From my experience with ICO listing websites as part of ICO Listing service and dealings with ICO founders, I’ve noticed a disgusting fact.
What’s the disgusting fact?
It’s that they LIE, LIE, LIE.
They lie about traffic numbers, they lie about email list numbers, they basically lie about every single number.
Disgusting right?
I think so…
Because it’s so disgusting, I’m gonna show you how to compare ICO listing sites with Alexa (it’s free) on an even ground, so you don’t get scammed by them.
#1 Go to Alexa at https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo
#2 Type in the URL of the ICO listing website and click find
Next I’m gonna explain which things are “key things” and why on the Alexa page
While the Alexa global rank doesn’t show traffic, it’s easily comparable against other websites which is what we’re aiming for. The #1 site (google.com) has the most traffic in the world, the #2 site (youtube.com) has the second most traffic in the world and so on.
We want to put everyone on an even footing and compare one listing site to another.
You’re looking for a low number. Lower the better. It’s not the end all of everything, but you should still look at this number first.
If a website that has a global rank of 1,804,097 and is saying they have millions of visitors you simply know they are lying and shouldn’t purchase anything from them.
Here’s my outline of the Alexa rank ranges you should probably be looking at and what they mean:
Because all ICO listing websites get the majority of their traffic from search engines (over 90%).
This means you can use this section to evaluate the quality of their traffic.
There are two main things you want to look for here.
The first thing you want to look at is whether or not they have an “exact match” brand term in their top 5 keywords.
If they do, it means that there are users coming back to the website.
Why are they coming back?
BECAUSE THEY LIKED IT. They found the website valuable.
But why is this important?
It’s important because it means they probably have serious investors as users.
I mean… WHY else would someone go back to a ico listing website multiple times if they aren’t really interested in ICOs?
The second thing you want to look for is the quality of the terms in the top 5.
This one is super simple.
Here’s how you do it – Simply ask yourself:
WHY is someone searching for that keyword?
The why behind the keyword reveals their search intent and consequently helps you evaluate the quality of the traffic.
If you see the below screenshot there, you should probably skip this site. It doesn’t have any traffic, trust me. It means they have less than 50 users per day (not very impactful for your marketing efforts).
If you see keywords like “ico list”, “best ico to invest in”, “top ico”, “best ico”, “best ico 2018”, “initial coin offering list” you’ve found a site that ranks for what I like to call “hunting keywords”.
Hunting keywords are phrases that only ico investors use.
They are keywords that investors use when they are “hunting” an ICO to invest in (aka why I call them “hunting keywords”)
No one is searching for “ico list” or “top ico” in order to find their next vehicle purchase or figure out where to go for lunch (these would look more like “best car 2018” or “best lunch new york”).
You see how valuable this is?
Good.
The “why” behind hunting keywords in my opinion is this:
Their “why” is to find ICOs that look good enough to research more about.
This means, you should probably get listed on sites that rank for “hunting keywords” because you’ll be able to get in front of the right eyes, AT THE RIGHT TIME with these.
Check out this guide on how to find “hunting keyword” ico listing websites in less than 30 minutes.
Remember how I said Global rank “is not the end all of everything”?
ICO name keywords is one of the reasons I said that (and that it’s very inaccurate).
Let me explain this further.
It’s not so obvious at a first glance.
If you see ico names such as “telegram ico”, “nex ico” “quarkchain” in the top keywords from search engines section, it means that the listing site gets traffic from people searching for particular ICOs.
What do you think the intent is behind these keywords? Why is someone searching for “quarkchain”?
It’s because they have already picked an ICO and they’re looking for more information about them.
Why is this important?
It’s important because these users basically only go to a listing page for the ICO they’re researching and then simply head over to the ICOs website and whitepaper for more information (hop in, hop out)
This means that these users aren’t in “hunting mode”.
They’re past that.
They’re no longer searching for ICOs that look promising, they’re in the due diligence mode now.
This is important to realise when evaluating listings sites.
It’s important because the listing sites that receive the majority of their traffic from “ICO name” keywords act as “hop links” most of the time, meaning users go there simply to go somewhere else (from the listing to the ico’s website).
Sure, they can somehow lose their way and browse the other ICOs that are on the site, but in the majority of the cases it’s acting as a “hop link”.
They are not in “hunting mode”.
This simply means their Alexa rank number probably should be deducted in order to more accurately compare it against a listing site with more “hunting keywords”, as these sites are more likely to bring in investors (which is the end goal of getting listed on ICO listing sites isn’t it? Don’t lose sight of the goal).
Audience geography
While the visitors country section is mostly not accurate, you might still want to deduct some points from listing sites that receive a lot of traffic from countries that aren’t allowed to participate in your ICO.
Related sites
Once you’ve found a listing site with a good alexa rank that has a branded keyword in their top 5 keywords and a few “hunting keywords” you might want to check out the sites that have a similar audience to find more ico listings sites that can get you quality traffic.
I hope you found this valuable 🙂
P.S. Here’s the link to Top ICO Lists Alexa page in case you’re interested: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/topicolist.com
