Buy traffic or Looksmart?

[RyaninZion]

We finally have some local advertisers who are paying us well to place banners on our Israel news website. Now that we have them, I want to make sure we keep them - meaning I need more traffic, but traffic that is likely to click on our advertisers' banners.

Am I better off buying 10,000 "targeted" visitors from Dan G.'s targetedvisitors.info, or spending that same $40-$50 to start a Looksmart campaign?

Any direction in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[incka]

Targetted visitors from Dan G are popups. I would not suggest them if you are looking for clicks on your banners.

[RyaninZion]

Mmmm, thanks for the tip incka.

So that begs the further question - which PPC program is more likely to help me in this area - Looksmart, Google, or another?

[incka]

Tribal Fusion leaderboard campaigns on news websites could work well. If you had an article on fishing you could do ads about that article just on fishing websites, etc. Tribal Fusion is by far the best way to targetly advertise.

[Chris]

Looksmart isn't the best program to use every since MSN dropped them.

Your money is best spent on SEO related things. PPC advertising for content sites is usually not profitable. Still, if you want to do it, use Google. They should give you the most bang for your buck.

Otherwise if you have money to spend I'd spend it on incoming links (Yahoo, Joeant, GoGuides).

[incka]

(phpbb.com if you want pr)

[MarkB]

Don't pay for PR. It's too fleeting.

[incka]

I'm making my own PR building sites, I agree buying PR isn't that good, but if you can make $100,000 a day from being at the top, it's worth it.

[RyaninZion]

Ah, I was not aware MSN dropped Looksmart.

Chris, what exactly do you mean by spending money on incoming links?

[MarkB]

Try getting links from sites that are slightly affiliated with your tatget audience (Jewish groups, local business groups, etc).

Do you provide RSS feeds?

[chromate]

RyaninZion, paying to get listings in directories such as Yahoo etc. They can often bring in a lot of PR and quite often (going by what other people say) a fair bit of traffic.

[RyaninZion]

We plan to provide RSS feeds in the near future.

[RyaninZion]

What about Searchfeed? Is that something worth looking into?

[Chris]

Searchfeed can get you cheap traffic, cheaper than Google, but you won't get the same volume you get at Google.

[MarkB]

I've only just looked at your site :) It's VERY good.

I would try and build on the site's stickiness, to get repeat visitors. Highlight the fact that you provide a news service/newsletter (I had to look for the link, and found it in your footer).

Why not allow visitors to comment on stories?

Run a regular poll covering topics of the day.

And other ideas along those lines - having regular visitors counts for a lot more (to me) than new visitors coming and only visiting once...

[RyaninZion]

Thank you MarkB :)

Yes, that is what I am after - bringing in traffic that will stay. That is why I am concerned about choosing the right option with the very limited advertising funds we have to spend.

A new version of our site that will be online soon will include a full forums where readers can comment on articles.

[MarkB]

Excellent :) An information site will always benefit from a community - and community comes in many forms (not just forums!).

[RyaninZion]

I was thinking - I definitely want to continue to grow our core repeat readership, as MarkB suggested, but there are only so many times our repeat visitors will click on the same monthly banner ads.

Therefore, wouldn't it also be good for us to be doing things like Searchfeed or Google to bring in new viewers who may be seeing our particular ads for the first time?

[MarkB]

I'm not an expert on banners, and what prompts people to click them... But as far as user interraction, you could try and get some of your sponsors involved in a promotion of some sort - something that would raise the awareness of their services/product to your readership, and that gives something back to the readers (a prize? information? free service?) that they will remember.

[ozgression]

Google Adwords is by far the best bet for you. Large volume, Geographic targeting ability and (generally) higher quality visitors than most other ppcse's.
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[chromate]

You can get some very cheap traffic from searchfeed.com. However, it comes in much more slowly because it's simply not exposed to as many people as adwords.