How To Increase Alexa Rating?

I am going to launch a web directory soon and was wondering how I could get the website very popular and well known fast and increase its rank in google as well as getting thousands of people knowing about the website and such.

Should I pay for advertising? Should I submit my directory link to premium directories (pay 50 dollars per link) and such? How would I get this site up and going strong fast?

Good SERPs are the only real thing that will make your site popular rather than alexa ranking. 50 dollars per link would be very expensive; I think you should get listed in many free niche directories instead of paid directories in the very beginning.

Getting a directory to rank well in Google is so difficult you shouldn't expect to see results for a very long time. There are so many directories out there and so few ways to distinguish them that it's almost pointless to try. As with any website you can improve your chances by adding quality unique content to your directory which will attract quality links. That will definitely give you a leg up on almost everyone else.

As far as improving your Alexa rank simply install your toolbar and visit your site every day. That will work wonders. And if you can get friends to do it, too, you'll climb even quicker. Alexa is easy to manipulate.

This is the only thing that you have to do for good Alexa ranking.

Well I just want to get a lot of people looking at my site and make it grow fast without having to pay thousands of dollars for advertising. Besides unique content, how do I make my link display higher when you type in "Photoshop forums" Into the search engine?

There is no easy way. You need to have unique quality content to get the links you'll need to rank well. Without them you can't do it. It's just too competitive.

That's hilarious...not that gaining rank in Alexa is my goal in life, but I'm going to test this out for fun. Thanks for the info.

Manipulating alexa ranking might be just good for fun but it is not going to help you for good sales conversion.

Alexa's ratings serve only one purpose (and it is ashame it is used this way): some advertising networks check your Alexa ranking before accepting or declining your application. That's a shame because not only is it not accurate but anyone with half a brain can cheat the system. It's a poor measurement of anything. But I guess anyone who gets rejected because of a poor Alexa rating kinda deserves it since they easily could have improved it before applying for the network.

I agree. I've thought Alexa was a joke for a long time. It's funny though when Marketing Execs at a potential client company come to me really serious about their Alexa Rating and goals to improve it. I keep telling them it's a useless metric.