Overoptimizing for adsense (MFA) - Are those days over?

[polspoel]

As you can see in the following image, google adwords now shows conversion data, etc.. for the content network:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/243/455392640_bf415eeeca_o.gif

You can easily ban domains using this interface. Great news for advertisers, not so much for most of us here. What will the impact be?

[Chris]

Why is it automatically bad news?

Instead of grouping all content sites under the same umbrella, this will allow advertisers to differentiate between content sites that send good traffic, and those that send crap traffic.

Hopefully we all run sites that send good traffic.

[Generalissimo]

Even if people click the ads 'by accident' because they look like normal links, it's still good traffic we're sending, and as the ads will be on topic and the user clicked the link thinking it was another page on our site, the links should still convert even if the user is a bit annoyed that they thought they we're going to another page on our site.

Because the links will still convert, we won't get banned by advertisers - all is good.

[rpanella]

If anything I mostly see this increasing the number of advertisers willing to try out the content network, which in the long run should be good for most publishers.
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[ozgression]

If anything I mostly see this increasing the number of advertisers willing to try out the content network, which in the long run should be good for most publishers.

Yes. I think that is the key thing to remember from these changes.

[paul]

Does this have potential to feed back to the AdSense side? For example, I think some of the ads shown on my site are irrelevant and must have very poor conversion. Would this tool let me see conversions on my own pages so I could block poorly converting advertisers? Would that improve the "quality" of my pages?

[KLB]

Why is it automatically bad news?

Instead of grouping all content sites under the same umbrella, this will allow advertisers to differentiate between content sites that send good traffic, and those that send crap traffic.

Hopefully we all run sites that send good traffic.
I totally agree with Chris on this one. I don't see this as bad news. In the long run it will instill more confidence in the content network with advertisers and attract more advertisers to the content network. At the same time it will drive out crappy MFA sites. I'm sure there will be some turbulence for the next several months while things shake themselves out, but I truly believe that QUALITY sites with good content and good quality traffic will benefit from this.

It just means that everyone needs to really focus on quality instead of quantity.

This change is long overdue.

[KLB]

Does this have potential to feed back to the AdSense side? For example, I think some of the ads shown on my site are irrelevant and must have very poor conversion. Would this tool let me see conversions on my own pages so I could block poorly converting advertisers? Would that improve the "quality" of my pages?

I think indirectly, poorly converting advertisers will take care of themselves, so there really wouldn't be an overwhelming need for this functionality.

[Selkirk]

If you knew which advertisers were paying you a penny a click and which were paying you a quarter, you could certainly spend more time creating content for quarters than pennies.

[KLB]

Knowing what paid a penny and what paid a quarter would have little influence on my publishing priorities.

I already have a pretty good feel what types of articles generate the highest eCPMs on my site but this knowledge is not a major driving factor in what articles I publish. What I care about is the quality of my content and what will add the greatest overall value to my website.

How long do you think it will take for me to recoup the $345 I spent on this article on PCBs in the Hudson River (http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/environmental/200510hudsonriverpcbs.html)? Will I ever earn enough advertising revenue from that page specifically to pay for the article? It could take years for that individual article to directly earn enough ad revenues. But you know what? It is that article that gained high praise from a field office director for the EPA and it is this kind of article that bring me my best links.

If I focused on chasing the advertising dollar, I would be turning my back on the articles that probably earn my site its greatest respect and best links.

Changing your content strategies based on what advertisers pay the most is extremely short sighted. In the long run it is better to focus on a well balanced site with lots of quality content. Sometimes a low economic value article that is of high quality will do more to generate traffic and awareness of a site than lame articles that are chasing high paying key words. In the end this greater awareness and traffic volume may more than offset the low direct economic value of a given article.

[paul]

What I think I am beginning to understand is that really maximizing the long term rewards of your website(s) requires a much broader skill set than I have appreciated. I have had some success with my focus on content, but there are clearly other factors and techniques that can increase or decrease income, readership and SERPS.

My thought would be that applying the 80/20 rule to multiple success elements would yield the best results. For that reason I will be testing AdWords in a variety of ways. I also plan to spend more time with analytics to get a better understanding of what is going on with my specific sites.

[KLB]

Paul has made some good points.

What is interesting about all of this SEO talk is that other than maintaining a good basic overall SEO framework for my site (e.g the basics of page title, description, url, Hx tags and most basic text placement) I totally ignore the finer points of SEO. I don't worry about cherry picking keywords based on popularity in SERPs, I worry about what phrases are most important to the article at hand. There is a broad ocean of search phrases used by users on a daily basis. The broader one's net, the more users one can land. Focusing on competing for a few key phrases can an ineffective use of one's time.

My web publishing efforts are focused almost entirely on the user and user experience. I do everything I can to cause the user to want stay around and visit more pages, to want to come back later and to have a desire to tell others about my site. I also make it as easy as possible for the user to do these three things.

The other day I was looking at the "syndication" links Chris has on his blog and I thought why not do the same thing for my website? While I used text links instead of graphics, last night I added a "Syndication" section to my vertical menu to encourage people to add my RSS feed to their favorite portal homepage. This may be most successful for my careers section where users can get RSS feeds of the careers they are looking for (which would be perfect to add to a homepage). Yes there is an SEO benefit to getting users to link to my site via RSS syndication, but there is also a direct user benefit in that the more people who link to my site via one means or another, the more people who will find my site via some means other than search engines.

Paul mentioned maximizing long term rewards and I really believe that the best path to success with web publishing is to look towards maximizing long term rewards. Producing content takes lots of work, don't focus on stuff that has a short shelf life. Focus on stuff that will still be relevant or have interest to readers ten years from now. This way the content you produce will still be paying dividends for years to come. This long term prospective will make paying more for better quality articles more profitable.