How to add Alexa Rank Widget to improve Website Ranking?

Alexa Rank Widget WordPress Guide

If you find Alexa rankings really important, you might want to consider displaying your rank directly on your website by adding an Alexa widget.

A higher Alexa ranking is lucrative for advertisers and webmasters to take your website seriously. So why not take that opportunity to show the ranking directly on your website?

Displaying Alexa rank widget on your WordPress website is really easy. I will walk you through few different ways that you can add the widget to your website.

Follow this video guide to help you add the Alexa Rank Widget to your WordPress or Blogger blog.

If you are already familiar with Alexa and its ranking, you might want to skip the introductory section and find the code or plugins that you need for your website below.

For those who are still researching on the topic, let’s start with some basic introduction on Alexa ranking and if you should really consider adding the widget.

What is Alexa Ranking – Alexa Traffic Rank?

Alexa ranking is a traffic rank position for a list of websites as published by Alexa. The website is owned by Amazon and presents itself as an information company that offers website information and analytics.

The company uses a sample of Internet users that it claims to be representative of all Internet users to estimate the ranks.

Alexa ranking, however, can be biased, and there are so many articles on the web claiming that the Alexa rankings aren’t perfect.

There’s certainly truth in such claims and you might want to understand how Alexa calculates rankings while taking them into consideration.

To solve problems around such issues, Alexa in recent years has introduced certified rankings to make the ranking more accurate. To have a certified rank webmasters, however, are required to subscribe the costly Alexa plans.

You can visit the detailed article from Alexa to know how the traffic rankings are determined.

Now that you have some idea of what the rankings can mean, let’s move onto how you can show the rankings on your blog or website adding an Alexa widget.

Alexa Rank Widget – HTML code

Adding Alexa rank widget is as simple as adding any text widget in WordPress. Alexa officially provides HTML code that you can add to your sidebar or any widget areas in your blog.

You can either display just your Alexa Rank or your Alexa rank including a count of the sites that link to your website.

Here’re the required HTML codes for both widgets.

1. Alexa Widget Showing Rank

Gist File:

https://gist.github.com/pradeepdotco/5c5019fa16f6edb79247

2. Alexa Widget showing Rank with Count of Site Links

https://gist.github.com/pradeepdotco/672222055674e75c696d

Obviously, you will need to change the WPism.com in above code snippets to your website URL.

To add it to WordPress, you will simply need to add a Text Widget in the required place.

Instructions: Go to Appearance > Widgets and drag the Text Widget from available widgets to the location you want to display your Alexa Rank. Copy and paste the above code in the widget.

Alexa Rank Widget WPism

Detailed Instructions to Add Alexa Widget with Rank

  • From your WordPress dashboard, go to Widgets under Appearance section.
  • Click on the Arbitrary text or HTML widget and add it to your desired widgets section.
  • Copy and paste the above code in the HTML widget.
  • Change the URL in the above code to your own website URL.
  • Click on Save and your Alexa Rank Widget should now appear on your Website.

Adding Alexa Widget with WordPress Plugins

That previous method of simply adding HTML codes should be the best option, but if you are looking to add the Alexa widget using plugins, there are few plugins that can help you with it.

I will cover one of the plugins that seem to be frequently updated and used by a number of people to add the Alexa widget.

Alexa Rank Widget WordPress Plugin

Alexa Rank Widget WordPress Plugin

This simple widget just allows you to add the Alexa rank widget in your sidebar. All you have to do is drag the widget to the sidebar or footer you want to display and fill your website URL.

The plugin provides two options to display the Alexa widget

  • Square – Button (120 x 95)
  • Vertical – Vertical Banner (120 x 240)

Instructions: Once you download and Install the plugin, go to Appearance > Widgets and Drag the Alexa Rank Widget from the available widgets.

Alexa Rank Widget WordPress Plugin Settings

Can the Alexa widget improve your ranking?

One important part of this article, before we conclude, is if displaying the Alexa widget can improve your ranking.

I have seen several webmasters displaying their rankings on their blog, but I don’t have a definite answer if it actually impacts the ranking. I have seen blogs with good rank using the widget, and I might be biased to suggest from such pieces of evidence.

