What is the Value of Being on”Best of” Lists?
Has your site ever been included in a “Best of” list?
Over the past few months Elemental Truths has showed up on a few such lists. One was Phil Gerbyshaks, The Make it Great! 125. Before that Priscilla Palmer included me in her professional development resource list.
In case anyone wonders if being included in such a list adds to your visit depth, I did some reader trend maintenance research and found some guests who visited my site from the lists stayed for 20 minutes, at least when the list was first published. Odds are that kind of reader will be coming back to Elemental Truths if I continue to pony up with the initial quality they met.
But, does being included in such a list increase my traffic?
The answer is, it depends. It depends to a great extent on how the author publishes or markets the list. And to an even greater extent, it depends on how big the list is.
For example, I find I’m much more likely to pick up extra traffic on a list of top five sites than I am a list of top 100 sites. Readers view list of much more than 10 rather like chain letters. It is a basic of human behavior analysis. People just don’t have the time to devote to checking out all the sites listed.
Have you ever compiled a best of list for publication? If so, how many sites did you include in your recommendations?