You have great content ideas and the motivation to create, but if your site isn't link-friendly, you might still be up the proverbial creek. Let me give a perfect example from one of my favorite bloggers - Andrew Goodman (from a blog entry called monetizing your site):
I was about to link to this site because they had a relevant article to my next post. But their article was nearly unreadable because of all the monetization around it. Hey, it's nice to sell ads, but...
So now they're officially in the usability hall of shame.
And they're in the "no link for you hall of shame" to boot. Yes, folks, the quality of your design, the delivery method of your message and the user experience you provide all heavily impact the links you're able to earn. Let's look at some of the site attributes that can make or break a link:
Achieving all of the positives on the list while dodging all the negatives is incredibly hard, but there are a few sources that do so with impressive results. Wikipedia is the first that comes to mind, but the BBC, the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the Discovery Channel and many of the top blogs fulfill a great number of these criteria.
In addition to these, there are specific elements that you can use to "encourage" link creation, but I've got an early presentation tomorrow so we'll have to save that for Thursday morning content :)
A lot of this can be summed up with professionalism. Even if it is a non-commercial site, even if it is a humor-based site, there is difference with a professional look and feel site.
I think this is the part where a lot of "do-it-yourself" site owners take for granted... like SEO, anyone can do it, but it takes a considerable investment of time, self-education, and experience. It just doesn't all come together on its own.
Let's say ads are a requirement - income needed to pay the bills! How can you incorporate them into the site without killing your linkability? Ads and links are a necessity for the success of most sites - and the ads need a CTR that is high enough to pay for the content creation with enough left over for a profit?
EGOL - You're the expert on that; you write the post! :)
Rand, you hit my biggest turn-off, breaking articles into separate pages. "Click next to learn why using moisturizing while curling your hair so important.... and to see more of our advertisements." It especially grates on me when the web site is way too busy. (I'm being nice and not linking to one particular SEM related site I have in mind.)
You could do what we do... add a link that says "single page". This has the benefit of letting our readers choose the long version or continue browsing the short version. For the advertisers, this means at least two impressions -> a decent compromise between consumers & advertisers :)
Note: some readers actually like articles split into bite-sized pieces that are above the fold.
But it would still turn off all the reader who don't like multiple pages - they still need to click at least once. Remember, "don't make me click"? What if you'd reverce that - offer a single page as a default and include a link that says "multiple pages"? I bet hardly anyone would click on that one.
I also recently changed my adsense ads because I felt that they made my site look cheap. However, instead of getting rid of them altogether, I just changed them to image ads. I think they look much more professional. Also, they add some nice color to the page.
In addition, I only have two ads at the moment. One at the very beginning of the article and the other at the very end of the article. It allows for a possible revenue stream without being frustrating to the reader.
This brings me to my next point. I have visited the nameless site in question a few times and I rarely, if ever, finish an article of theirs. Sometimes I don't even start it. I just find it too hard to read. As such, I also don't come back, don't recommend the site, etc. In other words, we are talking about more than links here.
With that said, though, it should be pointed out that when I do a search on Google for SEO they come up #1! So, I imagine they can afford for now to lose people like me. I'm not sure that's a good long tem strategy, but in the meantime I imagine they make a decent amount of money with the combination of #1 on Google and lots of intrusive ads (note, btw, I'm in Israel so they may not come up #1 on Google when you search for the term).
One last point, I sometimes actually feel that ads INCREASE the value of a page. I've clicked on ads because I'm interested in what the ad is advertising and sometimes I've been happy with where I've ended up. In such a situation I'm happy that there was an ad there. I just don't want the ad (or ads) to make it difficult for me to accomplish my main goal on the site whatever that may be (read an article, use a tool, etc.).
I believe this is one of the main problems with adsense. It screams, "We want to monetize this but we want to do it the easy way." That isn't always a problem - hey, sometimes you really do want to monetize something small without any effort. However, the main page of your website shouldn't be covered in it.
