1. Global Sugar Art – 287,107 (Increased 2,672)
2. MoleskinUS – 260,422
3. Harry Winston – 251,898 (Decreased 8,103)
4. Cake Journal – 250,366 (Decreased 9,337)
5. A&P – 233,930

Quite a few changes have occurred since our last Alexa discussion. We have since surpassed WP-Smooth which has since dropped from the list. We are no longer monitoring the rank of Hitsville as their rank has decreased significantly and are beyond our range of five websites. In the meantime we have added two websites – MoleskinUS and A&P, both of which I have discovered as a result of reading Meatball Sundae.

-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding

1. WP-Smooth – 285,450 (Increased 6,665)
2. Global Sugar Art – 284,345 (Decreased 1,763)
3. Harry Winston – 260,001 (Decreased 609)
4. Cake Journal – 259,703 (Increased 928)
5. Hitsville – 251,912 (Decreased 6,802)

Although the individual ranks have changed, the order has pretty much remained the same, with exception to Global Sugar Art and WP-Smooth which have swapped places. This is due to an increase by WP-Smooth with a corresponding decrease by Global Sugar Art.

-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding

Alexa Basics
For those unfamiliar with Alexa, it is basically a website created by Amazon which ranks all websites on the Internet in regards to traffic. However, it does much more than this – see the example screenshot below:

As you can see from the highlighted area, the website provides traffic stats, contact info, related links, keywords, clickstream, and demographics. And some options, such as “Traffic Stats” contain multiple options as well. The great thing is that you can either use Alexa for your own website or any other website you are interested in. I will not go into all the features here, as it would be beyond the scope of the article, however I will provide what I believe to be the best three features in Alexa, listed in order of importance.

Traffic Stats – Traffic Rank
This is really the heart of Alexa – the ability to check your website rank when compared to other websites. We have been tracking our website since the second month of our existence – watching with excitement as we moved from 21 million (the first time we checked it) to our present position of under one million. A screenshot of the Cape Cod Branding traffic rank and associated metrics is provided below.

Note that you can also view the 7 day average, 1 month average, 3 month average, and 3 month change. This is a good way to project your potential future trend on the Internet should your performance continue as it had historically from the past week to three months. Also note that only the top 100,000 sites are featured in the graph – a goal to which we aspire!

Your goal should be to consistently lower this number over time, #1 being the top spot.

Traffic Stats – Pageviews/User
Provides the average number of pageviews for each visitor to your website. Does your average visitor only reach your site, read (hopefully) the current article and then leave? Or do they stick around for a bit and browse the website? Find out here. The more they browse, the more interested they likely are in your content and overall mission in life. As with traffic rank, Alexa provides your 7 day average, 1 month average, 3 month average, and 3 month change.

The Cape Cod Branding Pageviews/User stats are provided below with the areas of interest highlighted.

Using Cape Cod Branding as an example you can see that in the past week visitors had visited 8 pages per visit on average, 12 in the past month, and 5.7 in the past three months. This averages a total increase of 160%.

Your goal with pageviews should be to increase this number over time. The more pages a person visits, the more interest there likely is over time. My guess is that this number will stabilize eventually, given that many of your returning visitors may have already read articles in your archive during past visits – however maybe not when you factor in new readers.

Traffic Rank – Time On Site
I consider this metric to go hand in hand with Pageviews/User. It is one thing to have a high volume of traffic, but is this traffic visiting multiple pages, and how long are they sticking around? A screenshot of the Cape Cod Branding “Time On Site” metric is provided below:

As with pageviews/user, it is difficult to determine what exactly constitutes a good time on site. In my experience I have found anything over 5 minutes to be desirable given the short attention span of many Internet users. Similar to pageviews/user you should constantly strive to achieve a higher number as you proceed – mainly by developing solid content and providing value to your readers.

I recommend that you visit Alexa and see how your site compares with the rest of the Internet. Browse around Alexa and play around with some of the features – you will find it worthwhile and it’s usefulness grows over time.

Alexa is a great way to see how your website compares to the competition!

-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding