Adding Alexa Widgets Effectively

Alexa widget

Never thought that these free traffic rank badges would help improve Alexa Rank on top of other great benefits it provides. But beware of the consequences when not placed well on your pages.

What is Alexa Widget?

Alexa Site Widget is a web object that generates simple interactive badges which shows always-updated traffic statistics for your web sites.

There are three (3) types of Alexa widgets:

  1. Traffic History Graph

    Alexa Traffic Graph Demo

    This widget shows dynamic traffic graphs of up to three (3) web sites for side-by-side comparison by audience reach, traffic rank, or pageviews in ranges of 7 days, 1 month, 3 months or 6 months period. The traffic graph is updated on daily basis.

  2. Alexa Site Stats

    Site Info Demo

    A badge that shows traffic rank and incoming links to your web site. It comes in three sizes: Button (120x95), Vertical Banner (120x240) and Banner (468x60).

  3. Alexa Traffic Rank

    Traffic Rank Demo

    This minimalist badge only shows traffic rank of your web site. It is also available in three sizes: Small Button (120x65), Regular Button (120x90), and Banner (468x90).

What are the benefits of having Alexa Widget on web sites?

  1. Shows live, authoritative, and genuine traffic trends directly from Alexa.
  2. Shows publicly visible measures of traffic generation efforts.
  3. Supports your inclined success stories.
  4. Indicates the popularity level of your web site. Lower rank numbers are better and one (1) being the highest.
  5. Attracts advertisers and get approved to various advertising networks.
  6. Reportedly collects information about every visit on a web site just like what Alexa Toolbar does. It feeds Alexa accurate counts of visits and pageviews. Thus, boost your Alexa Traffic Rank. Check out some recent reports about having an increase in Traffic Rank after placing an Alexa widget.
  7. Shows flawed, imperfect, and biased ranking, but it is diffinitely one useful tool by far that you can use to top in your niche.

How to get an Alexa Widget?

Getting a widget for your web site is very easy, straightforward, and requires no programming skills.

  1. Visit the Site Widgets page. at Alexa webmaster’s corner section.
  2. Enter your web site URL into the box of preferred widget. You can input a maximum of three web sites for Traffic Graph Widget.
  3. Copy the Javascript code for pasting onto your web site.

Where to place Alexa widget?

You may put Alexa Widget anywhere on your web pages as you see fit. But beware; as with all other web objects, Alexa widget may cause your web site to load very slowly or, sometimes load incomplete pages or the worst, due to corruption, it may prevent your pages from showing especially on the following conditions:

  • Alexa web servers become heavily loaded in serving millions of web sites across the Internet. Fortunately for us, Alexa has plenty of resources to support the load.
  • Browser communication to Alexa servers is very slow probably due to network congestion.
  • Browser loading too many objects on the page. This is one of the top causes of web site performance degradation.

To work around the conditions above, the following techniques are recommended:

  • Place the Alexa widget at the bottom of your pages just before the tag

    This is the optimal place for Alexa widgets and takes care of conditions 1 and 2. Page contents will show up completely while browser is still loading the widget but, it may not look good at the bottom.

  • Hide the Alexa Widget

    This is what you want to do when your widget doesn’t look good or, you feel uncomfortable with your traffic rank in millions. To make the Alexa Widget invisible while still enjoying the benefit of getting improved traffic rank, wrap the widget in a container like this:

    <div style="display:none;">
    <SCRIPT type='text/javascript' language='JavaScript' src='http://xslt.alexa.com/site_stats/js/t/a?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jampmark.com'> </SCRIPT>
    </div>

    Giving the <div> wrapper the style "display:none;" will effectively hide the widget from sight while still being loaded in the background.

  • Minimize usage of web objects on your pages

    Objects like the Alexa widget, other third party widgets and external applications, can hurt the performance of your web site. To maintain fast load time, limit the usage of external applications and widgets.

In general, you should add Alexa widgets to your web site only when you need Alexa rank and trends to help realize your goal.

You may share your experience with Alexa Site Widget by posting comments.

Comments
 - cool information
2009-03-18 22:18:11
ya dude this is really cool information and the placement of alexa widget at bottom is nice idea.
thanx man
 - Thanx a Lot
2009-03-19 09:03:43
Thanx a lot for the useful info. I canged the template and lost all widgets. Putting them up again.
Stef
 - Wow thank you very much
2009-03-31 00:28:44
I really like that I can add alexa widget without displaying it.

I dont want to have a lot of those widgets, banners and other advertisements because I want to have a clean website and now with your help I can.

I was trying out your module "Product SlideShow" and I cant get it to show 4 images one next to another as you have it on demo, is there some trick?

I know this isnt the place to post a question but I cant see a forum :S.

Thank you very much again!
Virgil
 - Glad you like it
2009-03-31 15:46:43
I'm glad to know you also like the virtuemart product slideshow.

i posted an instruction on running multiple slideshows here

http://www.jampmark.com/virtuemart-product-slideshow/news/virtuemart-product-slideshow-1015-released.html#josc93
 - Best Buy And Idea Blog
2009-04-17 17:19:53
This is a great tip, as I noticed that my blog site slows down or even unable to display. I hope it is not caused by Alexa, but no harm giving it a try to move to footer instead of sidebars. Thank you very much for sharing. All the best to you. But do visit http://www.bestbuyidea.comand all comments are welcomed.
2009-05-19 22:31:16
Hi, this is the second time I get the broken link to Alexa's Page Not Found.

Visit the Site Widgets page. at Alexa webmaster’s corner section.

Perhaps you should update the link above to: http://www.alexa.com/siteowners instead.

And thanks for the tip.
 - How come my traffic 1,247,719 immediately?
2009-05-29 07:32:37
Hi,

I have a problem.
I have implemented trafic rank in my site at www.bagusardianto.co.cc
But I was surprised when I see my traffic rank was 1,247,719.
How come be like that?
Please advise me
Thanks very much..

Rgds,
Bagus Ardianto
Virgil
 - Nice Alexa Rank
2009-06-02 15:25:46
Perhaps your site was getting traffic before you implemented the traffic rank.

Also possible that your domain was previously used but had expired.
 - apparelshop online
2009-06-10 14:58:09
I am doing my best to increase my alexa rank of my site. Indeed, sometimes I give up until the new spirit comes along. thanks.
 - Cool
2009-06-27 19:17:53
Great post! Many thanks!!!
 - how it works?
2009-07-04 23:21:55
i have undestand right? this widget tracks the visitors on my website(to complete alexa stats)?
has also the same function as alexa toolbar?
 - thanks
2009-07-06 05:36:33
tnx for the tip of hiding the nfo..appreciated
 - thanx
2009-08-04 03:10:22
thanks a lot for the information. i have plenty of third party banner in my web.
HA3
 - Making the Widget Invisible
2009-08-06 12:47:19
I am wondering:
Will the script in the widget still be executed even if the div was invisible?
+
Shouldn't we at least hide the div in a more indirect way to avoid any penalties from Alexa?

Not that I care a dime about Alexa ranking, but I have a client who has his Alexa ranking page set as his homepage and he keeps bugging us about it:)
2010-01-06 03:17:52
Thanks for sharing~
 - Belisma
2010-06-10 12:17:27
Thank for information.
I think that this tool i useful for big sites with a lot of visitor, but for small sites I dont'think that are useful.
Name:
Email:
 
Website:
Title:
UBBCode:
[b] [i] [u] [url] [quote] [code] [img] 
 
 
Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."