Speeding Up in a Slowdown is a five-week educational series about speeding up your online publishing business in a slowdown. We revisited the basics of online publishing to help you grow your business. Each Thursday in June and July 2009 we shared tips about using AdSense and other Google products, as well as general online publishing advice, that you can apply to your business today.
- Understanding Your Business
- Retaining Your Visitors
- Attracting More Visitors
- Increasing Your Revenue Potential
- Attracting More Advertiser Spend
Speeding Up in a Slowdown
Understanding Your Business
Avinash Kaushik is the Analytics Evangelist at Google. Part of his job is to help educate website owners about the importance of understanding traffic, analyzing site performance, and using data to make decisions. Here are a few small to mid-sized ideas that -- in Avinash's own words -- can add up to remarkable results for your website. They're all things you can do today with free web analytics tools, like Google Analytics.
Idea #1: Discover what content and traffic sources keep people coming to your site again and again
How many times does a visitor have to visit your site to be considered valuable? Use the Visitor Loyalty report in the Visitors section of Google Analytics to pinpoint the visitors who come to your site that many times or more. Put that data into an advanced segment and apply that segment to your core reports to understand things like where these valuable visitors come from and what content they consume. You can then use this information to optimize how you acquire new visitors and the content on your site for loyal visitors.
Idea #2: Figure out which pages to improve on your site
Many people ask the question: How do I know which pages on my site to improve? Take a look at the Top Landing Pages report in the Content section of Google Analytics. This report tells you the first page people see when they enter your site. Sort this report by bounce rate. Bounce rate measures how many people come to your site, only see one page and leave right away (or as Avinash calls it: "I came, I puked, I left"). Once you identify which of your top landing pages are not able to get a single click from your visitors you know which pages need to be improved.
Idea #3: Find out where AdSense performs best on your site
If you've linked your AdSense and Analytics accounts, the Top AdSense Content report in the AdSense section of Google Analytics will tell you where on your website AdSense ads get the most clicks. This is a win-win for your business and your customers, as it helps you identify what type of content to produce more of based on what content people are most interested in as well as where people most often click on your AdSense ads.
If you haven't already, link your AdSense and Analytics accounts in order to take full advantage of what Analytics can offer. If you don't yet have an Analytics account, sign up today.
Additional Resources:
- Read more from Avinash at his blog, Occam's Razor, which has more tips like the above and additional ways to use Visitor Loyalty metrics, or on the Official Google Blog.
- To learn more about using Analytics on your website, visit Conversion University.
- See great ways to use AdSense and Analytics together by watching this video.
Retaining Visitors
Ricardo Prada is a user experience researcher at Google. One of the things he and his colleagues are responsible for is making sure that Google websites are efficient and fun to use so that visitors keep coming back to them. Here he shares three tips they think about daily as they do their jobs. Ultimately, they all fit into one guiding principle: if you focus on the user, everything else will follow.
Tip #1: Design for the tasks that visitors complete on your site.
Think about tasks on your website first and layouts second. It's tempting to want a flashy design that exercises your CSS skills, but remember that vistors come to your site with specific goals in mind, like reading your essays, or checking out your collection of sports photos. Write down the top three tasks your users might want to accomplish on your site, and design to make those tasks quick and efficient.
Tip #2: Use ads as potential exit paths, not interruptions.
Ads should complement your site, not distract from it. The most natural place for a user to evaluate an advertisement is after they've completed their goals on your site. Instead of interrupting your user's main tasks, try to offer ads as potential exit path for users who were probably ready to leave anyway by placing them at the end of completed tasks.
Tip #3: SEO - only if it makes sense.
Only do search engine optimizations that benefit your users. For example, page titles that are relevant to the page content make it easier for your visitors to understand what your articles are about. On the other hand, there are lots of sneaky strategies out there for improving search engine rank. Most of those don't work anymore, and they might actually harm your site's reputation.
Additional Resources:
- Our Help Center has more suggestions about where to place ads.
