Which is More Important to Making Money? Alexa or PageRank?

Image Credit Melesat.com

Blogging is far more complicated than most bloggers realize. The more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know yet – and the best way to find out what isn’t clear in your mind is to try to answer a question like this one from self-publishing blogger Ivin Viljoen:

“Which is more important: Alexa rating or PageRank?”

I said, “important for WHAT”? Then he added, “for making money”. OK, then. Which one is more important for making money – and should we care?

It is true that many people judge the importance of your blog by your Google PageRank – including advertisers. So, yes, PageRank is an IMAGE thing, but it does not always affect how much traffic you get.  Which would you rather have? More traffic and NO PageRank or a higher PageRank and less traffic?

Google sometimes takes away PageRank but doesn’t take away any search engine positions or traffic.

Other times they take away both.

Advertisers also sometimes look at Alexa ratings – again, to see how popular your blog is and possibly see in a limited way what keywords are bringing you traffic. He didn’t ask how important is Compete traffic, but he could have. Isn’t how much traffic you have what advertisers really want to know?

What they SHOULD want to know is what percentage of YOUR traffic is interested in what they have to offer.

The problem with all of these numbers is that they are not accurate. While they can be used as guidelines and they can affect what advertisers may be willing to pay you, each one individually is not critical to making money overall.

Some believe there is a Google PageRank Alexa Connection. Mike D’Agostino wrote about that way back in 2006 on his Highly Structured site.  He offers some interesting insights into what the numbers mean.

No comments there which is too bad because this blog is an example of very low Alexa Rating and low PageRank which he was not seeing back then – or at least had not come across yet.

You can read answers from other bloggers to this question in posts like PageRank or Alexa Rank? Which One is More Important? but the bottom line is to focus on quality content and reaching a specific target audience – ideally a geo-targeted audience.

It is beneficial for bloggers to write reviews for each other on sites like Alexa and Technorati.  If you don’t have your blog listed there you’re missing out on traffic and influence and a great source for advertiser inquiries.

What advertisers may not realize is social media influence and the amount of interaction in blogs is growing in importance. I will be writing a guest post that explains why and how that relates to SEO for the Stay on Search SEO blog. This is important to understand so I hope you’ll watch for it there.

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