Top 75 Nigerian Sites on Alexa Ranking

Top 75 Nigerian Sites on Alexa Ranking

A few days ago, I was on Alexa.com website to see some insights on Top Sites in Nigeria. I discovered quite a lot of things that I am going to share with you guys on this post. Alexa ranking insights shows how your website is doing in times of traffic you are receiving (compared relatively to other websites like yours), who your visitors are (maybe working or jobless, male or female, age group etc.), where your site visitors visit before coming to your website, the top websites that links to you, the top keywords your website ranks for on Google and lot more.

Image Credit: Google

I specifically concentrated on the Top 1 – 75 sites in Nigeria. These sites are ranked based on the number of visitors and views they accumulate. Top ranked websites are Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing and other related sites – which is understandable because basically everyone use these search engines and connect on social media networks. My main interest was on personal websites and blogs of various Nigerians or businesses. Some of my findings will actually appear funny to you. Here are my conclusions from what I saw on the 7th of October, 2016 (and it is solely based on my personal opinions/assumptions, not an expertise analysis.)

1. Nairaland has to be the biggest forum in Africa.

Though I didn’t check how nairaland.com is ranked regionally in Africa, but sitting in number 7 behind Google and Facebook et al shows how popular the forum is. I don’t know of any other forum like nairaland.com, but if there is any competitor to this forum, then nairaland is by far on a higher level. I am sure the owner of the forum would have monetized the regular traffic it receives on a daily basis. There are lots of keywords linking to this forum because of its diversity in topics discussed on the forum.

2.  No doubt, Linda Ikeji is the biggest blogger in Africa. How did she do it?

Lindaikejisblog.com sits in number 12 and it is the first entertainment and gossip site ranked in this list. What I found baffling was that the top keywords linking to her site is herself i.e. Linda Ikeji, Lindaikejis blog, and Linda. But, it has over 3000 websites linking to her blog – which must be the reason she is highly ranked on Google. Also, you can’t neglect the fact that she attracts a lot of comments on each of her posts too (Google spiders are programmed to believe any webpage with a lot of comments shows the users really trusts it and should be very useful to others searching for the same information on the web.) Linda is basking on popularity and nothing more. No one can beat that, because she has started blogging from 2007. She didn’t even get a private domain till 2015.

And oh well, stop wondering how she makes a lot of money from blogging. How will she not make a lot of money? It is true that she can be receiving an average of 1million views daily. She posts more than 10 new blog updates daily, so assume she has 100,000 active users who would view each updates, that’s 1,000,000 page views, which will mean a higher number of ad-units impression. Assume her RPM (the amount CPM companies pay publisher for 1000 impressions) is about $1 (depending on her traffic which is mainly 90.5% from Nigeria), then she could be earning about $100 - $1000 daily, that’s surely $3,000 - $30,000 monthly from Google AdSense. Add up all her earnings from the multiple banner spaces she sells for advertisements and her sponsored posts. Do not wonder where her ₦650million Banana Island home came from, surely not from a sugar daddy. There is also no secret in the strategy she uses to retain her viewers. I am talking about her massive giveaways; ₦100k for 5 regular commenters every month, and ₦1million for 10 people at the end of year. Nobody can beat that, you don’t even have to be beef her either.

3.  Naij, PulseNg and BellaNaija are just behind Linda ikeji

Naij.com is No. 20; bellanaija.com is No. 39; and pulse.ng is No. 33. If you use Facebook frequently, you might have seen numerous Facebook adverts ran by Naija and Pulse. With their nice contents (written articles and videos) going viral on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – traffic to their websites will surely be massive. Unlike Lindaikejisblog.com, these blog sites have better keywords linking to them and a better global audience (less than 85% of their users are Nigerians compared to LIB’s 90.5% Nigerian users).

4.       Naijaloaded has to be the biggest wapka site in Africa

Naijaloaded.com is the highest ranked wapka site in Nigeria on No. 28. This site has one of the biggest archive of downloadable materials ranging from videos and audios, software and even real-time news updates.

5.   E-commerce is booming in Nigeria

Online shopping is becoming one of the biggest industries in Nigeria. With the recent acquisition of Kaymu.com by Jumia.com, you can unarguably call Jumia the biggest e-commerce player in Nigeria, and even Africa. Jumia.com.ng sits at No. 8 on the Top list, and Konga.com follows on No. 16 as the next biggest e-commerce website.

