Sometimes Being Too Greedy Is Not Good
So a couple WA blogs ago I wrote about Adsense and how I added 4 new ad units to my site and how much money I would make from it for Nov.
But guess what?
I let it ride for a week and my results were that yes sure money went up but Bounce Rate, Pages per Session, and Avg Session Duration all went down from the previous period before I changed the ads.
These stats weren't great to start with but then I never had reds when compared to previous periods either so the new addition of the ad units of Adsense made these measurements worse.
That's not good because it will affect my Google rankings, and I gotta keep my rankings on page 1, wherever I could.
So I decided to take out the ad within my content (so they can concentrate on what they're reading) and the ad after my content which was before my comments box.
Results after a few days compared to the period that had all 4 ad units:
The first comparison above on top was for a whole week but the second comparison was only the last 4 days so you will see some difference in the data when comparing the two data sets because they are not on the same time periods.
Anyway, my point is that money is not always a good thing because you can be hurting your rankings for your site as a whole.
So, for now I will keep my Adsense as adjusted to the latest of what I have:
- 1 on sidebar
- 1 below title (still a big money maker)
- 1 above footer
I only have three ad units, instead of five, which is still better than what I originally had which was just one on the sidebar.
Another point I want to make and hopefully you will see is that you must test on your own site how changes you implement can impact different parts of your site being money or stats and whether those changes are worth the result you're getting.
For me, having a lower bounce rate, more page views, and longer duration periods are better than making a few extra bucks more because, in the long run, the higher rankings will make me more money than Adsense.
Evaluate for yourself what's important to you and see how changes can bring you the good or bad as it's all relative and only you can determine if it was a positive or negative change.
If anyone has more than 3 ad units on their pages and still earning a nice consistent income, I'd love to hear it about your story below and learn what strategies you're using! :)
Hope this helps some of you,
Grace
Recent Comments
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Thanks, Grace, still building my site and moving along. Adsense will be added shortly.
John
That's good John, yeah there's no point adding it earlier when you don't have enough traffic, so there's no rush on this.
Hi Grace, and thanks for your feedback on Adsense. Funny thing, I was surfing yesterday on your site and I saw that they were some ads missing and I was going to send you an PM to know what’s you were doing ?
Now I know. This is great and at first I also thought 5 units could be a lot.
From what I see so far, I’ve tested to add 4 different type of Ads manually in a few posts only. My ads inside the text is earning more than the others but I have to do some more tests before implementing all ads on my site. I don’t want my site look spammy. It’s not worth it for a few dollar.
Hi Sylvain,
Yes, this is what happened and I didn't want that bounce rate to go higher than it is. Currently the changes are good in the sense that it's in the rate it was before I added all those ads so I'll still have to keep monitoring it.
I've seen a really established site that added a lot of ads but don't know how that's affected his site, never answered my PM, so I'll never know but it looks spammy for sure when you have too many ads.
Good luck with yours,
Grace
Thanks for your feedback on this. For now, i'm doing some test. I will use the plugin as soon as my new theme is up and ready.
I know when i'm looking on a site, if there is ads everywhere, i won't stay for sure.
Sylvain
Hi Grace - Great example on how less is more. At least when it comes to Ad-sense. Thanks for sharing this very valuable information.
I really like how you used data to monitor, assess and implement a change to your approach - and testing changes to pages and configurations is sage advice. Thanks for sharing! Ben
You're so welcome Ben, just wanted to printout these stats and ways you can see how change on your site is affected. Glad this has helped you. :)
Hey little mama, that's a demo we are still behind, Good that you have given us an awareness before taking up such a task.
Thanks
I really wish someone could tell me how to place adds in adsense ?I only seem to have the one option and they put them wherever they like.
You mean put the ads on your site? I think there are Adsense training here if you search in the WA search bar.
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Thank you for the advise.
You're very welcome David. :)