Could you improve your website’s popularity?

The following article was edited from my online journal entry of 13 Mar 05. The numbers relate to that date, when Aisling.net was my only art-related website.

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Yesterday morning, I did website popularity research before continuing to work on my websites. Alexa.com is fabulous for this.I had the idea that if I had a couple of successful books, I’d get a lot more visitors to Aisling.net. But, as part of my research yesterday, I checked websites that attract a similar audience to mine.

Claudine Hellmuth’s website is the top-ranked site in the field of Collage Art. With a URL of collageartist.com and her recent very successful books, plus her heavy teaching schedule and a quality website… Well, she should be at the top. She has more than earned it.

But… her numbers were only very slightly better than mine.

And, drawing from a slightly different audience, I outrank Artitude zine, which also has ample reasons to draw tremendous numbers. They publish a great zine and their website features some fabulous resources.

With Alexa.com, I can also see how many pages the average visitor sees. A visitor who looks at just a couple of pages and leaves… that’s a site that needs a redesign, or deeper webpages. Or something.

For example, Ghosts of the Prairie may outrank the HollowHill.com “ghost hunting” website–which I have contributed to–by a wide margin, but people stay at Ghosts of the Prairie for 1 or 2 pages at the most, and then go elsewhere. (Alexa.com tells me this, too.)

In other words, Ghosts of the Prairie is doing a good job with keywords and links in… but they can’t keep visitors.

I can learn from what they’re doing right… and wrong.

Do you know this kind of information about your own website and your competitors’?

If you’re trying to make a living–or supplement your income–with your website/s, this kind of study is important at least every three months or so. Trends change, and so do the audience and the competition.

It’s also vital to know if there even is a larger audience that you can attract in your current field. In the case of Aisling.net, I needed to make some big changes… so I did.

To use Alexa.com (while it’s in beta test mode):

Go to Alexa.com. Enter the domain name that you want to learn more about in the “Search the Web” box. (That searches the Alexa files. It doesn’t take you to a regular search engine.)

See how that site is ranked, if it is ranked at all. If it isn’t, search on subjects related to your site, and see what your competitors are doing right.

Overview tells you rank, site speed, and a few other details

Related links lists your competition.

Sites Linking in lists the major websites that people are using to find your site.

Traffic Detail tells you more detailed numbers about people who visit you, how your traffic is doing (general trends), and how many webpages people visit when they arrive at your website.

Be sure to check your competitors. Who links to them? How many pages do people visit at their websites? Who are the top five in your field (use Subject searches for this)?

Website success is vital today. Alexa.com is one of many helpful tools to study what’s working for you and what isn’t, and what you can learn from others.

One final note: Some people are concerned about online privacy. Almost any toolbar–including Alexa’s–that you download and use will track which sites you visit. However, it’s not necessary to download the Alexa toolbar to use their free (as of 3/05) site ranking and review services.