PageRank v.s Alexa Rank? Which One Is Important?

Google has a effective way of ranking the pages present in its index. Google uses this algorithm to rank quality posts first and low quality posts last. But Alexa Ranking is a lot different. Alexa tells how much traffic a site receives and ranks them on this basis. It helps advertisers a lot and a site receives sponsors if it has a low Alexa Rank (Alexa Rank lower means better). A lot of people often mistake that PageRank is better than Alexa and start building links to their sites and forget about Alexa. You won't even believe that some of my fellow bloggers don't even know what Alexa Ranking is!!!! Now this will really affect a site's performance and minimize the earnings of the blogger which then even causes to leave the blog and all thus all their hard work goes in vain.

PageRank and Alexa Rank Series

Part1: PageRank v.s Alexa Rank? Which One Is Important?

Part2: PageRank is Not Important Says Google!

Part3: Killer Tips to Improve Alexa Rank of your Blog!

Part4: 3 Reasons Why Your PageRank is not Increasing!

Google Page Rank

Google PageRank is a page ranking algorithm by Google. PageRank is the backbone of Google and it's one of the major functionality that differentiates Google from other major giants like Yahoo! and Bing. It is a really effective Page Popularity algorithm that keeps track of all incoming and outgoing links to and from a page. Whenever Google Spiders (search robots) crawl your pages, they count the number of incoming and outgoing links. Based only and only on the quality and not quantity of links, the PR algorithm scales sites between values starting from 0 to 10.

SEO Importance of PageRank

Websites and blogs that are recommended to Google via backlinks rank higher in the PR scale and get the benefit of faster crawl and index rate. Sites with higher PR are crawled faster by spiders compared to those with lower PR. For instance a PR 6 page is crawled several times per minute as compared to a PR 4 one.

How it helps Google and Webmasters?

1. It helps Google do justice with authors and ranks pages in Google Search according to their rank.
2. Can help to penalize websites/blogs with duplicate content.
3. Differentiates Google from other major giants like Yahoo! and Bing.
4. Mostly Page Rank is considered a major factor when buying or selling a site.
5. Calculated by Google itself. 
6. Offers a toolbar named 'Google Toolbar' to check the Alexa ranking of a site
7. Helps hard working webmasters receive much traffic by ranking higher and getting indexed faster.

Negative Aspects

1. Updated quite late. To understand when it is updated, read: Google PageRank Update Schedule 2013   
2. People can buy quality backlinks and get good Page Rank.
3. They do not provide a toolbar for even their own Browser i.e, Google Chrome.

Alexa Ranking

Alexa is a web directory and  provides free traffic metrics, search analytics, demographics, and more. Alexa ranking depends upon how many visitors a blog/website gets daily. The lower the Alexa, the better. Because for instance MBT right now has an Alexa Rank of 482,368 which means that 482,367 websites/blogs receive more traffic than MBT. You should never rely on PageRank because its readership what counts first, then rankings come second.

A always aim to share something that is unique and working. If anyone compares ALEXA and PR, then your vote should always favor ALEXA as I do.

How is it helpful?

1. Updated quite sooner.
2. Algorithm and rank calculation is based on a dependable factor i.e Traffic.
3. Offers a toolbar named 'Alexa Toolbar' to check the Alexa ranking of a site.
4. Helps advertisers a lot on selecting the right site for advertising.

Negative Aspects

1. Anyone can use bots to increase Alexa Rank.
2. People become a victim of the false belief i.e. "High PR Means High Traffic and Revenue!"

Conclusion

Observing both the two factors, I guess Alexa Rank is almost a perfect way to describe the success of a blog. I recommend all of you to install the Alexa Toolbar. Actually both are very important to receive handsome sponsorship, attract tons of Advertisers and earn a handsome revenue from your blogs. But your priority should be Readership and Traffic. Then automatically good traffic will help to get a good Alexa Rank as the whole algorithm is based in traffic and with a huge list of subscribers, your PageRank will also boost. I will write the second part of this series tomorrow. Till then Take Care! :)