is to to take chances and explore new topics. It’s a natural progression, that your content should elevate over time.

As a blogger who blogged about blogging, I began to feel confined by my choice. How important was the statistical trappings of subscribers, comment count, and Alexa Rank, when I felt like I could be doing more? So much more!

Many bloggers would advise you to start a new blog if you were covering new topics since it would confuse your current subscribers. I disagree. Keep your costs down. Keep it all on the same blog. Your blog is not written as a continuous piece of literature, it’s read through random content and image keyword searches. (But, realize that unless there is some consistency on your site, there will not be any motivation from readers to read similar articles you have written on the same topic!)

In Closing 

Oh, how did I destroy my Alexa Rank? Well, it’s easy. I stopped writing content for what I thought an Alexa Toolbar user would read and began to want to have a greater impact on society. Blogging about blogging, internet marketing, and social media marketing is too competitive and too self-indulging anyway. I began writing content about Sales & Marketing, Human Resources, and Employment. Ironically, my traffic nearly doubled as the transition came… while my Alexa Rank was flushed down the toilet!

I never really felt part of that “crowd” anyway. So, why pretend? Why not write about what moves and excites you? As a matter of fact, if you go back and read some of Source Blogger’s articles in its first year, it was a always a contra-philosophy to the perceived “norms” in the industry (blogosphere). But, I was OK being the rebel. …and still am.  I consider that part of the reason I am still here putting out some of the best independent content on the net.

No, Source Blogger is not a personal blog serving as an outlet to my emotions, but it has become my pulpit to share my unique views and ideas onto the world.

What are you doing with your blog?