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.”