Good Content — The Key To High Revenues

November 6, 2005

Author: Joel Comm
Source: Adsense Chat

I’m always yammering on about optimizing the way your ad units look so that they fit onto the page. I’m forever talking about putting the ad blocks in the right place and in the right format so that users can see them and click on them easily. I’ve probably spent hours in front of the keyboard writing about finding keywords and bringing up the highest-paying ads.

All of those things are important.

But they all take for granted what is probably the number one most important factor in generating consistent, high revenues.

Know what I’m talking about? Right… consistent, high quality content.

Now, if you’re thinking, “Well sure Joel, that goes without saying!” just head over to Google, type in a keyword related to your site’s content and see how far it goes without saying.

You’ll probably find that about 95 percent of the sites that that keyword pulls up are garbage. Maybe two sites on the first page will be worth reading. The rest will be stuffed with dull information that’s taken almost word-for-word from some other site long forgotten. Or they’ll barely touch on the subject and contain nothing of any interest to anyone. Or they’ll be filled with pages that contain little more than ads.

Lots of people have become pretty skilled at pushing their sites up the search engine rankings. They’re much less skilled at producing the sort of content that gets users to come back regularly without a search — the sort of content that people actually want to read.

But having good content isn’t only important because it increases your traffic. It’s important because it increases your trust.

And it’s trust that gets people to click.

The reason that high-earning AdSense publishers get plenty of clicks isn’t just that they know what to do with their ads (although that certainly helps). It’s that their users trust them to deliver the content they want to read. And that includes the content that they reach through the ad links.

That’s why I’ll always turn down a high-paying keyword if I’ve got nothing new or interesting to say about it. Sure, I might get a few clicks but I’m not going to get consistent clicks, and I’m not going to get them for long.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore keywords. That would be crazy. But I’m always going to be much better off with a good Web page using a medium-paying keyword than a dull page with a high-paying keyword. It just pays more… in the short-term and the long run.

Thank you for going “on record” with this, Joel. It somehow increases my comfort level for trying to be a bit more “scientific” about Adsense, when there’s so much wagging the dog/cart before the horse thinking about Adsense in the mire these days. I cringe whenever I read that someone is “creating an Adsense site.”

That backwards approach reminds me, as an amateur classical guitarist, of a tale about Segovia. Whenever a student or potential student would come to him to show off some “great new technique” that might somehow “be easier” or “look flashier,” but to Segovia’s ear not sound as good, he would toss them out the door, saying something to the effect of, “It’s the music that matters! You have to love the music first.”

I hope it’s the same over time with Adsense–that it’s the content that matters–because maybe even what we do with our sites and our Adsense implementations says something about (and continues to shape) our character as individuals. It’s the difference between a site designed and optimized _only_ to score high in search engine rankings and attract clicks, and one that might also do the same but also genuinely help, inform, connect, or even entertain people.

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to post this; it’s been a good touchstone to help me review how I want to work with Adsense on my sites.

- Mark

Just as you guys have said, it’s best to have good content, and not just to nobly shape our characters, as beizhenwu mentions, but also as Joel has mentioned before:

Content created to take advantage of today’s SEO tricks might be worthless if (when!) Google changes their algorithms.

But providing links to good content is what Google has always been about (whether the links come from searches, AdWords, or Adsense), and that will likely never change.

Let us expand that equation just a bit…

Quality Rich Content + Medium Paying Keywords + Optimized AdSense + Persistence = Long Term Profits

Joel

I agree with everything that’s been said here…especially with the way beizhenwu phrased a few points: “…there’s so much wagging the dog/cart before the horse thinking about Adsense in the mire these days. I cringe whenever I read that someone is “creating an Adsense site.”…backwards approach…”It’s the music that matters! You have to love the music first.”…what we do with our sites and our Adsense implementations says something about (and continues to shape) our character as individuals…one that might also do the same but also genuinely help, inform, connect, or even entertain people.”

The simple fact is the Adsense is a godsend for those of us who had something of value to offer…who would have been building sites anyway because we had something we felt the need to share. To build sites without value for the purpose of attracting Adsense clicks just strikes me as somehow sad and desperate. I will always look to link to and support quality resources that might appeal to those who visit my sites. And I will avoid the others like the plague. It’s good for people who believe in value to band together to support each other where possible. It’s not that I wish ill on the ones who go another direction. But I hope that the opportunity dries up soon.

c-

The biggest issue which is lacking from many threads like this one is TRAFFIC.

The items mentioned here are great and ideal to strive for but trust me on this, they will NOT bring you much traffic, perhaps no traffic at all. You could have the best looking content rich website in your category and you will usually not get sufficient unique visitors to make more than pocket change form your Adsense account.

