They have a brand name, support from the New York Times, and 500 content contributors; now, About.com wants more advertisers to discover the site.
Wal-Mart, SBC, and the US Army aren’t enough for About.com CEO Scott Meyer when it comes to advertisers. He wants more, DMNews.com reported.
“We’re probably the biggest site that is least known in terms of what we can deliver to advertisers,” Meyer said. The report cited market researcher Nielsen//NetRatings, which said About.com drew 29 million unique users nationally and 47 million worldwide in October.
Of About.com’s appeal, which includes the breadth of content and its diverse revenue sources, is an area of expertise among its contributors, called guides, that will be very familiar to many Murdok readers:
Its guides are experts at search engine optimization. The content they generate is found on engines, which means search referral traffic is huge. While a typical news site gets 40 percent to 60 percent of its traffic on its home page, About.com receives 80 percent of its traffic through search engines, Meyer said. Less than 5 percent comes through About.com’s home page.
“Bringing that expertise has provided a significant opportunity to become better optimized at search” for the Times, Meyer said.
With many visitors arriving based on contextual searches, the opportunity for advertisers to deliver ads means those visitors already have an interest in a particular category. That interest could translate more readily into site visits and conversions into customers.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