Alexa in one of its blog post has mentioned that installing an Alexa widget to improve your rank is actually a myth and that the widget is not used to measure traffic.

One thing that I have learned from my experience is that it actually can influence your ranking if people are clicking on your widget and landing on to your Alexa page, such as WPism.com page on Alexa.

Although it won’t make your ranking certified, Alexa can have more data to have some valid estimates for your ranking. Again, I would recommend going through how Alexa calculates its ranking in details.

Why is my Alexa Rank decreasing?

I get questions about decreasing Alexa rank all the time. Alexa Rank is mostly based on your website traffic and if you see a drop in your Alexa ranking, it should also suggest that your website traffic has decreased recently. It might also mean that your competitors are gaining more traffic than you.

Few other situations why your Alexa rank could be dropping;

  • Many of your website users are not using Alexa toolbar. Alexa uses data from its toolbar users and it might be possible that your website has a significant audience that aren't using the Alexa toolbar.
  • Other websites, mostly your competitors should have stepped up in traffic or getting more visitors with Alexa toolbar installed on their browsers.
  • In few situations, your website might not have been favoured by recent changes in Alexa's algorithm.

Final Thoughts on Alexa Ranking

It's true that Alexa ranking cannot be taken as authoritative for website rankings and although it might help you to inform about website's position broadly, it isn't wise to use the data for website comparisons.

Displaying an Alexa rank widget on your website can be something for you to decide but as for my suggestion and provided that you have a good ranking, it can surely be a plus point for you to display the rank on your website.

As Google Page rank has been discontinued, we are only left with few public ranking options that are reliable. Alexa and Compete Traffic ranks might be the only options that we have today.

Do you use Alexa ranking widgets? I would love to hear your view about Alexa rankings in the comments below.

Alexa Widget Review Summary

It's really easy to display Alexa Ranking widget on your website using the custom code provided by Alexa or using the WordPress Plugins.

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Pradeep Singh
Pradeep Singh
Pradeep Singh is the founder and your host here at WPism. He is an entrepreneur and blogger living his startup life based in London and Cambridge. Follow him on Twitter or like his page on Facebook.
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84 Responses

  2. Thanks. I was able to use the info provided to display Alexa ranking on my site. For WordPress users who are using the HTML widget use the center tag to centralize the widget.

  4. Very nice content. I’m a new blogger in the blogosphere. my website is still very young and I want to know how I can improve my site traffic. Thanks

  6. hello there..i just added alexa rating to my blog but its showing no data..plz have a look at my blog m i missing something..

      1. I don’t know Why My site is not showing alexa rank. I am using your code. Please see my site theexplode.com. I applied the code at footer side.

        1. Because “The Alexa rank widgets were retired on October 26, 2016.” but you probably already know it cause you posted this a few month ago. Anyway this answer is for others.

  11. Can alexa rank be shown on the free wordpress site also? As i have a free wordpress site, and i have added the html code of alexa rank in text widget, but nothing is shown there. Can anybody help me out?

    1. Hi Shivam,

      I have seen other WordPress.com users this issue. I don’t think WordPress.com allows external Javascript on their website. Here’s what I have found on their official pages:

      “Users are not allowed to post JavaScript on WordPress.com blogs. JavaScript can be used for malicious purposes. As an example, JavaScript has taken sites such as MySpace.com and LiveJournal offline in the past. The security of all WordPress.com blogs is a top priority for us, and until we can guarantee scripting languages will not be harmful, they will not be permitted.

      JavaScript from trusted partners, such as YouTube and Google Video, is converted into a WordPress shortcode when a post is saved.”

    1. Hi Prasenjit,

      The widget has Javascript code, and I guess WordPress.com doesn’t allow external javascript on their pages. See the above comment for more details.

            1. you can

              just pull the data with php.
              if you use wordpress:
              first install PHP code plugin, this will allow you to insert php code anywhere on widgets area.
              then inside the php widget insert this code:

              <?php
              $source = file_get_contents('https://data.alexa.com/data?cli=10&dat=snbamz&url=yoursite.com&#039;);

              //Alexa Rank
              preg_match('/\/si’, $source, $matches);
              $aresult = ($matches[2]) ? $matches[2] : 0;

              //Alexa Sites Linking in
              preg_match(‘/\/si’, $source, $asli);
              $alinksin = ($asli[1]) ? $asli[1] : 0;

              ?>

              don’t forget to replace “yoursite.com” with your domain

              This way you don’t show your ranking but you get the benefits and improve your ranking, it has the same effect as the widget.

