Should You Stay Away From “Home” When Monetizing?
June 29th, 2008 Posted by ChanyaI just finished modifying an existing niche site that I’ve been neglecting for a while. After some general housekeeping I decided to change the template to one of Court’s SEO Wordpress Themes. In doing so I realized that my old template included a “Home” button but that the new one doesn’t.
Hmmn.
I almost added a Home button but thought “if I want to eventually monetize this site (which I do) perhaps I should leave out the Home button.” Why? Because if I want visitors to click on ads should I make it easy for them to navigate away from the current page?
I’m not sure about this one but I think it depends on whether the site is set up for search traffic or readers. If you’re looking for readers I’d think you’d want to make it easy for them to navigate around your site. But if you’re trying to optimize for search traffic and want people to click on your ads, perhaps not . . .
What do you think? Anyone got any opinions on this subject?
Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 7:46 pm and is filed under blog tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I think you’re right about not having the home button. You want them to click on something that makes money.
Hey Michelle: good to hear from you! Thanks, that’s what I was thinking.
The question isn’t whether or not you want visitors to click ads on your page, it’s whether or not you want visitors to return to your site.
If you want repeat visitors, then make the site easy to navigate. They might even click on an ad on another page. If they can’t find an easy way to navigate your website, they might just click the back button in their browser rather than click on an ad.
But, if you just target one-off visitors and hope they’ll click on an ad, then you can probably omit the Home button.
Plus, bear in mind too that people clicking ads to escape your site, rather than because they were interested in seeing the ad’s offer, reduces the quality of visitors to the advertiser’s site. Lower quality traffic is going to eventually result in lower earnings.
You’re right, it depends on the type of traffic you’re targeting. I appreciate your input about “quality of traffic.” That’s something I hadn’t considered.
I have to agree with dcr. The “quality” of traffic is what raises your readership levels - and the quality of trafic is generally based on the quality of the writing. The BEST way to monetize your site in a MEANINGFUL way is to:
1. Increase readership;
2. Build a loyal readership;
3. Know that your loyal readers will trust you enough to click on your ads.
The higher the readership, the easier to monetize a site. As dcr states, “if you want repeat readers, then make the site easy to navigate.” In my experience, the best way to do that is simple: write well, keep the blogs compelling - and maybe run a contest for a great ring! lol
Thanks for the input Rita - it was PERFECT.