January 17, 2005
by Eric Ward, aka The Link Mensch
Your site is probably already listed in the Yahoo directory. And Yahoo is probably one of your larger sources of traffic. You’d probably rather eat bugs than lose your Yahoo link. But aside from the Yahoo directory, did you know there is another link that Yahoo gives certain sites, at no cost, and sites that receive this link receive tens of thousands of site visits?
I’m referring to Yahoo’s Picks of the Day and Picks of the Week. Every day, Yahoo selects a few new sites and features them in their daily newsletter as “new and notable” sites. The daily new and notable picks can always be seen at the below URL.
These daily selections are also sent via email to thousands of people who have subscribed to receive them. Then at the end of the week, from the 20 or so new and notable picks, Yahoo will select several sites as “Picks of the Week”. It appears to me that the weekly picks are made by selecting one site from the new and notable selections from each of the seven previous days. The new weekly yahoo picks can be viewed here.
Weekly selections are also sent via email to thousands of subscribers.
I’ve seen proof from several people that the email version of the above Yahoo publications/selections refers more traffic to the selected sites than the web based version, which I find very interesting. It means more people read the picks via email than via the web. I’ve long believed that email based links appearing in newsletters can have a greater impact on traffic than links from web sites, if the newsletter is of good quality and edited well. People who subscribe to such newsletters are naturally more engaged when they read them, since it was a conscious choice to subscribe.
So how do you get your site selected a a Yahoo pick of the day or week? Ahhh, that’s the hard part. The folks who make the selections are naturally protective of who they are and how to reach them. They do not provide personal email addresses nor do they personally seek new submissions. It’s the same with other high profile reviews editors like USA Today Hot Sites or Newsweek’s Cyberscope. But don’t give up. There are services that have a rapport with these folks that can announce your site directly to these and other online site reviews editors. Email me and I’ll tell you which one is best for your particular site. There are also other online publications like WDFM or The Scout Report or Netsurfer Digest or LockerGnome that can bring tremendous attention and traffic to your site.
But Yahoo picks of the day/week remains the Holy Grail. Yahoo does provide an email address you can use to send email to their editorial team (See http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/url/url-06.html ) but given that it’s a general address, your submission will likely land in a pile with thousands of others, making it hard to stand out from the crowd.
Until next time, I remain,
Eric Ward,
The Link Mensch
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