Increasing Page Views Part One

I view search engine optimization as a supplemental means by which a publisher gets users to their website. Supplemental because absent any effort on a publishers part, some users will find their way to a site. Once you get the user to your site, SEO is not the key to keeping them there. At that point, you have to use things like engaging content and a pleasing user interface to keep them there… to increase page views.

Why is this important some may ask? More page views almost always translates into more revenue (assuming you have at least some CPM component to your revenue model). Banners from networks like Casale, FastClick, Tribal Fusion, etc, pay almost exclusively on a CPM model. More page views generally means more money to a point.

So how do you keep users on your site? One of the simplest ways I have found is to simply point out related content. The user is looking at a page on your site for some reason. If the content you are showing is relevant, there is a reasonable shot that the user may click on the link for the related content. On my FoodClassics.com site, adding a short list of related recipes to my view recipe page raised average page views by approximately 25% over the several months since I put it in place. As I go back and link related recipes across the entire site (I’ve only retrofitted roughly 50% of the recipes so far - the most viewed), I am hoping to add at least another 10% increase to page views.

While this process required some code and template rewriting on my part, the monthly revenue boost has paid off already. In many ways this is not much different than category links on almost all blogs. The major difference is that you are saying to your user… “Hey, I know you know how to get to related content via my category links, but here are some specific content blocks that are more closely related to what you are viewing right now.”

Will AdSense Content Bids Impact You?

Google AdWords offers advertisers the ability to set different price points for search result ads versus content ads via what they call content bids. What’s the difference? Search ads are those that show up when someone searches on Google for a term. Content ads are those that show up on publisher sites like yours and mine.

On first thought, one might think that advertisers will set their bids higher for search results than content sites. This might be true in many cases, but there are just as many reasons to think that content ads would be more valuable to advertisers. In my mind, content ads might actually serve to pre-qualify a purchaser more than someone who just searched for a term. Why? Since so many websites get their traffic via search engines anyway, these searchers have already seen an ad on the search engine and have chosen to see content first (first click). If the searcher still is interested in the topic at hand and choose to click on a contextual AdSense ad, then they might actually be more inclined to take action on the advertisers site. Of course this is only my conjecture, but I like the sound of it, and I’m sticking with it.

If the tendency is for advertisers to pay less on content sites though, there may be a slimming of the publisher ranks running AdSense ads. It seems that every webmaster in the world is running AdSense ads right now, and many of the sites are crap. By crap I mean the content not very unique and is geared strictly towards running AdSense ads (a site for the sake of AdSense, not for the sake of the content). Heck, I even have a site like that (although I have all but pulled the site from existence). If the money to be made decreases substantially, then these sites will be less of a draw. If they are less of a draw, many may fade away. If many fade away, it’s possible that publishers putting together really good sites that draw good traffic will actually increase traffic and the corresponding revenues even in the case of content ads drawing less money per click.

I guess time will really tell. Get all of the details on content bids in the Google help section.

Which Ad Network Is Big?

In case you did not realize it, Google as an advertising network is HUGE. Of course web publishers who want to make money know about AdSense. And advertisers surely know about AdWords (the advertising source for AdSense).

Did anyone realize though that nearly a third of each advertising dollar spent on the web in the United States is given to Google. I didn’t, but I am down with it, as AdSense is my prime revenue source. There was roughly $3.1 billion spent on advertising in the 3rd quarter of 2005 in the United States, and Google took in roughly $950 million in the United States (based on their financial reports).

Check out this Forbes article for more details. Another interesting fact pointed out in the article is how large a percentage Time Warner (AOL) makes from Google. Roughly 10% of AdSense revenues goes to them based on my interpretation of the article.