Are Online Business Directory Sites A Good Advertising Opportunity

Inbound links Sensing Traffic to Your Website from Qualified Sources Online Creates an Opportunity for Lead Conversion

When should you pay for an ad or online listing on a Business Directory or Website?

There are a  few things to ask when considering advertising on a website.

Here are questions to ask to understand if the advertising platform is the best value:

 

How visible are the site’s ads and how easy is it to find your category in the site navigation?

Do you see any predominant web banners used for ads integrated into content?

Are pages set up like a blog where you need to scroll down and one article is on top of the other?

Do you see ads in the right hand column and are they below the page fold requiring scrolling – note these lower cost positions for your ad to see if you can negotiate a reduced rate.

need content for their blog?  If a listing site is not continually updating site content and adding to the site their traffic numbers will decrease.

How much of their traffic numbers are paid vs. organic.

Find out

if the advertising platform has a presence (extension of reach) on social for an opportunity to interact there.

If the site has events listed and can you get visibility from listing there instead of purchasing and ad.  For the cost of an ad you can host an event to connect IRL (in real life)

If you decide to advertise online, you’ll need to know how many clicks the ad drives to your website.  You will need to measure interaction with ad in order to determine the success of the ad. To do this you will need to set up a specific landing page on your web site and put Google tracking code on that landing page so you can capture traffic numbers. You will also wnat to compare the traffic from the advertising platefor you choose compared to the traffic you can get from Facebook/Google.

Each answer will increase or reduce the impact of ad and help you determine comparative value.