If you’d like to know how your affiliate marketing website ranks online, you’ll want to download the Alexa toolbar.

Alexa measures your websites ranking using the combined number of users who have the Alexa toolbar and the number of page views.  It’s based on three months of traffic data. Here’s how it works.

Install the Alexa Toolbar. The first step you’ll want to take is to go to the Alexa website and install the toolbar. According to Alexa’s website, this toolbar will help you…

• “See how popular a website is.”
• “Find sites that are similar to the site you are visiting.”
• “See how a site looked in the past.”
• “See what’s popular on the web right now.”
• “See what other people thought of this site or write your own review!”

The Alexa toolbar not only allows you to see how other sites are ranking, but it also gives you insight about how your website is performing in the rankings.

What do Alexa Rankings Mean?

Basically, you want your rank to be below 100,000. The lower your number is, the better your ranking.

Some people swear by Alexa rankings while others say they are useless. You can install the toolbar and see if you find the information useful. If you like it, keep it. If not, you may want to find other ways to assess your rankings.

Some webmasters use the ranking as a bargaining chip for ad pricing. The higher a websites ranking, the more they charge for ad space.

How to Raise your Alexa Ranking

Let’s say that you’ve decided you’d like to use the Alexa toolbar and want to raise your rankings. What can you do to get a better score after you’ve installed the toolbar?

Install an Alexa rank widget. Some people like this widget because they say each visit counts as a click, even if the visitor does not have the Alexa toolbar.

Write a blog about Alexa. This is a good way to increase your rank because others will link to your site. Many people are interested in increasing their Alexa ranking, so blogging about it will increase your visibility and website’s popularity.

Create an “Alexa” category on your blog. Whenever you post anything about Alexa in your blog or on your website, categorize it. This will help users find your site more easily in the search engines.

Use Digg! Digg is a great way to direct more traffic to your website and increase your Alexa rank.

Ask others to review your website. The jury’s still out about whether or not this will increase your Alexa ranking, but some say it’s worth a try.

Install the Alexa Toolbar. You Decide.

People either love the Alexa toolbar or don’t put much faith into it. Most webmasters still use the toolbar these days to assess the popularity of their sites, so you may want to test drive it and see if you get useful information from it. If nothing else, it may be a good way to see how high your affiliate marketing site ranks so you can make decisions about how to build your lists or drive more traffic to your website.