While your income and RPMs may vary throughout the year, the upcoming months are the most valuable. As a content creator, I like to take a couple of weeks during this time to make sure that everything is optimized from a revenue standpoint.
Batten down the hatches – Audit your site there is an RPM increase on the horizon
Originally written for r/juststart Sept, 2022.
For us, Christmas comes early, and it pays great.
Too often, I see people focusing on pushing out content to gain viewers while ignoring some of the quick wins that can see their income jump by 10%, 20%, or more overnight. As you scale, you’ll likely be able to identify more of these little victories, but here is a checklist of things that I just went through to see my income increase by 20.32% over the past 7 days. I like to do this in September because you can expect your income to rise by almost 50% throughout the next couple of months (peaking on November 25th), so proper optimization pays extra dividends at this time.
If you can increase your earnings by 20%, it is the same to your bottom line as writing 20% more articles. Now I never want to get too caught up in optimization because it has diminishing returns (your first 5 hours spent optimizing will likely be more efficient than the next 15 combined). However, it’s nice to do an audit once a year; for me, September is the time to do it.
Note: This is done from the perspective of an advertising network like Mediavine or AdThrive that pays per impression. The concepts are similar to a pay-per-click network such as Adsense but may differ slightly in measurement.
Quick Wins
The coalition for better ads has laid out some standards (which I wholeheartedly agree with), stating that ad density should be less than 30% of your content as a whole. This means that if you take the entire pixel height of your page (including white space and images) and times it by 0.3, you will get an idea of the MAX size of ads that can be included on your page. Luckily, this is all done programmatically these days, but the concept of these quick wins is to make your content longer while not negatively affecting your user experience (UX).
The Basics – We’ll get into some more advanced concepts after.
These are the easiest and most impactful changes you can make to your website as they are full website changes. Simple changes that you can make to increase your revenue site-wide overnight.
Font Size – If you’re reading this on default Reddit, it is most likely Arial size 14px with a line height of 21px. Many websites and themes default to an out-of-the-box font size of 14px, which is ok, but it’s actually smaller than what the big G recommends. Google’s Lighthouse actually recommends a font size of at least 16px, so in many cases you can improve revenue, UX, and SEO with a font increase from the default size.
Currently for my sites I use a font size of 17px-18px on desktop with a 19-20px mobile font size. You can also change your line height; typically I use a line height that is slightly larger than my font size. Reddit for example does 14px font size and 21 px line height. See what works best for your sites/fonts.
This small change can make your website MORE accessible and increase your ad impressions/time on page by 5-10%.
Ad Units – If you break down the ad unit income source for a Mediavine or AdThrive website, you will see that your income is broken down into groups. One reason that most users see a massive increase in revenue when joining Mediavine/AdThrive is that they start using these other Ad Units in addition to regular in-content ads.
My average ad income breakdown is typically 1/3 In-Content, 1/3 Video Player, 1/5 Adhesion (Bottom Ad), 1/10 Sidebar/Sticky Sidebar, and Video. If you aren’t on a premium ad network, the most unused Ad Types are the Video Player and the Sidebar Sticky, which can account for almost half of your income.
For quick wins you will want to make sure that:
A) Your sidebar is properly displaying ads while being short enough to show ads when a user scrolls below the fold.
B) You are utilizing a video player. Displaying additional Ad Types can increase your revenue by 2X. I am not a fan of interstitial ads, as I think that they ruin your user experience and long-term negatively affect revenue…however if you wanted to try them out for a couple of weeks…end of November would be the time to do it.
Ad Density – As mentioned earlier, the highest you should go for ad density is around 30% of your page. While I typically keep my ads at a lower density, October and November are a great time to try out higher ad density or paragraph spacing. I don’t notice much difference between my users when I change my ad density (up to 30%); however, anecdotally, I find that I get more backlinks when I have a lower ad density. Therefore, I prefer to keep it at an average density, although I will likely crank it up for a week or two at the end of November to pay for a vacation in January. Your ad partner likely has literature on this topic.
On-Page Optimization – Little Victories
Now that we’ve done the EZ peazy site-level optimizations, it’s time to get down to the grind of some on-page ad optimization. Of course, this is different from SEO optimization, but if you see some egregious errors that a younger you made, you should go ahead and fix those.
Work Your Way Through Your Content
For those of you with smaller websites, you might be able to go through all your pages and optimize them for ads. For others who have more pages, you’ll want to prioritize the content that needs it the most. For this audit, I’m not trying to reinvent the website…I just want some quick wins to increase my RPM’s throughout my portfolio of sites.
