I wrote the other day about why engagement matters when it comes to web marketing, explaining that networking is the key to building endorsements, thus links, referrals, and traffic.

Rand Fishkin, CEO of search marketing firm, SEOmoz, took a look at the subject from a web analytics perspective, sharing some great data on which types of sites provide the most sign-ups and/or the highest conversion rates to his site. The verdict? Sites where he or members of his team personally participate (online forums, colleagues blogs) generate the highest quality traffic.

The data shows what a huge difference this can make. While his average conversion rate appears to be in the 1-2% range, it jumps 5-20 times that rate from forums where he and his team participate.

This makes sense since the traffic is, in a sense, pre-qualified before visiting SEOmoz.

I think it's safe to assume that visitors from the high conversion rate sites also convert to paying customers at a higher rate than average. They've read forum contributions by the SEOmoz team on forums, clicked through to check out the site, read blog posts by the team, then get around to calling. The prospects have likely dated SEOmoz for tens of thousands of words at that point, and made the next step, making it SEOmoz's business to lose.

How do your prospects find you? How to they get to know you?