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The 11 Types of Alexa Hot URLs And How to Get There

Alexa is a subsidiary company of Amazon.com typically known for its rankings of websites. The Alexa Toolbar collects data on the web browsing behavior of those who have it installed. That data is then used for its rankings of the top 500 websites and showing traffic details of sites like mine.

It is important to note that it has been widely rumored over the years that the Alexa rankings can be manipulated fairly easily. The Alexa Rankings, however, are different than the Alexa Hot URLs, which isn’t as easily manipulated and therefore I would assume is more accurate. The Alexa Hot URLs is a list of the hottest web pages on the internet right now according to the Alexa Toolbar; and the list is updated every five minutes.

There are several ways to use the Alexa Hot URLs list. From a website owner’s standpoint, getting one of your website’s URLs to show up on this list means that “you’ve made it”. It also means that your website’s search engine rankings are going to change (for the better) and your website is (or soon will be) getting better organic search engine rankings because your site traffic is up. And from a web surfer’s standpoint, it’s certainly an interesting place to start your web surfing: the list shows what’s hot right now, the websites that everyone’s visiting right now. Quite often it’s full of the latest top news stories, but it’s also filled with lots of other stuff: and that’s the whole point of me writing this.

I have watched the Alexa Top URLs for over a month and determined that the list can be broken into certain types of URLs. After categorizing them, I have analyzed each type to determine exactly how and why that type of web page appears on the list of Alexa Hot URLs and added comments on how you would get your site on the list if you own a similar website. These are not necessarily in any order of importance or any order of how often they appear.

The Mainstream Media News Article
If it’s major news, then it’s most likely going to be covered multiple times and all the major news websites are covering it. Quite often, there will be more than one article covering the same topic.
Examples – News.yahoo.com articles, CNN.com articles, local FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS news affiliate website articles
How often It Stays – As long as it’s news, people will still be interested in it. These don’t stay around for a while, a few hours at best. Longer if the article has gone popular or hot on a social bookmarking site like Digg.
How You Get There – If you’re a mainstream news site, putting the article on your site’s home page and promoting it on other sites will certainly help. Make sure the article is optimized with the proper title tag and include links to socialize the article like a link to Digg.com, Mixx.com, Propeller.com, Reddit.com, and Delicious.com. A link to StumbleUpon may help, as well. If it’s big news, getting picked up by Drudge will help. The news site should also be in Google News and in Yahoo News, which also helps.

The Mainstream Media Link Bait Article
Classic linkbait articles with nifty headlines still will pull in readers. Linkbait is not just for bloggers, the mainstream media has been using it for years and still use it. “How to” articles and “Things you didn’t know” type of articles still are highly read.
Examples – MSN and Yahoo! are notorious for these types of mainstream linkbait articles. Here’s one by MSN and
How often It Stays – Usually at least a day or so, it really depends on how long the main site wants is featuring it. If it’s an MSN.com article, then the traffic is usually from MSN and they’re pushing it. If it’s a subdomain of Yahoo!, like RealEstate.Yahoo.com, then the traffic is mainly from Yahoo.com.
How You Get There – The mainstream sites know how to get their article there: feature it on the home page. Certainly pushing it out through social media bookmarking sites will help, but mainly the traffic is already there and it’s just a matter of featuring it somewhere. [...]

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