It's Not Just the Numbers
By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI co-owner of http://www.websitetrafficbuilders.com
If you have a business and an email account, you no doubt get loads
of spam, both through email and phone, promoting various plots to
get more traffic to your site, a listing on a site at extremely low
cost, a national directory listing, or even an exclusive ad or web
page just for your city or state.
Working with many real estate and
legal sites, our clients
repeatedly inform us of these offers that all seem too good to pass
up. Over a period of one year we have investigated some of these
offers and were not at all surprised to find that the chance of
getting new business from them was like handing out your business
cards at a local shopping mall. Actually, this may not be a
righteous analogy, as you might get a new client at the mall!
First, let’s look at the very inexpensive listing in either a
national or local
Internet directory. We asked one San Diego real
estate agent why she was listed in a specific national real estate
directory. She replied, "It was just $20 with my picture included.”
Our second question asked if she received any leads or direct
business from this listing. Answer: "No!" She had been listed with
this site for almost a year.
The lesson to be taken from here is that it's not the cost that is
important, but the potential for getting new clients! Almost any
high school student can set up an inexpensive, and attractive
website 'directory'. Now, if they named it the Jimmy Jones High
School Law Directory, not too many lawyers would even consider a $20
listing (unless it was for a school support function). However, slap
on a name like The Western States Legal Internet Bureau, and some
will definitely say “Well it's inexpensive; it's worth a try.”
Sometimes these sites will describe how much traffic they receive.
Even though this figure may sound high, here are some facts to
consider:
A. Pay no attention to any figures quoting 'Hits.’ Depending on the
graphics on a web page, one visitor to a page with 15 graphics, will
show as 15 hits.
B. You should inquire about the number of 'unique visitors' or
'visits' to determine a much more appropriate traffic count. Plus,
as the saying goes, “talk is cheap,” so be sure to look at some type
of site traffic log to verify the numbers. Below is a such a log for
our own site, www.websitetrafficbuilders.com:
The above table shows 1,455,803 hits and 58,370 total visits for the
month. Keep in mind, numbers can be easily changed prior to
publication. So, just use this as an indicator in your decision
making.
C. How is the sites traffic generated? Where is the traffic coming
from? So, a site shows you had the 58,000 visitors last month.
Impressive? Maybe, maybe not! Look at the actual traffic table
below:
For May: 8,170 visits, June: 58,370. July: 10,521. See something
unusual? Why the huge jump in June traffic? As an experiment, we
tried an offer to have one of our sites pages visited 50,000 times
in June. Sure, we received the 50,000 'visits,’ but, were they
verifiable people as the offer stated or from another
computer-generated program which 'visited’ the site? Perhaps,
someone in Asia received a dime each time they visited the site. We
highly doubt any real people actually visited the site.
Our average site traffic runs 8 to 10 thousand per month, all
generated from high search engine keyword rankings. This traffic
generates a predictable number of sales and a much higher number of
free trial software downloads from the site.
D. Remember, high traffic to a national directory may not equate to
high traffic for your regional business. Many real estate agents and
attorneys only do business in their local city. In a national
directory, one should validate how much traffic comes in for your
particular locale, as anything else is not going to be meaningful.
So, with the above points in mind, how do you distinguish a true
cost-effective site on which to advertise? The absolute best way is
to see if the site has useful, high keyword phrase standings on the
major search engines. As an example, during July 2002, our Los
Angeles/Orange County legal directory (www.la-orange-county-lawyers-attorney-directory.com)
showed these keyword standings on Yahoo (only a partial listing):
Just clicking on the Yahoo Web Pages name will take the interested
advertiser to the Yahoo search engine. Once there, type the
individual keyword phrases shown above in their search box and
verify the results!
The second best way to determine website credibility and efficiency
is to look for testimonials on the site or on their sign-up form.
Contact these people to verify their results. In this same vein,
whether you are a real estate agent or dentist, look for fellow
practitioners in your town who are listed on the site and contact
them.
The Internet is proper judgment in evaluating various advertising
opportunities. Caveat Emptor is alive and thriving on the Internet.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use,
copying or mirroring is prohibited.
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