how to read alexa ranking?

Alexa bases their ranking system on the top 50,000, the less you rank with Alexa the better. The site above has a terrible ranking over 5 mil.
On the other hand my lowly little site, has an Alexa rank of 6889. Better than average in the top 10k. The numbers in the list you posted, are a three month average, you go by the last or the total.

Both Alexa, and Google alone fully understand their system?? and I'm not sure they do.

#PS. Alexa rates according to incoming links, as well as daily web traffic. The site above will get better as time goes. The more search engines, and directories you can list on the better.

I have truly worked like a dog to get my Google #3, and The Alexa under 10k.

how many visitors do you get? 6889 is a very high rank!

Well actually not as many as I would like, in fact by some website standards not many. The trick is right here. I post on about 5 other forums, at least several times a week if not a day. All these posts come in to Alxea as links. I ran a check I have something like 2-3 k links on alexa. Not all from posting on boards, if it was I would not have enough hours in a day. But it's like a snakes tail when it's in his mouth, they all circle around and compound on one another.

So that's the trick with Alexa. Google on the other hand is no trick, that is from searching out other high ranking photo sites, that would give me a back link.
The current rank is probably a little low, it doesn't include all the four links on the home page. These are the places that gave me back links, plus a few more that did not require a link from me.

Quote: how to read alexa ranking?

With extreme suspicion!
Alexa ratings are only based on a minute proportion of internet users (the ones with their toolbar installed) and are so easily skewed it's untrue.

Steve,
I'd lay good odds you have the alexa toolbar installed and visit your own site on a very regular basis.

Yes, I realize that people with the toolbar installed who visit your site will get you a better ranking. So how do you read the stats? I see today, 1 week average and 3 months average, what do they mean?

That should be ONLY people with the toolbar

personally, I've absolutely no idea and care even less. They are an utterly meaningless metric. Google PR is a more useful metric. and that's of 0 interest. Measure something that means more, Sales, signups, enquiries etc. Check your own logs/traffic stats It will tell you far more of value.

Little test;
Install the toolbar and visit your site several times a day, Hey, make a family thing and get everyone and the dog to join in and watch your ratings shoot up (or down) after a few weeks. It will make no difference at all to sales or enquiries or whatever you do (didn't look)
Then remove the toolbar and watch them drop (or up) at the same rate.

I already have the Alexa toolbar and set my site as the homepage. So far the site is at over 5 million ranking. =(

No I do not have an Alexa tool bar, Google tool bar, or any other BS internet junk on my computer. That stuff is worse than a virus, which I would trade for it anyday. I can get rid of a virus, toolbars and green Alligators you cant. All that stuff, is nothing but spyware to the max. The only thing I have is a little Google rank indicator, at the bottom of my homepage.

I inflated that rating just like I said I did, all these posts count as links. I did not set out to do it, I just happened to find out it works. Google is different, you have to really work on that. Is it worth it, no it's not, but it is good PR. I don't get impressed by lots of hits on my sitemeter either, unless it results in a sign up on my message board. Which only one in 200 do, it seems.

Really the only advantage you can have, and I'm not positive about that. I think is to have good clean code, that will validate. I believe that gets you a little more consideration, from the search engines.

Do you have any other tips for getting good SERP? I have both the Alexa and Google toolbar, I notice the Alexa toolbar slows down my PC a lot though. I checked your forums, you have almost 2500 visitors since May 17th of this year. That's pretty impressive!

It's probably little to do with the actual links, More to do with the people who "inhabit" webmaster type forums.
The newbie webmaster are the main users of the Alexa toolbars so them clicking through your sig links will be the difference.

Yep Most probably.

Just checked the sites I have in my sig and they show movement in the Alexa ratings. 3 other sites I either own or maintain (chosen at random) have no data at Alexa. And these other sites actually get more traffic.

lets pick on that message board a little bit. First off, I have had boards I liked better. But that one provides member photo storage, which is an advantage for me to some extent. But from a management stantpoint, ProBoards is much better.
They are supposed to do another upgrade soon, and take care of some of the dislikes I have with it. Now all those hits?, they are not just hits. The board records a visitor, then also counts every page he opens as another hit. So to get an average, you could probably divide that number by 4, and come closer. I think they did that to do just what it did, impress people visiting the board.

The reason that tool bar is slowing you down, it is recording every move you make. Then sends it back to Alexa, where they sell this info to all those spam flingers, that plague your e-mail. That's why I will not run one, of anybodies!.
Even windows comes with 4 Alexa registry keys, built in. But if you know how you can remove them, and you will notice a speed increase just as quick as you do.

Where others have spent time learning CSS, and other fancy markup languages. I have spent my last 6 years, learning just HOW search engines like your pages to look. Not physically but from the search bots point of view, and it has paid off. For instance in my header, after the title, nothing else comes first except keywords.
These I have learned bots do not like much, in numbers of over 20. They had better also come from your page text, or they will not be noticed. Do not repeat any over 7 times, and no less than 2. Try to work your strong keywords into the title, and header. Blue Ridge are two of my strongest, they appear in the title, description, keywords, and header of the page.
So when someone searches for anything "Blue Ridge" my website comes up. Photos is another, that appears in the title, description, and keywords. Of course all three are repeated at lease twice, in the page text. There are more taken from the page text, I think the page has a total of 17 keywords.

The art if you want to call it that; is to make your text say what you want, while being able to sneak in some valuable words. Like photography, the most searched for word in my sites field. You can be sure that's there. So it pays to research your sites subject, and find the strongest keywords for it, then work them into the page text. I have a little program I can run, to find this out.

I could go on for at least three times this much. But I despise never ending posts, so I do as I like, and try to keep them reasonable.