Redirecting with Alexa is a BAD Linking Strategy

A lot of bloggers seem to think the Alexa redirect will help them in their Alexa rankings. This is what it looks like: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.untwistedvortex.com/. Go ahead, click on it. You know you want to. It'll boost my Alexa rankings for a little while.

There are two problems with a link like that. First, it doesn't help with Alexa rankings if no one clicks on it. Second, the Google juice for the link goes to Alexa and not to the blog it's redirecting to. Which do you think is going to have more longstanding benefits, linking to Alexa like that or linking directly to the blog?

I don't want to republish what I've already written about the subject of linking. I invite you to read a guest article I wrote: Links, Backlinks, Pingbacks and Trackbacks - What Exactly Are They?. The fact is, linking directly to blogs benefits both your blog and theirs.

Andy Beard made his thoughts known about the Alexa redirects in his article, Linking Mistakes Frequently Encountered On Blogs. Today, he pointed to an article that gave the Final Word On Alexa Redirects in which Lord Matt gave compelling reasons NOT to use Alexa redirects. I recommend you take a few minutes to read Some SEO Basics and Alexa Rank Mistakes.

I did a search through my blog comments and found six commenters had used an Alexa redirect as their comment URLs. Because I use a "dofollow" plugin, they lost out on the Google juice from articles that have page ranks of 3 and 4 right now (and I know their particular page ranks could have used the boost). I considered changing the URLs to point directly to their blogs and decided against it. It's their problem, not mine.

Links to other blogs with similar articles: (add yours to the comments and I'll add it here)

How To: Getting Alexa to like you

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August 6th, 2007 By RT Cunningham | Categories: Marketing | Tags: Alexa, services | Full Article Feed | Summary Article Feed | Comments Feed | Respond | Trackback URL

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2. HMTKSteve on August 6th, 2007 at 8:18 pm (Reply)
   
   

   I have blogged about this myself. In fact, when I tested this out I found zero benefit from using the redirect link.

   2. RT Cunningham on August 6th, 2007 at 8:22 pm (Reply)
      
      

      What's the link, Steve?

3. HMTKSteve on August 6th, 2007 at 8:57 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Here be the link: http://www.hmtk.com/archives/how-to-getting-alexa-to-like-you.html

4. Matt on August 6th, 2007 at 9:02 pm (Reply)
   
   

   I tried this for a few days as well and had hundreds of click throughs and saw no effect/increase in my ranking. I stopped bothering with it, though I keep seeing a few from time to time.

   I agree that it's much better to aim for the Google love than the Alexa love.

5. hari on August 6th, 2007 at 10:25 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Man, I hate the whole SEO business. I mean, it's nice to be popular, but there are far too many people obsessed with SEO to make it worthwhile scamming. That's why there are so many fads floating around on the internet.

   Bah, I steer clear of all of them.

   2. RT Cunningham on August 6th, 2007 at 10:39 pm (Reply)
      
      

      The key to SEO for most people, in my own opinion, is to set things up the right way to begin with and then concentrate on writing good content. The SEO stuff will take care of itself if it's handled that way.

      2. hari on August 6th, 2007 at 11:32 pm (Reply)
         
         

         Yes, you're right. There's no substitute for content.

         And even otherwise, Internet popularity (or notoriety) is a hit/miss business and I prefer to remain obscure as you very well know by now.

         2. MrCorey on August 6th, 2007 at 11:46 pm (Reply)
            
            

            That's completely the ticket. I don't know about others, but I like to have the important things found and the not so important things perhaps not found.

            For example, I wrote about my CD burner not being in DMA mode and how to fix that (10 minutes vs 2-1/2 to burn a CD…hmmm…) and, since I used a good title for the article and threw appropriate keywords into the header (with a plugin - I'm lazy), the article is on the first page of results on Google for relevant search terms. My grunt work in fonding others' grunt work will save others a lot of hair pulling (unless their haircut's like mine!)

6. Comedy Plus on August 7th, 2007 at 1:45 am (Reply)
   
   

   I wondered about this since I've been seeing a lot of folks do this. So, now I will quit wondering and not do it. Thanks for the great advice RT.

7. Andy Beard on August 7th, 2007 at 3:26 am (Reply)
   
   

   Very weird, I didn't see a trackback come through for this and only by chance saw it in Technorati.
   I posted a few times today and my Technorati listings are going apes**t

   The SEO benefit or loss isn't necessarily such a negative, until Alexa change their URL because it is a 301 redirect.
   The worst thing is people are less inclined to click on redirects compared to descriptive URLs.

   SEO isn't important if your internet business converts into income well enough such that you can buy traffic and make money.

   If you just blog for personal pleasure, nothing matters at all, you might as well just store your blog on your harddisk if your intentions are that you don't want people to read your thoughts.

   If you do want people to read your thoughts, then having a blog set up so it can be found by whatever algorithm and technology is out there is a worthwhile undertaking.

   2. hari on August 7th, 2007 at 9:47 am (Reply)
      
      

      There is a middle ground for everything. I just think some people over-emphasize SEO without worrying about the content. Like RT has mentioned, that's the reason why such myths about page-ranking float around on the internet.

      Also blogging is all about the interaction, so your argument about "storing it on the hard disk" doesn't really hold water in my opinion.

      Of course, a lot of us care about the interaction, but for many of us, getting a huge number of hits from search engines is not really that important… I'm not talking about people who blog for money obviously.

      The word-of-mouth interaction provides far more quality than any web search result leading to my blog.

8. maurizio on August 7th, 2007 at 3:47 am (Reply)
   
   

   Hey..have a look at my blog. I wrote about it too.

   I agree with everyone but I will leave my alexa redirect there for ONE reason.

   My Alexa link is on mybloglog near a normal link. I lose just 1 "Google Juice" thing but I get lots of people clicking on it.

   I think the Alexa link is good if you place it in one single place where people click it.

   What do you think?

9. goldcoaster on August 7th, 2007 at 12:42 pm (Reply)
   
   

   I have noticed the alexa redirects as well - even mentioned to one of the commentors that it doesn't work and that , I think, is a bit like and old wives tale of blogging.

   cheers,

10. Ninja Jon on August 8th, 2007 at 12:38 pm (Reply)
    
    

    I think those links are spammy looking, and I always just delete them. I never understood why people were doing that, but whatever it was it seemed silly to me, so into the spam bucket it goes.

11. Rose on August 8th, 2007 at 1:26 pm (Reply)
    
    

    I edit every link that uses Alexa. It drives me nuts. Great post!

12. Cigar Jack on August 10th, 2007 at 10:40 am (Reply)
    
    

    The only place I've been using it is my signature in web forums where the links aren't picked up by Search Engines. Even though I've been rethinking that too.

13. Michael from Pro Blog Design on August 10th, 2007 at 8:34 pm (Reply)
    
    

    It still amazes me how some people find their Alexa ranking to be so important. I'd definitely rather have the link love any day.

    2. maurizio on August 10th, 2007 at 8:43 pm (Reply)
       
       

       I see you don't have any kind of ads on your site..

       Everybody hates Alexa, but every ad service is using it

14. Jacky on January 21st, 2008 at 4:27 pm (Reply)
    
    

    alexa sucks

    I saw striking differences.. like this

    rank = uniques per day
    850000 = 50
    2500000 = 500
    n/a = 800