According to some interesting stats I have read (if you do not count the huge traffic websites such as sites like eharmony.com and cnn.com, etc) the average small website gets about 14 unique visitors/day (which is considered to be good by some webmatsers).

One large portfolio consisting of hundreds of thousands of PPC domain names was sold for 160 million dollars recently, and that was with estimated traffic of less than 10/uniques per domain per day (from what I recall and based on what was revealed in the press release using simple math which gave total traffic and number of domains involved in the sale).

These are interesting statistics, I was wondering, what software is recommended for reporting the site’s statistics. I’m using awstats, it is ok, but I wish I could see statistics in a more granular form, for example, I want to see how are people getting to my site in the current week, or even just today, awstats only provides monthly statistics. It also only shows the unique visitors for the month, not per day. It does show the total number of visits per day though.

Ensode

Trader,

I don’t know you personally, and I don’t know your sites or your experience or your track record. So I can’t speak specifically to your situation.

But I can say that I disagree with your point to some degree. While it’s certainly true that a site can’t survive with no traffic…you’re making it sound like brain surgery to get visitors to your web site. And it just isn’t that way. If you have a site with unique, helpful content (which i would define in brief as “stuff people want”), then it’s not THAT hard to get folks to find you.

Let me give you an example. I started a brand new web site 3-4 days ago. I put it up, and provided some links to it (from maybe 3 related sites). I checked back after 24 hours and Google still didn’t know it existed. So, I waited a couple days and then checked back again last night.

I looked at the traffic logs to find out where the limited number of uniques (still less than 100 total) had come from. I fully expected to find that all the hits had come from the 3 web sites from which I had provided links.

I was shocked to find that probably 2/3rds of the hits came from search engines. Mostly MSN…but a few from Google as well.

I looked more closely and found that, for the keyphrases that brought folks to my site, I was scoring very well…already…in 3 days. Take a look at the positions for those keywords (with the keywords removed):

MSN
#1
#3
#1
#18
#61
#1
#
#10
#1
#1
#6
#9
#1
#1
#1
#7
#1
#2

GOOGLE
#7
#8

This was just in the first 30 referral links or so. No, the site hasn’t seen significant traffic yet. But it’s only been 3-4 days. This is a site that will have a very nice audience soon enough. Based on my track record with sites of this nature, I would guess that it will be a $10-20 per day site in 3-6 months.

So, my question is: Who should be the judge of whether you are providing high-quality, unique content? Should it simply be your personal perspective? Or should it judged by audience response? Is is possible that you are simply providing something that folks can just as easily find on other, more highly-ranked sites?

If so…maybe you’re planting in the wrong field.

And if you’re not…maybe the lack is that you’re not defining your site content and niche in such a way that the search engines can figure out a way to reach your target audience with that information.

Again…I don’t know you, your situation, or your web sites. I’m not criticizing. Just asking questions. Sometimes all of us need to be stirred up by folks with differing viewpoints.

I hope you find that helpful…or at least challenging in a constructive way (that was my intent, anyway).

c-

Yes, very interesting feedback and informative, thanks.

Regarding the SE’s, over the yrs some sites do well, ranking high for their keywords, a few mos later they rank nearer the bottom than the top, then they suddenly go back near the top, then they almost vanish for no good reason, next they come back in the middle of the rankings somehow.

Far too unreliable a process for me to value much. So unreliable that I often do not even bother to submit my sites to the SE in the first place and rarely look at their Page Rank. If they do get SE traffic that is fine and welcome of course but it should not be your primary means.

We all need to NOT rely so heavily on search engines and run websites and own domains which get more natural traffic and type-ins.

Trader,

I agree that the volatility/unpredicitability of the SE results can be irritating, but how wise is it to abandon SEs altogether? As you say, there are highs and lows, but every business has those. The effects of the SE rollercoaster can be moderated by just not having all the eggs in one basket (I’m sure there are other ways, too!).

To say, in the same way you wouldn’t have your entire income depend on revenue from a single website, it would be unwise to put every effort into only one means of gathering traffic. In addition to SEs, you can publish for article directories, have tell-a-friend links on your site, and offline options too. All can provide a little traffic, some might send a lot, but definitely use every means to get visitors….the accumulated results can be huge.

SEs are an important thing, but they aren’t the only thing, and I doubt anyone here would argue that–but I think it’s a mistake to ignore SEs potential to deliver just because it’s inconsistent.

Also, about your earlier comment (emphasis mine):
Quote:
According to some interesting stats I have read (if you do not count the huge traffic websites such as sites like eharmony.com and cnn.com, etc) the average small website gets about 14 unique visitors/day (which is considered to be good by some webmatsers).

I’m not arguing with the stats, but remember that since the start of this thread, we’ve been talking about creating high quality websites, not average websites. Small websites, most likely, but exceptional.

Cheers!
~Shena