How-to sites are always popular on the Web because they give people practical instructions on how to perform specific tasks and projects. They are also search engine optimization (SEO) machines, getting most of their traffic from search engines. About.com and eHow are the biggest sites in the category, but there are a slew of others, including wikiHow which just crossed the 20 million monthly unique visitor mark (see Google Analytics screenshot above provided by CEO Jack Herrick). It also released a major redesign today which makes the crowdsourced site downright pretty. (Wikipedia should take note). While sites such as eHow (which Herrick founded and sold to Demand Media) and About.com are still roughly four times as big, getting to 20 million monthly uniques with only 6 employees and no VC money is nothing to sniff at.
Besides the new look, some of the new features include a video curation tool, a guided editing page which automatically organizes the how-to articles into Steps, Tips, And Warnings, category pages (also great for SEO), user profile pages (duh), and images on the homepage. There is also a community page to help train new editors and collaborate on articles.
The site is filled with tons of useful and not-so-useful information such as “How To Use Old Corks” (gotta love that easy chair). And is all about openness. You can even opt out of advertising if you want.
What is your favorite How-to site?
Comment