I hate to say it, but I just added a third image adsense ad to my site and, well, my click through rate went up. Also, my initial sense is that the image ads tend to pay more, but I need more data. I now think my site doesn't look as professional, but it made more money. Hmmm....what to do - I would like those linkerati links. Perhaps I'll just have to create extra good content to compensate! Any ideas?
I think you need to weigh the ad clicks based on value to your visitor or "oops, that wasn't what I thought it was." If it is the latter, then you may see those clicks drop over time, and unfortunately, you might see your visitors drop as well.
Or more to the point, you have to decide what is the purpose of my site? Am I looking to draw revenue through ad clicks, in which case the image ad will probably help to do that. In which case, I might drop the other ad spots and just maintain the one image block, which might help maintain the professionalism and not look to adsy.
But if your purpose is to draw clients for services, then the ads may be costing you more than they bring in, or at least it may be better to reduce the prominence of the ads.
I absolutely love the Turn-On list, it makes good sense to use these practices on any site.
This is probably as good a start list as any to encourage people to link to your site, but I am looking forward to the next post about further elements that would "encourage" link creation
I'll add a personal peeve to this: animated ads and graphics. I stare at a computer screen all day, and "TRY OUR FANCY NEW VERSION!!" scrolling in my peripheral vision is enough to make me look elsewhere. Gives me major headaches.
and if you are a commercial site, and you want the links? i think this is a bigger chalange...
Obtusive Ads - should be simple to avoid
Poor site Architecture - Actually, this simply comes down to experience. It's kinda like riding a bike, in that once you can do it, you can do it. But you've got to spend time playing around with sites and learning how to structure things to be able to do it really effectively.
Forced Registration - It's not a problem. I have this wonderful button that makes it go away. It's called Home Page. Voila: it's gone!
Bad Site Search - Actually with AdSense for search, there's no excuse for this. It offers pretty good site search capabilities, and it pays you. And it's completely customisable to your site's theme.
Long Dynamic URLs - And what was SEOmoz like before the refresh/overhaul? :p Yeh, this annoys me too. And it's not that hard to fix. However, your average webmaster doesn't notice them, let alone know how to fix them.
Unprofessional Design - Good design is just lining things up. You just need to know where to draw the lines! And that's a skill that can take real time to learn.
Hard to Read Text - Never a problem for me, with my perfect eyesight. However, my mum and dad both hate it. So this get's my vote. And come on, it's REALLY not that hard to have a sensible font size.
Splitting of Article Content into Multiple Pages - Actually, this is my bane of contention. It depends on the length of the article. If it's anything over about 800/1000 words, I'll split it, simply for ease of reading. And it gives the eyeballs of the reader a break for a moment. But that's me.
Other things I'd add on? Hmm...
Good: Hosting that doesn't keel over and die when you get Dugg, logical, easy to understand navigation, flowing design, where all elements are where you'd expect, and everything just works. Note, this is not the same as stunning, which I read as flashy.
Bad: Flash, too much text on the page, inconsistant design through the site, clashing garish colours, and broken links/under construction parts.
Aw, come on Pete. They weren't that long! Plus, Matt and Rand spent a great deal of time apologising for them, even before they were fixed :p
Got any Wayback links for those before the SEF URL's came into play Jane?
eg: ...seomoz.org/page.php?pid=56465&cid=A3
visser - our old bog structure URLs were very simple - seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?id=123
One dynamic parameter, one slash, 32 characters. Not ideal, but certainly not unspiderable.
It was tongue in cheek! Actually, it was tongue out of mouth, as evidenced by the :p emote. But you know what I mean. They're big lovelies, and we all love the new site :)
I love the graphic Rand, it's like dating site for the Linkerati. Long walks on the beach and dinner by romantic candle light have been replaced with "Stunning Design" and "High Accessibility". Well done. I look forward to the post tomorrow.
