It is a fact that many site owners have realistically priced (i.e. cheap as chips) space reserved on their sites for advertisers that are willing to deal direct. Sometimes you can order and pay online, sometimes you have to revert to good old e-mail but often the effort is worth it.
Of course it helps to be able to get an advance idea of what kind of traffic numbers your targeted web site enjoys. Here we recommend that you do a little bit of comparative analysis with many tools available. Most tools require some form of permission from their users (like installation of an toolbar, like Alexa or giving Google Analytics permission to pool your data into industry averages) so the data will only be as good as the authorised user base.
Use these tools to get a good estimate of a site’s traffic:
- Google AdPlanner (Free)
- Google Trends (Free)
- Alexa Traffic Estimator (Free)
- Traffic Estimate (Free)
- My Domain Stats (Free)
- Compete (Login Required) (Free)
- Quantcast (Free)
- Stat Show (Free)
- SEMRush (Free)
By combining the data from all the tools above AND comparing your actual site visitors against the traffic estimates by the above tools for your site you will quickly get a good feel of the amount of traffic to your targeted web site.
Additional tools:
- SiteTrail for Chrome Browser Extension (Free): Find out a whole host of competitive data about a site, including Compete, domain info, software, analytics, social stats, etc.
- Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner Free: Find demographic data by domain
- Search Metrics Visibility Report (Free) Check visibility of top winners and losers in search
- SEO SERP Chrome Browser Extension (Free): Check the position of a list of sites given a keyword.
Tips:
- Check where your ads will appear (which category or part of a site) – they may only appear on certain sections of the site which is good for targeting.
- When analysing data given by site owners be aware of the terms used – Unique Visitors (number of visits from one IP in a specific period), Page Views (the number of pages viewed by those Unique Visitors) and Hits (the total number of elements loaded for those page views i.e. a page may have 30 graphical elements so each page view results in 30 hits).
- Advertising Slots that appear above the fold (the area you see when opening the site without scrolling down) are worth more than advertising slots below the fold.
- Only target sites that serve your target market – e.g. most people visiting MyPE will not be interested in an advert for a plumber in London.
- Give your campaign time to mature – work on the sevens rule – most people need to see something seven times before they will take action.
- Make sure that the text or banner advert for your campaign is geared towards a specific and measurable outcome – take visitors to a custom page on your site and offer them a discount, ask for a newsletter sign up, ask for a comment and then measure the conversion rate.
- Express the conversion rate as a value per visitor and track that over time.
- Test. test, test.
Related: Speak to Janine about Advertising on MyPE.