- The Google Webmaster Tools team shares their design and content tips.
Attracting More Visitors
Jack Herrick is the founder of wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. wikiHow is a wiki, which means that any visitor to the site can create or edit wikiHow articles. wikiHow is currently ranked as the 100th most popular site on the web by Quantcast, and receives over 16 million unique visitors each month. Here, Jack shares three of his favorite tips to attract visitors. We hope they'll help you come up with new ways to entice visitors to your sites as well.
Tip #1: Produce great content.
The first tip is obvious, but it's also the most important. The articles on wikiHow vary widely in quality. We have some of the highest quality how-tos on the net, for example How to Hard Boil an Egg, and we also have some fairly ugly, unfinished drafts we call stubs. Interestingly, the high-quality articles don't get just a little more traffic than the mediocre articles, they get hundreds of times more. When you can produce the single best page on the Internet on any given topic, people will find it and share it with their friends. Don't settle for acceptable content, always strive to produce amazing content that your readers can't resist sharing.
Tip #2: Learn to share.
My second tip is more counterintuitive. To attract more readers to your website, consider putting your content under a Creative Commons license so it can be widely distributed. Everything on wikiHow is under a license that allows other websites to publish and even modify or adapt our content for re-use on their sites. In fact, we have a button at the bottom of every article that allows webmasters to copy and paste the HTML right onto their site. Many webmasters are afraid to share their content, because they worry they will only be aiding competition. By sharing, what you are really doing is encouraging your competitors to provide free advertising for you. The more people who see your content on other sites, the more likely they are to eventually come straight to you.
Tip #3: Make your community a team.
Finally, I'd encourage you to allow real collaboration on your site. Lots of websites try to create online communities. To use a basketball analogy, most online communities are just groups of individuals shooting freethrows alone. On wiki websites, people play together as a real team. Humans are hard wired to want to work in groups and collaborate. By allowing this to happen, you can create a passionate community of people that will build something bigger than any one person could accomplish on their own. And that will in time attract a large audience.
Hopefully Jack's tips will help you come up with some new techniques to attract visitors to your site. In addition to Jack's tips, here are a few extra resources focused on attracting more visitors.
- Learn the basics of Search Engine Optimization with Google's SEO guide.
- Submit your content so that Google can help you distribute it across Google Web Search, Maps, Product Search, iGoogle, and more.
- Drive more traffic to your site with programs like AdWords.
Increasing Your Revenue Potential
Mel Ann and Tim are two AdSense Optimization Specialists from the Google office in Sydney, who work with publishers to help them improve the performance of their ads. Today, they'll walk you through a 5-step process to optimize the AdSense ads on your sites, and will also share tips that many publishers have found successful.
Step 1: Analyze your webpages (jump to step 1 in video)
The first step to a successful optimization is to analyze your webpages. Ask yourself the following questions as you think about where to place ads on your site:
- What type of content do you have? People interact differently on articles, forum, and video sites, for example, so think about how people will be interacting on your site.
- Where is visitor attention likely to be focused? You should place ads where your users are most likely to look, but as Ricardo Prada mentioned in week two of this series, make sure that they won't get in the way of users trying to complete tasks on your site.
- How can you integrate ads into the are without getting in the way of your users? You can view a heat map we've put together showing where ads perform well, and keep in mind that above the fold ads and ads close to primary content tend perform better.
- Don't forget to think about how advertisers would like to appear. If you can make your site more appealing to advertisers, while keeping the above in mind, you're more likely to be able to attract advertisers and placement-targeted ads.
