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Has anyone ever had a start-up which was covered by TC? If so, how much traffic does it send your way? Have people seen a significant SEO boost from their links to their site?

Is their coverage overrated? Or is it really worth the time to get them to cover you?

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Expect 0 traffic. – TimJ Mar 28 '11 at 18:45
@Tim, why do you say that, it's completely false. – Alain Raynaud♦ Mar 28 '11 at 20:24
@Alain - IF you are covered by them, you get traffic - but one can't expect coverage from them – TimJ Mar 28 '11 at 22:00
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I know a Boston developer who had a very simple beta site mentioned in TechCrunch in 2009. It generated about 35,000 site visits in one day. It eventually got about 70,000 users. The developer eventually pulled the plug when he couldn't convert enough users from free to paid.

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This. I was gong to post something along the same lines, but will add to your comment instead. The thing to measure is how many good hits will you get from a TC mention? The prevailing data seems to indicate not many. You'll get a bunch of hit n run users that strip server resources, and possibly create a negative impact on site performance for your actual customers. Not saying this is always the case, just keep in mind that the single to noise ratio of links from high-viz sites often leave much to be desired. – Brian Karas Mar 27 '11 at 20:28
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up vote 6 down vote

I doubt SEO effect would have a prolonged impact on your site. Numbers on referral traffic cited on Quora range from few thousand to 15K visitors. Not that much.

There is much better potential upside though. TechCrunch is being read widely so it's your chance to get to know your potential customers, employees or VCs. That's valuable.

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Plus it looks good on your site and gives you social proof – Nick Mar 28 '11 at 19:44
I had 2 of my startups covered on Techcrunch (foundrs.com and letslunch.com), that answer is correct in every way, both regarding traffic and overall influence. – Alain Raynaud♦ Mar 28 '11 at 20:25
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up vote 2 down vote

SaaSy.com's launch was covered by TechCrunch on March 17th. It was a generally positive, comprehensive article, "Online Subscription Billing Is Still A Hassle, SaaSy Aims To Change That": http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/17/online-subscription-billing-is-still-a-hassle-saasy-aims-to-change-that/

It resulted in about 2,000 unique visitors to SaaSy.com via TechCrunch, according to Google Analytics. That led to about 65 new client signups. While this is valuable, my feeling is that the best value from TC is the branding. It puts you on the map overnight if your target market overlaps well with the TC readership. TC was our top media placement target, and we're pleased we received such nice coverage.

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up vote 1 down vote

The advantage comes from the high domain authority of TechCrunch. The page will appear high in a google search of the keywords in the article and the backlink to your site adds more than the average backlink to your domain authority.

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This sounds like SEO fud. Sure, it's a helpful link, but a link from TC alone isn't going to suddenly pop your site up to the top of SERPs for simple keywords. – Brian Karas Mar 27 '11 at 20:26
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FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt, how exactly is my post any of those three? I didn't quantify the advantage of doing this, the increase from one alone is minimal. I neither said nor implied that such a link would do such a thing. – David Mar 27 '11 at 21:39
I was using fud a little more generically, but mostly focusing on the Uncertainty part. Maybe I should have said "SEO urban legend". In any event, I don't think a simple link/mention on TC is going to add the SEO sway that people seem to think it does. If you have conclusive evidence otherwise, I'd love to see a link. – Brian Karas Mar 27 '11 at 21:51
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