This post from Shoemoney - A Sale is Made on Every Website Visit - got me thinking about the dichotomy between monetizing a visit and building a website's brand. Here's the gist of what Jeremy's saying:
This same way of salesmanship IMO directly relates to the internet. Just think about it. If someone comes to your site interested in purchasing a product and you have nothing else on that page but that specific product then you give them a tough choice. Either they purchase it right then or they are gone. Now on this same page if you put … say adsense at the bottom of the page you increase the chance that you will get some form of compensation for this person using your bandwidth.
I don't dispute his point at all. In fact, if Jeremy's taught the SEO community anything, it's that a lone man, in his boxer shorts in the basement (this is how his wife described himi to me after I told her about her husband's celebrity status) has the same earning potential of a high-level executive, and his methodologies aren't to be dismissed lightly. However, when the goals change, the philosophy of maximizing monetization doesn't always fit.
Many of SEOmoz's clients, and many of the folks who read this blog are seeking the growth of their brand. These sites aren't neccessarily happy with earning $0.05 or $0.10 per visitor - they're interested in being recognized, remembered, subscribed to and searched for by name. In these scenarios, there's a fine line between "making the sale" and hurting the customer experience.
For example, on a site like Wikihow.com, the monetization through contextual advertising walks the line perfectly - creating value by showcasing content over monetization and helping to build the community that continues to add value. A site that goes over-the-top like Imaging-Resource might be losing value by over-burdening their visitors with pop-ups, pop-unders, banners on both sides, ads in the middle of the page and PriceGrabber quotes on product pages.
I've certainly got nothing against earning money on a website, but it's important to consider whether another row of ads or a banner that fills the screen, drops over the content, or deceives uninitiated visitors is going to help or hurt in the long run. In my experience, the ratio of content to advertising has an impact on each of the following:
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Return visits - more ads equals lower retention
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Bookmarks - more content equals more bookmarks
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Links - fewer ads equals more natural links
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Referrals - fewer ads equals more referrals
This doesn't apply universally, and good judgement is key, but with savvy audiences (the kind that build links and send referrals), an ad-free site experience carries a lot of weight. Consider your goals before you fill up on monetization tactics and test your systems out for a week or two at a time to be sure you're making the best possible decision.
p.s. I do love Jeremy's idea of adding a monetized search box to your site, though. Even the most finicky user won't be put off by ads in the search results. Maybe Jimmy Wales should give it a shot.
If anything I'll say that AdSense is usually NOT the best way to monotize a site to begin with, but it is a pretty good fire and forget kind of solution to making money from a site.
As far as building a brand vs. making money I'll agree with Rand that it really depends on the kind of site you're building and what your profit strategy is. A artsy design site would be a bad place for AdSense ads, but a little online t-shirt shop with clever or cool designs could be a great source of revenue and would actually help to grow the brand. T-Shirts are great advertising.
Also, even if you are focusing on branding, Shoemoney's idea still applies if you are trying to sell your brand. Whether you are selling Content, AdSense, T-Shirts, or a brand image, you still need to sell the visitor on that point.
For that reason I think that made-for-AdSense sites while a bit devious are also fantastic for what they are. They don't pretend to be doing anything other than selling AdSense ads, and that should be perfectly acceptable as long as they aren't using click-bots.
As much as webmasters whine and complain about sites with tons of ads, if the ads are working properly, then everybody wins. The site owner gets paid, the advertiser promotes their product, and probably some conversions are made. If the ads aren't working and users aren't clicking, then the webmaster who put them up is the one who takes it on the chin.
An often overlooked aspect of advertising and branding is the ability to use some designated ad space to push one of your other web properties. I have one small content site that did not convert well on adsense at all so I took that ad space and used it to promote other sites in my network where the revenue did grow from those visitors and I was able to brand 2 sites in a reserved manner without pushing ads.
Perhaps part of the apparent dichotmy relates to the fact that we insist on thinking of our sites as "ultimate destinations", rather than as connecting points between other sites, as part of much larger traffic flow patterns. Part of the relevancy determination for a given resource relates to literal specificity (string match), but part also relates to how well the page *conducts outward* to other relevant resources, in the theoretical but probable event the surfer has not been totally satisfied by what he found on that page. What I try to do on my own Adsense publisher sites is create hubs rather than cul de sacs for the surfer, with some of the spokes being links to external resources I have chosen, some being links to my own (off-domain pages), some to on-domain pages, and some to Adwords advertisers. I think Google is doing its part to increase the apparent fit between ads and context.
