It’s All in the Numbers

We work with a lot of high profile online editorial outlets – from iVillage.com to Yahoo.com and DailyCandy.com. No question, a hit anywhere there can be extremely powerful. There are also a ton of lesser-known sites that can give you a big bang. And there are plenty of small family blogs that are probably not the best PR venue. So, how can you tell if it’s a site or blog worth pursuing, or not?

One of the simpliest ways is via the Alexa rating. Alexa.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. Simply put – it is a tool that is used to rank web site traffic. The lower the Alexa rating number, the more heavily visited the site. Currently, Google.com ranks #1, followed by Facebook, and YouTube. Given there are billions of websites worldwide, anything with an Alexa rating under 100,000 is top notch! Several of our clients were just featured by SheKnows.com and Babble.com – both of which are in the 3,000 range. A recent hit on Wired.com (#677) was terrific for our Reading is Fundamental client. And we just got SafetyTat featured on About.com; which ranks #64.

Along with getting clients featured by top sites, we’ve helped companies rise in their own Alexa rating. Mamapedia.com ran a 6 month campaign with Pitch and went from Beta start-up to Alexxa rating 10,643!

Online sites and blogs also measure their audience by the number of unique visitors a month.

Beyond the numbers, you can also spot an influential blogger by the presence of advertisers on the site, the professionalism and look of the page, and the frequency of their content.

It is important to point out, some smaller sites have extremely loyal followers. So an editorial feature there can be extremely valuable. In addition, a niche site that offers just the right audience can sometimes translate better than a site that is too generic or broad. You have to experiment with targets to figure out the best formula for success.

The numbers matter. But effective PR is really more art than science.

Ann Noder