Is there a correlation between a website’s score, its engagement and the amount of money the owner(s) of the site makes?
I got this idea when I was doing a recent blog. That is the way things often happen; you are right in the middle of a project when an idea hits you for the next piece. I wondered if the big-time promoters had good website scores? How much engagement did they have with their websites and their users?
So last Friday, I compiled this list:
|
SITE |
Website Score |
|
|
speculatingstocks.com |
99.4 |
4 |
|
thehotpennystocks.com |
99.1 |
4 |
|
qualitystocks.net |
98.7 |
4 |
|
otcpicks.com |
98.7 |
4 |
|
stockhideout.com |
98.4 |
4 |
|
smallcapvoice.com |
98.1 |
4 |
|
stockguru.com |
98.0 |
3 |
|
beaconequity.com |
97.4 |
4 |
|
hotstockchat.com |
96.7 |
3 |
|
hototc.com |
92.0 |
4 |
|
thebullreport.com |
91.0 |
2 |
This list is not all inclusive; many of the names you recognize are in the table above. But, also many of these names you know, by reading disclaimers, make a significant income. I receive emails from most of the entities above so I am familiar with them.
Why do these sites have high scores while most of the other stock promo sites have lower scores? All of the entities above score significant income. Most of the IR/promo sites on the Internet are struggling for market share. A lot of it has to do with their presence or a lack thereof on the Internet… I ran some stock promotional sites through the website grader that received scores in the single digits.
What it comes down to is engagement. All of the sites above offer something else than just client company profiles. Some of them are community based which is a concept that is picking up a lot of steam. Others have content on their site which engages the site visitor. Some advertise heavily or do a lot of news releases.
You may know of other promotional entities (I know many of them) that have sub 90 website scores and do very well with regard to income. These entities use email engagement. But, email is becoming less and less effective and it is certainly an expensive way to do business. It does satisfy the “immediate gratification” needed by most in the stock promo world for the time being.
So, there are two ways you can see where your site stands; through use of these free tools you may be able to see why your site does not score well or even why your site does not generate as much income as you would like.
- Run your site through Websitegrader.com
- Install Google Analytics and see how many real visitors you have (not hits) but more than anything- CHECK YOUR BOUNCE RATE. If your bounce rate is more than 20% or so, then you may want to look at your site and see why people are landing on your homepage and leaving, never to return. I am blowing my own horn here but the bounce rate for HotStockChat.com is 1% or less which means: People are clicking on links, reading articles, etc.
- On most stock promo sites, the page that gets the most action (besides your homepage) is the “DISCLAIMER” page. If that is the only page people are drilling down to on your site, then you might look at getting more interesting content. Before I changed HotStockChat.com into a content driven website, the homepage got the most hits followed by the disclaimer page. That is NOT the case anymore. My disclaimer page visitor numbers are dwarfed by many other pages.
I have lots more to write about on subjects like these; all will be included in book/ebook if I ever get the time to finish!