6. Traditional social media sites also featured

The two notable traditional social media sites are Eskimi.com on No. 14 and Hitwe (a new dating site) on No. 71. It is nice to know Nigerians enjoy connecting beyond Facebook and Twitter.

7.  Nigerians and Blogging

Is it passion or unemployment that has driven Nigerian youths to blogging? Having seen how blogging can transform lives with the likes of Linda Ikeji, Uche of Bellanaija.com, JideOgunsanya of Ogbongeblog.com etc. with the recent downturn of the country’s economy, youths have grown accustomed to the get-rich-fast syndrome, and aside from illegal international internet frauds, blogging is seen as another viable alternative and legal money-making avenue.  So, that could explain why Google’s blogger.com is No. 13 and wordpress.com at No. 30. Also Popads.net (one of the best pop-up ads merchants) is No. 48 and PayPal.com is No. 66, Nigerians sure loves to make money online.

8.  Nigerians and Online Betting

Surebet247.com is No. 45 on this Alexa ranking Top sites in Nigeria, the only bet site to feature in the Top 75. It is followed by livescores.com on No. 57 and goal.com on No. 26. Nigerians love football and football betting – that’s all.

9.  Nigerians and Free Downloading

02tvseries.com is No. 42, and it only tells you that Nigerians love cable movie series that’s uploaded on that site. With recent popular series like Games of Thrones, Empire and Power trending worldwide, it is understandable that Nigerians will be all out on the web trying to download – even though this movies will still end up in physical pirated DVDs that would sell in the market.

10.   Nigerians and Pornography

To think that Nigeria is ranked globally in the Top 5 of the most religious countries, Xvideos.com on No. 62 in Top Alexa ranked sites shows Nigerians also love pornography. Hey, do you also see porns?

11.    Is MMM a scam?

I have a blog post on my blog on MMM being a scam. A simple Google search will reveal a lot more about this money-pyramid system. But to my surprise, the global MMM website mmmoffice.com is No. 15 on the Top ranked sites in Nigeria, followed by Nigeria-mmm.net on No.44. This clearly shows that Nigerians are ignorant –probably because of economic recession- and would want to make fast money anyway anyhow as long as it is still working. Only God knows when the pyramid system will crash in Nigeria as it recently did in Zimbabwe, but until then, we should keep observing.

12.   Music blogs aren’t doing poorly too

Notjustok.com is up there on No. 58. Nigerians love music and they download from only their most trusted blog. Notjustok is surely the most trusted music blog in Nigeria, and all artists (especially up-and-coming acts) all struggle to get their songs on the blog, and that tells why they (Notjustok) had to create another separate blog for musicians to personally upload their own songs on it, and the best music goes to the main blog site.

13.   FCSC is up there too, does that explain why the website is never accessible?

Only job seekers can explain how frustrated this Federal Government vacant jobs website leave them after the many failed attempts to register and apply. The site fedcivilservice.gov.ng is ranked at No. 59 in Nigeria. It is highly embarrassing that a country with a lot of unemployed youths would build a website and host it on a server that is unable to receive massive traffic. Even free host platforms like Blogger can never be this poor. To make matters worse, they made the process an 18-pages application. Before you get to the 18th page to finally click submit – you would have seen a lot of ‘unable to load’ and “internal server error’ messages. 

14.   Who visits Quora?

Quora.com is a website where random users post their questions under a particular category (e.g blogging) and other users will try their best to provide answers to this question. Prominent bloggers use this site by providing answers to questions that they have discussed on their blogs. At the end of the answers, they place a link to the material that further talks about the question, and if other users finds the answers useful, they vote the answer and it becomes more relevant and massive traffic can go to the blog.

After my little insights on the Top ranked sites in Nigeria by Alexa, one thing that stuck is that, as a blogger, if you are not Linda Ikeji or BellaNaija, you have to keep writing meaningful and unique contents and advertise/promote your blog. In fact, more than half of your efforts on the blog should go to promotion, because what is the essence of very interesting contents without users? And for we bloggers who do it for Google AdSense, depending on your traffic quality (which determines your ad-units impression RPM), to make at least $100, we need about 4,000 page views.

The competition for traffic is very tight, especially in Nigeria. So, it takes a whole lot more time and efforts to achieve success. If you have recently started blogging, and you are not seeing fast results, don’t give up yet, keep working hard. Don’t blog for money; else you may never make this money.

Profile of the Writer : 

My name is Akintobi Jimoh and I blog on http://www.rapportnaija.com

October 18, 2016