Fresno California lawyers - attorneys legal directory
It Isn't Only 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 continuously 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 the same as handing out
your business cards at a local shopping mall. Actually, this may not be a
perfect analogy, as you might get a new client at the mall!
First, let’s examine 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 certain 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 close to 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
likely say “Well it's inexpensive; it's worth a try.”
Sometimes these sites will proclaim how much traffic they receive. Even though
this figure may sound high, here are some facts to consider:
A. Pay no mind 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 find out 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 see 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 before to publication. So, just use this
as an indicator in your decision process.
C. How is the sites traffic made? 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 real people as the offer stated or from another
computer-generated program which 'visited’ the site? Perhaps, someone in Asia
received a quarter each time they visited the site. We highly doubt any real
people actually visited the site.
Our usual 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. Keep in mind, 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 determine a true cost-effective
site on which to advertise? The absolute best way is to see if the site has
pertinent, 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, enter the individual keyword phrases shown
above in their search box and verify the results!
The second best way to determine website credibility and usefullness 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
attorney, 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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