I posted it to where my biggest reader base is coming from - LA.

According to this article on Alexa's blog in April of 2008, Alexa formerly only gathered data from Alexa toolbar users but now aggregates "data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users."

Great Idea...Im going to give it a try! Do you do a post on CL for several metro areas? Or is there an area that will post to a national board? haha I need the traffic! Im one month in, and scratching my head as to how all of you have made the strides and progress that you have. Thanks again.

 

http://www.moneyistheroot.com

http://www.moneyistheroot.com

It sounds like you don't quite understand the nuances of how Alexa is calculated vs. how Google PageRank is calculated.

Alexa rank is based on traffic. Alexa only measures traffic from people with an Alexa toolbar or plugin installed. Generally, only web developers and people like us have Alexa toolbars, so there is some fault to the system. However, it is well known and an easily measurable benchmark, so it works well for our purposes. Links have nothing to do with Alexa rank, only traffic measured by Alexa.

Google Pagerank (and MOZRank) are calculated based on links in from high quality sites. Gettings links from Craigslist could increase pagerank as long as Google can index it. If people visit your site from Craigslist that have Alexa installed, it will impact your Alexa rank.

You can read a lot around the web about the strengths and weaknesses of each ranking method, which is why it is good to take the whole picture into account, not just one benchmark.

Alexa rank is based on traffic. Alexa only measures traffic from people with an Alexa toolbar or plugin installed. Generally, only web developers and people like us have Alexa toolbars, so there is some fault to the system. However, it is well known and an easily measurable benchmark, so it works well for our purposes. Links have nothing to do with Alexa rank, only traffic measured by Alexa.

Google Pagerank (and MOZRank) are calculated based on links in from high quality sites. Gettings links from Craigslist could increase pagerank as long as Google can index it. If people visit your site from Craigslist that have Alexa installed, it will impact your Alexa rank.

You can read a lot around the web about the strengths and weaknesses of each ranking method, which is why it is good to take the whole picture into account, not just one benchmark.

the nature of CL is very temporary, thus the need to stay on top of it. the archives are almost non existent. the strategy works, and can work over the long haul if you diligently stick with it

There's a really easy way to get a big boost from a site that ranks about #10. Place an ad for your site on Craigslist. It's free, and easy and you may even convert some of the visitors into regular readers. I usually place an ad about once every few weeks pointing to one of my best articles. The bounce rate is usually high, but my goal is traffic and I get it. It's one of the top referring sites. I plan on tweaking the ad to get better responses and lower bounce rates in the future, but I thought I would share that with all of my fellow challengers.