With Google Panda Update the 80 percent of traffic of many websites was gone. One of my blog also got affected which resulted in Low revenue from AdSense, however, low traffic wasn’t the only thing which was affecting my Revenue from AdSense.
With few comparisons, I came to know that the CPC (Cost per Click) of AdSense ads was also decreased.
Comparing the Revenue between August 2011 and August 2012
The above screenshot is from the month of August 2011 and below is the screenshot for August 2012.
The above result is for a single blog which got affected by Google Panda update and you can see the page views are down and it is getting less than half of the previous one. But you would notice that the CPC has also decreased. In August 2011, it was three times of the CPC of August 2012.
One of the main reasons of getting low CPC is the niche of the blog you own. Few topics get high CPC and few get as low as 5 cents. But this is not the case above as it is the same blog but the CPC has decreased.
Exact facts are not known to anyone but I have come up with my own list by comparing results. Google has also mentioned do’s and don’ts to increase CPC on your blog. You can read my tips to increase Adsense CPC below.
Smart Pricing
There are many publishers who write on same topics but not all the publishers are equal when it comes to the quality of blogs they run. When an Advertiser targets a topic (or say keyword), thousands of websites will shows their ads.
Now, as the quality of websites differ, the conversion of the visitor who clicks on the ads will be different from websites to websites. Which means an advertiser would pay according to how better the ads are going to convert, the quality websites tend to have better conversations than other websites because of the trust factor of the visitor on their websites.
Smart Pricing is Google’s technique to maintain a pricing of a CPC according to the quality of the website. Google can easily find out which websites get getting better conversions for ads but sadly we, the publishers don’t have any such tool to find it out.
But, when Google clearly mentions that they care about quality websites, we can get a fair idea where the problem arises.
Removing Ads from Low Quality Blogs
If you run a blog which has a low traffic, it’s okay to run ads on it as long as you test the ad patterns and write quality articles on it. You have a loyal readership and the CTR (Click through Rate) is quite fair as well. But if you own blogs which has low quality and you create content on them once in a while and never really optimize the ads by trying different placements. Then you should consider removing ads from those blogs. Because these ads are adding page views to your total Google AdSense account without performing better, they can affect your entire account by entering into smart pricing we discussed above. So, consider removing ads from all your low quality blogs and you may see the results in a month or so.
Opt for Both Text and Image Ads
While creating ads, opt for both ads and image ads, if the design of your blog allows it, as it will enable more advertisers to bid for that ad spot and if more advertisers are bidding for a single spot, chances are you will get the highest bid for it. Also try different colours to suit your blog design.
Importance of Website Layout
The layout of your website is very important as it is going to leave an impression on the visitor and you would want to it be positive. Place the ads according to the layout of your webpage, do not compromise on your design for the sake of putting the ads on reader’s face. More visits are also important to make more revenue.
Smart Placement for First Ad
Google AdSense blog states that the first Ad on your page servers the better ad for various reasons, which means it will get the highest CPC of all of your ads. If you are using two ads above the fold, find out which one of your ad has the highest CTR. You may want to make the high CTR ad your first Ad on the page so that you get more revenue.
More Ads is Less CPC
In the third point we talking about opting for both image and text ads, now the other thing that can be done to get best CPC on the blog is to narrow down the Ads which hare going to appear on the blog, so that less options are available to more bidders, which will result in higher CPC. Again, use Custom Channels to find out Ads with better CTR and remove the other ads.
Increasing Quality Traffic
The quality of Traffic matters a lot, people who are landing on your webpage from Social Networking Websites or Bookmarking websites are more often casual visitors are not looking for something other than reading your content, and usually are aware of ads and they tend to ignore them, this is called ad blindness. The traffic coming from Search Engines are looking for something and they are the ones who get converted easily, but again, the content which are making them visit your blog also play some role, is it valuable and provides the information the reader is looking for, write quality content and to increase the traffic from Search engines, you will have to give importance to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I hope you get what I am trying to say.
Related read: 6 ways to increase traffic to your blog
Write useful and clean content
Suppose you are writing about hacked or cracked version of software and provide download links on your website. One thing you are doing to infringing copyright laws and other is you are targeting people who are always looking for Free things, imagine who will Advertise that kind of content and how many people are going to make conversions for the advertisers. Google AdSense doesn’t allow you to put ads on Adult or someone else copyrighted content, but even if you manage to get away with it, you won’t be able to make high CPC. Write clean content so that Advertisers can feel confident about advertising your websites.
Change your perspective
If you are running a blog and monetizing it just by running ads and you do not have product of your own. Then keep in mind that your visitors are not your customers, your Advertisers are. Your visitors are your inventory, which means the more inventory you have, the more revenue you are going to generate from your customers. While it is the best thing to write about something you love, but always keep in mind that what kind of advertisers you want and who are going to pay more for your inventory.
I hope this helps the most of you who are trying to optimize their AdSense revenue. Feel free to subscribe to the blog and share this post with bloggers who may find it useful.