When you implement Adsense ads on your site, not to deceive the surfer, but as an addition of optional links to other worthy resources, you can do right by the surfer, adhere to Google TOS (not to mention follow their optimization recommendations) and make a nice chunk of change to boot.
Jack Mardack PS: Google Section Targeting
I agree that for the most part, a lot of adsense is really low quality these days. But it depends on the sector - real estate gave me garbage traffic (measured in page views), but jewelry was quite good (high page views).
But back to Rand's post - I'm wrestling with this balance as we speak, having just launched Frog Rate. It's a very simple concept, and more of an experiment really. I plan to keep it simple and useful, with maybe just a few text links for affiliates, but to get quality links it's important not to try to "overmonetize" it.
I guess it depends on whether you want to cash it out or build brand.
AdSense is a bogus business model. It's bad for users and in all my days I've heard of just one advertiser that was happy with the traffic from it. In fact I'd say most traffic from it is fraud. I've watched hundreds of people use the web and never once have I witnessed anyone click on an AdSense ad unless they were tricked into it. The whole thing just seems like smoke and mirrors. To me it's the dirty underbelly of the web. I put it right next to spyware. But hey, everybody is entitled to make a buck...I guess.
Now that I'm done venting, back to Shoemoney's quote. Unlike Rand I will take exception to it. It seems he's talking about a product page landing. While this is essentially a DR approach there's enough data about searcher behavior to counter his basic premise "Either they purchase it right then or they are gone."
There is also a lot of reciprocal value that can be attained from branding, not only on the page but from the Ad or SERP. I just spoke about this at SES (if anyone wants a copy of the preso you can get it off my blog). And I agree with Amrit about the secondary goal should be further engagement, not driving the user away.
If you are building an ecommerce site I believe you should always design it around the idea of "what is the best user experience." I've never met or spoken with a user that liked seeing Ads on a site and in fact the opposite is true. I've sat with many users that have openly stated their dislike for sites with ads.
"Monetization" of a business website implies it is not doing good business and hence is resorting to other means of earning revenue, even at the cost of sending the prospective buyer away, in the act of desperation.
For Jeremy's dilemma, if a visitor is not sure about making the purchase (although the copy on the page should be compelling enough to orchestrate some sort of business transaction), then he or she should be encouraged to explore the website further to seek more information/assurance. If nothing else, the visitor should at least be encouraged to leave behind an email address for future contacts. Sending him or her to another link through the AdSense ads eliminates the chance of making a sale forever.
In my opinion this is the most important topic that anyone who operates a business based upon informational websites can learn about - the balance between content and monetization. Unfortunately there is almost no information available to learn from - websites devoted to this, ebooks, blogs, traditional publications - I can't find them. Certainly lots of variables that would change from one website to another - or even on the same website content rendered in different designs. Web analytics would be a very important factor in making these types of decisions, combined with other information such as income generation, linkbuild rate, reach of the site on the web.
Does anybody know where high quality information on this subject can be found?
Great point Egol. It'd be great to have some best practice information available on attaining this balance. I don't know of any such source myself.
Jeremy's way of earning money was short lived and highly destructive to other webmasters content in the past before search engines could deal with duplication and webspam. Let's not use him as an example of a good "SEO", though let me add that he amuses me, EVEN if we do not understand each other. :)
It is easy marketing a brand if it is something that doesn't exist yet, the people searching for it are only looking for it directly. They would have no interest in clicking on ads, so true Rand!
If I was to do brand sites for customers in low competition areas they would be HTML indexes with subdomain blogs for communications with no affiliate junk. In high competition areas, blogs.
I got to go change my underpants.
I think I'm turning pretty intolerant of sites with adsense. It immediately makes me a little suspicious. Unless its implemented / integrated really well.
I think its a difficult line to balance - branding and advertising. Particularly contextual advertising.
The Deck on Signal Vs. Noise etc. is a great example of an ad network that has done this. But that's with graphical ads.
For contextual advertising - the ad quality needs to be improved and the integration needs to be improved. But then maybe I'm just an adsense snob. For all the spam sites adsense has spawned, it has also inspired a myriad of fantastic websites.