This is how I prioritize pages, as making it through all of them would be impossible, and the goal here is efficiency. I want to make the most significant impact to my bottom line with the smallest amount of work.
Here is how I prioritize my pages, organize what you want to work on before actually doing the optimizations.
80/20 Rule (Google/Ad Partner)
Most websites roughly follow the 80/20 rule, where 80% of my traffic comes from 20% of the pages. Optimizing the top 20% of your pages will deliver 4X more value than the bottom 80% combined. These pages will by far deliver you the largest increase in revenue.
Viewability (Ad Partner)
As mentioned before, viewability is an increasingly important metric for advertisers. What I aim to do when reviewing pages for viewability is to see if there is an obvious reason that the viewability is low. Is an ad showing in an awkward spot? Are users bouncing immediately? I find that often where I am serving an English page to a place where English is a second language that my viewability is low. If the revenue is small I might even disable ads on that page to keep my sites overall viewability high (This is a personal choice and your mileage may vary). The reason for this is that advertisers prefer to bid on ads on sites with higher viewability.
If your font size is too large, you show too many images, or you have too dense of an advertisement setting, your viewability will suffer.
I don’t care how much traffic these pages get. For me, if it’s got low viewability it must be fixed. Let’s say your goal is to have 70% viewability, and you have a page that is getting 20% viewability with 20 impressions. That 20% score drags down your overall score 25X as much as a page with 72% viewability brings it up.
Impressions Per Page (Ad Partner)
I like to look at both ends of the spectrum here. See what pages have the highest impression per page. What are you doing right there? Can you replicate that on other pages? Once I’ve assessed that, I will get to work on the lowest ad impressions pages. Even if my traffic is low on these pages, it’s likely that I am not answering the question or hooking my reader, which can result in google not ranking my site as high as it should be.
Check Search Console for the queries that brought users to your page, you may find that you need to add content or answer a different question entirely. Additional fixes might be to place ad hints manually, make the content longer, or add more images.
CPM (Ad Partner)
Your advertising partner may use a different word for it, but CPM stands for Cost Per Mille. This is the basic cost of a thousand advertising units to be displayed on your site.
It is different than RPM, because this is per ad unit and not a page total. So you may have some content that has a really great RPM, but low CPM because it is keeping users engaged for a long time. What you want to find is your short-form content that could be improved upon or added to with the highest CPM, if you can improve upon this, it will give you great bang for your buck. It’s easier to expand on already-ranking content than it is to rank for something entirely new. These pages have POTENTIAL, it’s up to you to unlock it.
Content Fixes – On page for each article
As you’re working your way through your content, these are some things you should be adding or improving for each article.
Ad Hints
This was a huge one for me. As mentioned with the 80/20 rule, you’ll want to look at your top-performing pages first to ensure that ads are displaying correctly. While programmatically displaying ads is an efficient way to show ads that utilize text and images, if you have other content like tables or long lists, they will not display in the most efficient manner. In these cases, an ad hint like the one offered by Mediavine can display ads in between tables or break up long lists. I break up my tables by screen height, keeping just under one screen height in between advertising breaks.
Just keep in mind that if you use an ad hint, your advertising partner will likely not show programmatic ads because the ad hint overrides any programmatic advertising. I’m ashamed to say that in my most recent audit, I found a non-zero number of pages with only one ad hint on them that were not showing programmatic ads. So if you use one ad hint, you will need to make sure to seed the rest of the page with hints.
On some pages that weren’t showing ads correctly because of non-conforming content I have tripled my ad impressions by seeding them properly.
Shorter Paragraphs
Ads can only appear between paragraphs and other breaks. This means that if you have a gigantic wall of text, it may not only look unappealing, but it can also affect your bottom line. Instead, try to break your paragraphs up into 2-3 sentence chunks.
Longer Content
When reviewing your articles, try to think of ways to efficiently lengthen your content while also keeping your users engaged. As mentioned earlier, I am not a fan of making my users jump through hoops to get an answer…although I will always put the answer below the fold or make sure to add a hook. Here is an example on a site answering the question, “Who is better Messi or Ronaldo?”:
No Engagement:
“Lionel Messi has won the Ballon d’Or a record 7 times vs Ronaldo’s 5, so he is considered better…”
Engagement:
“While Ronaldo currently has more goals overall, Messi has the edge in the scoring department, with a higher season average….”
The second statement engages the reader, hooking them into the article, and can significantly improve all of your metrics.