Rand,
you got good catchy sentences on the end of your new posts :)
I'm talking about this:
.... "but I've got an early presentation tomorrow so we'll have to save that for Thursday morning content :) "
Brian can you give us other better revenue models of website because you say that adsense is low revenue model.
By the way, am I the only one who thinks the seochat use of nofollow on the highlighted page seems to lack strategy?
Even the title links and link to the next section of the article is nofollowed.
Brian - SEOChat is just telling you that they don't trust their own article writers that they pay to create content worthy of vouching for editorially :) Hilarious, right?
I've noticed one thing in common about the examples and procedures outlined; they are all used by unquestionable authority sites that do not have an obligation to earn revenue.
I'm not bagging on the conclusions reached, because frankly those things all bother me too. But they seem almost antithetical to a site that exists to make money. The unspoken summary point seems to be "if you want to monetize your site and you are not in the top 5% for your topic it won't be link friendly."
And unfortunately that's why most of these guys are making and SEOing these sites, to make money. I wish they didn't, I wish all of these people clogging up the internet "pipes" with their millions of MFA .info sites could just wash away like the sewage they are. But unfortunately at least some of them are successful and here we are.
Essentially what I'm saying is that this is all good advice... for someone making an unimpeachable authority site that doesn't have to cover its own costs. But it'd be interesting to see if it's possible to come to a compromise between monetization and link-friendliness. If that was possible maybe we could somehow improve the quality of the not-good sites clogging the drains (and that's too many plumbing metaphors for today).
PS-I'm not one of those people I mention; I do inhouse work for one company. I don't have any side project sites or even a blog for goodness' sake, so please don't think I'm tooting the MFA horn :)
What's with all these anti-monetization posts? Not all of us are great writers and experts at copywriting perfect linkbaited headlines. Good content cost money to make... I see nothing wrong with throwing up ads to support it.
What is wrong with making a site to earn money? I hope this blog does not turn into an "only do what's good for the user" type of community. If I wanted to read that junk I would go to Jill's High Rankings forum.
Not one of "THOSE PEOPLE"? Have fun working for someone else the rest of your life.
Please tell me how someone can work in the search marketing field and NOT have any of their own projects?
Anyone know how to use quotes in replies? The standard [quote] is not working.
Kurt - you can just use the blockquote indents in the WYSIWYG interface at the top of the reply box. And I'm not anti-monetization at all. SEOmoz just switched to a monetization model, so that would be pretty hypocritical.
What I am is honest - people on the web, particularly Linkerati-types whether they're teachers or researchers or Digg members, don't like obtrusive ads and will often prefer to link to non-commercial content. That's not me saying "Don't Make Money" that's me saying "This is how it is." The challenge is recognizing those biases and working to overcome them.
Rand, I hear what you are saying about the Linkerati... good point.
I think the reply from "Crease" kind of set me off :(
I think you hit on the key here and that is people don't like OBTRUSIVE ads. People don't want the ads on a site to either get in the way or fool them into clicking on them. For instance, I enjoy the ads on Andy Beal's blog (same goes for Search Engine Land). They don't get in the way, they're attractive, and they are there if I want to look at them. On the other hand, the ads on the nameless (but famouse) SEO site refered to in this post are in your face. It's as if you walked into a store and someone stuck a flyer right in your face saying that they have a special. It's overkill.
So I think there are two keys to overcoming this problem:
1) Professional and attractive integration of the ads into one's site.
2) Unobtrusive ads.
True there may be some purist who still won't link to such a site, but I doubt they are even a significant minority (just a hunch, though).
Good point and I agree that the key is to not have the ads in your face. I don't mind the ads on see on many sites. Then there are sites that look more like a block of ads interrupted occasionally by some content.