Step 2: Set up custom channels (jump to step 2 in video)
Custom channels will help you figure out how different ad units are performing based on a number of variables you can choose, like placement, size, and color. Create a channel for individual ad units and categorize ad units to see how they are performing. For example, you can track your leaderboard and medium rectangle to see which performs better, and use this information in step four. Custom channels will also allow you to track and measure results from your optimizations.Step 3: Optimize your ad unit design and placement (jump to step 3 in video)
The next step is to look at color, position, and size of your ad units and optimize these for visitor experience, advertiser experience, and performance. We've found that the medium rectangle (300 x 250), wide skyscraper (160 x 600), and the leaderboard (728 x 90) tend to perform best. You can also opt in to image ads to receive rich media and video ads, which tend to perform well too. It's important that you implement your ads in a consistent manner and in a way that is desirable to advertisers. Use colors effectively. Blend ads in, but not too much that visitors don't see them. Borderless ads tend to work well, as does highlighting the link and URL. Test different colors and placements, and then keep the changes that perform best.
Step 4: Maximize revenue from multiple units (jump to step 4 in video)
We recommend adding multiple ad units to your pages, while still keeping the user experience in mind when deciding on placements. You can use custom channel reporting to determine which ad unit performs best, and structure your page to optimize performance based on that. The highest paying ad we have for your site will be shown in the first ad unit that shows up in your HTML code. If you have a leaderboard at the top, but learn with custom channel reporting that a medium rectangle halfway down the page is outperforming the leaderboard in terms of CTR and eCPM, you want to put the medium rectangle first in your HTML code. You can do this by switching the location in the HTML if you're comfortable editing the code, or by changing the actual location of the leaderboard on the page.
Step 5: Track and Measure Results (jump to step 5 in video)
The last step is to understand whether your optimizations have made a difference. Here, use the custom channels you set up earlier to generate reports on your different ad units. Generate reports on your custom channels and group results by channel (remember, this depends on how you have set up channels) and see how different sizes, colors, and placements are performing. You can also look at placement targeting reports to see which ad units are receiving placement-targeted ads, and if they have resulted in improved performance.
We hope these steps and tips are informative, and strongly encourage you to take the time to try an optimization on your own.
You can also see value information in Analytics after linking your AdSense and Analytics accounts.
For more advanced optimization, you can use Website Optimizer to run live experiments based on ad placement, format, and more.
Understanding Your Business
I'm Christian Ashlock, and I manage an AdSense optimization team at Google that works to help publishers get the most out of their AdSense accounts. Once you create a site with great content and great ad inventory, the best way to earn additional revenue is to make sure advertisers can find you. Today, I'll share two tips to help attract advertisers to spend money on your site, and a third tip to help you access a new pool of advertisers you may not currently be reaching.
Tip #1: Define ad placements in AdSense so that AdWords advertisers can find them and bid directly for them. Ad placements are simply custom channels that you can expose to advertisers to encourage more placement targeting spend on your site. Ad placements are most effective for sites with lots of different topics or with different sections like articles, a blog, and a forum. You can set up ad placements based on specific categories of interest on your site, like fine arts or sports. You can also set up ad placements to cater to advertisers who are more interested in ad unit locations, like above the fold placements, or popular ad unit sizes including the 300x250 medium rectangle or 728x90 leaderboard.
Tip #2: Help advertisers find your inventory outside of AdWords. Google Ad Planner is a media planning tool that advertisers use to find sites for their media buys. With the recently launched Publisher Center in Ad Planner, you can claim your site and provide information that helps advertisers better understand your content, audience and advertising options. You can also share your Analytics data with Ad Planner to ensure that advertisers see the most accurate traffic numbers for your site. All of these will help advertisers who use Ad Planner as a media planning tool understand the value of your site, and may even help new advertisers learn that your site exists!
Tip #3: Tap into a new set of advertisers: search advertisers. Google has relationships with many advertisers -- some advertise on Google.com, some advertise on our partner sites through the AdSense program, and many do both. You can tap into advertisers who choose to advertise on our search partner sites by using AdSense for search. AdSense for search lets your site's visitors find what they're looking for on your site and across the web. Just like on Google.com, we'll display ads targeted to what your visitor is looking for along with the search results.
Additional Links:
- Learn more about placement-targeted advertising, and read about best practices for setting up ad placements.
- To get the most out of AdSense for search, try our five optimization tips.