Alexa ranking is now the defacto standard for determining web popularity - the less the rank number the higher is your popularity. For example Google has the highest rank - 1. Most online advertisers use Alexa rank as the key metric to decide whether to spend their precious advertising dollars on a site.

However, the way Alexa computes a sites rank is  by measring how many visitors are viewing your site using a browser that has an Alexa tool bar installed. In other words, if a visitor do not have the Alexa tool bar installed, that visit does not count at all. Well, apparently there are are other variables used in computing the rank, but most webmasters and SEO pundits agree that the Alexa tool bar is the key instrumentation used in computing this elusive number.

One of the best ways of improving a web sites Alexa rank is to convince your visitors to <a title="Alexa tool bar" href="http://www.alexa.com/toolbar">download</a> and install the Alexa tool bar (quite an unobtrusive element though) on their browser.  <a href="http://www.alexa.com/toolbar"><span style="color: #ff0000;"><strong>So if you are reading this now, download and install the toolbar and help improve my rank.</strong></span></a> However, if you are using one of the less popular web browsers like Google Chrome, then you (and me) are out of luck.

The other less effective ways are things like, installing Alexa widgets on your site, increasing the number of incoming links, use techniques like posting on Asian forums (apparently Alexa is more popular in Asia) etc. Google the term "how to improve Alexa rank" and you'll find tons of advice.

But I think the only way to make it work for you is to get tons of traffic to your site.