One thing you can also do is not use the ads right away. Work at first to attract some of the links and once you have them then start integrating the ads. I get the feeling that even some of those who will refuse to link to a site with ads will still happily link to sites with ads if they've previously linked to them. It's those first couple of times where the ads can make the biggest difference,
Kurt -
I'm not against monetization, but I am against pointless MFA/scraper sites that have A)no content B)no design and C)only ads. If anything I'm just stating what Rand has already said in this article, just more directly. Instead of saying "the linkerati won't link to you if your site is like this" I'm saying "I personally find these sites a waste of time." And I would say the huge majority of "monetized" sites are exactly like that, useless. Sure they don't make people a lot of money, but when they have a couple hundred equally useless sites earning $5/day from mistaken AdWords clicks suddenly they are a working proposal.
Good article.
Using banners and adverts on websites is now extremely dated and only causes users to turn away from using your site. I agree completely with 'Peter Wailes's' comment stating which factors will contribute to your final site design. Using too much flash or unreadable text is hardly going to appeal to the intended user. You need to do your research and experiment with several options before commiting to one final design.
I enjoyed this piece. If was helpful and gave a different insight to link love. Thank you for sharing.
https://www.marketingease.com/web-marketing-blog/marketing/what-makes-a-good-blog
Nice and thought provoking....
I have a blog (who doesn't!) with all posts using concise single paragraph summeries with "Click to read more..." style links.
Are we now against this form of post navigation? As a blog reader I prefer extracts to scrolling that mouse roller but what's your opinion?
Good post! It's interesting how many people don't see any connection between SEO and usability.
Very true, there isn't anything more annoying that a heavy monetized website, I am currently working with a big portal in the Arab world that tends to have allot of banner ads everywhere, its not easy to convince the top level management and owners to drop those banners while those banners bring in the big bucks, you have to convince them that heavy monetization will eventually lead to loss of traffic and loss of their membership base, however its easier said than done.
Rand,
I really appreciate this detailed, demographic and behavioral breakdown of the Linkerati and the link-worthy. It's so important to profile the target audience rather than just write "stuff" and hope "people" will link to it if it's "good." I go to a public university and I'd roughly estimate that no more than 5% of the students, faculty and staff have made a link within the last year (outside of Myspace). I intuitively formed a vague profile of the "linkerati" before, but thanks for crystallizing it and showing a few key facets I had overlooked.
Absolutely agree - banners and Adsense offer some of the lowest revenue models of any website, so I think a lot of sites would do better with more focused revenue generation models.
It could not simply increase revenues, but also improve user experience as well, adding a positive feedback factor to monetisation.
2c.
Ironically enough, Andrew Goodman still linked to the site he said was full of adverts! :) lol
Well-said, Rand. Well-said.
Amen to high accessibility. I get occassional e-mails to the webmaster account for one of our clients who has an all flash site - people don't like being forced to link to a homepage when the relevant content is 2-3 clicks away in a swf.
I need to say "Amen" and "MEEE TOOOO" to this post.
I've got 2 sites not monetized right now but I expect they will be...
And additional monitization of another site (besides the buttons and scrapers) took it down!
*rolls eyes*
About a month ago I stopped placing AdSense ads on my posts for this very reason. I've left them on my old posts for now, but in time I'm planning on removing ads from the older posts too.
I'm working on a new design too, though only in part to encourage linking. I'd like to think I've done ok with most other things on the list, but I know there's always room for improvement.
I'll be looking forward to Thursday morning's post. The series this week has been interesting and it's a good reminder we all have more than one audience for our sites.
Good article. I recently started a blog and have been thinking of monetizing it. So we just have to do it carefully, we have to find the proper balance in having adds and not scaring readers away. Thanks.
Was there an article on that page?
Seriously, wasn't SEOChat always like that? I hadn't spent any time there since the mass exodus.
Taking away ads all together, or finding alternative ways to monetize is definately a good tip. Also, readable text and colors are very important.
I remember a blog I ran had this green text on white background. The green was just a tad light and very hard to read. Low and behold once I changed the color to be more readable, my conversions increased, visits increased and page views per visitor went up all from changing one color code in my style sheets.
Great post, good tips. Can't wait to see "Thursdays content."