  14. Thanks for the tips. we are working very hard to create a social networking site, hope the tips will help us to increase the alexa ranking fast.

  17. Is there any permanent way to increase rank in alexa?. Advertiser generally check this tool and believe too much on alexa”s rank. And we publisher facing trouble.

  18. Hi there, I tried using this on my client’s website but it’s not working. The “My Alexa Ranking” title shows up but the actual rank doesn’t. Can you help me please?

  21. Hi,

    Thanks for sharing this post, We are having Regular posting in our blogs, but still we are facing to increase alexa ranking, any other short cut ways to increase alexa ranking

    Thanks

  23. I think that even if we add alexa widget to our blog it won’t help up decrease our ranking, it’s just a type of showing your visitors and advertiser the real stats of your blog.

    Are you agree with me Mr. Pradeep Singh ?

  24. Thanks for the share.
    but when i put the alexa HTML code in my website through blogger, it doesn’t appear in the website, i have also a similar problem, any HtML code like banners doesn’t appear too.
    I tried to change the template, but no results.
    For information : i don’t use Adsense in my website.
    Thanks in advance

  25. Very useful article but if your site has not developed on word press how to add this widget on your website.

  26. Hey,

    I have already added the html code in the sidebar widget area but nothing is displaying in our page.

    please advice us

  28. Thanks to providing tips for create alexa widget. These tips are really good and easy to understand.
    Thanks again

  32. Thanks for the share. i put the alexa HTML code in my website it’s working.
    hope the tips will help us to increase the alexa ranking fast.

  35. I was looking for the alxea rank code for widget.Not plugging.Any thank you very much for the good and informative post..

  42. Hello,

    Thanks for sharing the information. I was new to blogging and I had a question. Alexa does really matters in website rankings? Please guide me with your valuable suggestion.

  43. I think having Alexa Ranking widget on my website is a plus even if it does not affect my rankings in reality. I say this because it helps one measure if their traffic generation techniques are yielding substantial results. @Poster, Thanks for this.

  47. Hey thanks for the great article. I’m new to blogging andI was having doubts whether adding the alexa widget would improve the ranking or not, not any more.
    I’m adding the alexa widget right away. Thanks for the plain and simple explanation.

  49. Thanks buddy.i just thinking about alexa code to input on my blogger blog.and i finding your article.such a beautifull article.nice job.

  50. I had never noticed before about Alexa. But by reading this, I’d probably try to learn it.

  52. this is the awesome post i was looking for something like that thanks bro i will try alexa widget on my website topbestlist.in

  54. Thanks Pradeep, for informative article.

    is alexa rank is really matters ?
    what are the performance metrics so we can trust on alexa rank ?

    Arvind

  55. i think alexa widget is not working anymore..! according the latest update by alexa, they retired the alexa widget in may 2016

  56. Great info . But I have some questions; For about one week my site is on exactly same Alexa page rank, is this normal? Secondly I have been making some backlinks (mostly from social media sites and forum sites) to my website for two months, but they did not appear yet? I wonder if Alexa did not count those as backlinks or bots did not visit that pages?
    Thanks in advance…

  58. Thanks, rather than using a plugin to insert some code dynamically and made it load few miliseconds more, typing code in widget is more good idea.

  59. My site is a self hosted site I am trying to add widget to site but it is only showing the title of the widget not the ranking . Please advice I followed all the steps as shown above.

  62. Thanks for your tutorial. I have tried using code /widget but not display . why not show alexa widget.

  63. I don’t know Why My site is not showing alexa rank. I am using your code. Please see my site banananews.pk . I applied the code at footer.

  66. Yes, Alexa rank plays a very important role to get rankings to your site. Not only ranking but get more visitors. I like the way of your explanation. It will definitely helps me. Until I studied this post I really don’t know ” more visitors- good Alexa rank.”

  68. Hello, Nice tips to improve alexa rank. By appling some of the above mention tips I have improved my alexa rank. Thanks for sharing.

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