An additional method I like to use when creating a content pillar is to have content that applies to most or all articles within that content pillar and then just add it in to the bottom using a global block. This might not work for you, and I don’t use it on all my sites. However, I’ve had great success on a few that have some templated content.
Unique Images
Images count as content which allows for more ad units, and unique images are also a ranking factor on the Google side of things. This means that you can increase revenue substantially by just adding in some relevant images. I’ve been a bit of a naughty boy lately and have been using the same (custom) images throughout my pages in areas where I wouldn’t expect a user to read a different page. This has increased length and revenue without negatively impacting standings. Examples of this would be using the same images for location-based pages. While not optimal from an SEO standpoint, users shouldn’t see that you used the same image for LA as Chicago.
If you want to do things correctly you should make sure that you are using unique images for everything. I just found a neat feature on Adobe Stock that allows me to search only for unique images, which I’ve been trying out on a few pages. I don’t have any data for results yet though.
Tease the question, answer below the fold
Ugh. It feels icky, and there is definitely a balance to be found. You need your users to spend time on page, which will benefit your SEO as dwell time is considered a metric, just don’t be dirty about it. If you feel gross about it like I do (at times), remember:
1. Google considers dwell time a metric, so if these users are bouncing fast, it can harm your rankings.
2. The longer a user spends on your page, the higher your earnings will be.
Don’t Forget These Metrics
While the most commonly talked about measure of success is RPM and Page Views, there are a ton of other metrics you can improve that correlate directly with an increase in income. You can find these analytics within either your Google or ad partner analytics. These are not improvements where I can easily say do X, and your revenue will increase by Y%.
You may need to use some critical thinking to figure out how best to improve each of these.
Time on Page (Google Analytics) –
More time on page in a cost per impression or per click ad setup is more opportunity to make money. When creating content, think about how you can keep your user engaged longer. As mentioned earlier, I am not a fan of putting the answer at the end and forcing my user to read through 15 minutes of fluff like many recipe pages…but if they’re still engaged after getting the answer, I don’t mind putting a little bit of fluff after my content. Two great ways to do this are by checking out the people also ask section of the search or by checking your search console to see what secondary questions are bringing people to your page. Add those questions to the end of your page with a little FAQ schema, and Bob’s your uncle.
While those can help you add content, it is also great to look at the first portion of any article with a low time on page. Is the question being answered above the fold? Are they leaving before you have a chance to hook them? Do you have a table of contents?
Bounce Rate (Google Analytics)
I prefer time on page, but you can also sort by highest bounce rate to see which pages might easily be fixed. If you have a page with a high bounce rate, but a long-ish time on page, it may be that only some users are leaving quickly. This could also be a quick fix to figure out what those users are finding that causes them to leave.
Pages per Session (Google Analytics)
While keeping your user on a page is great, getting them to navigate around your site is even better. Make sure to include internal linking throughout your articles (although that is not a quick win, it’s something you should always keep top of mind). However, what you can do for a quick win is to include related content at the end, in the sidebar, tell users where to go next, or create a content hub that can be placed at the bottom of each article. You can do this with a plugin, custom code, or even make global blocks for each of your content verticals.
Viewability (Ad Partner Analytics)
Viewability is already huge for impression-based advertising. However, it’s often forgotten about from a content creator’s view. Just think about it from an advertiser’s perspective. How much more would you pay for an advertisement that has a viewability of 60% vs 50%? That’s a 20% increase. The exciting thing about viewability is that advertisers might select that they only want to be shown in higher viewability slots/sites. So if you can break into the next ‘bucket’ of viewability, you can see an increase in CPM while accessing more premium ads.
An ad counts as viewed when 50% of the ad is seen for one second or more. The best thing you can do to improve this is to join a good ad network (or set up your own) that utilizes best practices.
CPM (Ad Partner Analytics)
In your ad partner dashboard it is essential to look at everything as a whole (that’s what we’re trying to improve after all), but also take a look at each stat in a vacuum. Do you have a page ranking 9th with a CPM that is 2-3X the value of a page ranking ~2nd? Time might be better spent working on the content of the 9th ranked page to get it to #1 or adding more to it to get more ad impressions.
As mentioned, each of these directly correlates with income. So an increase in any of them can deliver a similar growth in your bottom line.
TLDR: Thanks for reading to the end; if this was on my website I likely would have made 5 cents with all of the ads you would have just been served (7 cents if I sprinkled some images in).
Links:
https://www.betterads.org/mobile-ad-density-higher-than-30/
https://adrevenueindex.ezoic.com/