Lest You Make This SEO Mistake Too

What if I say I get a lion share of my traffic from referring sites than that of search engines.

It’s still traffic, is it not?

Yes, it is but social traffic isn’t the kind targeted traffic you should be proud of if you want to make money blogging.

Sure, some of you are social bloggers and money isn’t really part of the blogging equation but for this online friend of mine, it could perhaps be her bread and butter.

I was chatting with her yesterday who told me that,

“Actually, I feel more of my blogs as liabilities at the moment. It’s not earning that much, will hope to see more benefits out of it in the future.”

Like it or not, she is not the only one. My guess is the majority of the readers here are not earning as much as they should have.

Now, the conventional wisdom tells us to

Uncover what your readers really want and write with theirs in mind. If you master the art, the rest is cake.

Sound easy, isn’t it? Not necessarily so.

When I started this blog in May 2008, I wasn’t in it for money. I wasn’t trying to make a living out of it. Sure, I did experiment with AdSense which was then probably the most obvious way of monetizing my content.

And, just like everyone else who are blogging about blogging, it didn’t work. The primary reason why it didn’t work is that your readers and subscribers don’t click your ads (or buy through your affiliate links).

Even if they do, those Adsense clicks are pretty much worthless.

Courtney once wrote

If you want to get absolutely worthless Adsense clicks, all you have to do is create a blog about blogging. It works like a charm and helps your entire Adsense account to generate worthless clicks…….

This may have led you to believe that Adsense is worthless, even though it’s still one of the best money makers out there.

Yes, you can still make money with Adsense or affiliating.

But you need traffic. Not just any kind of traffic. Not from Twitter, not from being on the front page of Digg.

You need targeted traffic. You need relevant traffic from search engines.

Social Traffic vs Organic Traffic

Search engine visitors are the ones most likely to click on your ads, far more so than the regular subscribers.

Search engine visitors are on a journey to find some information, if they can’t find what they want on your site then they might as well find it on one of the advertisers sites, and that’s the good thing about Adsense – the ads are relevant to the visitors.

Since I was a social blogger, I’ve neglected the crucial element of on-page SEO. That is, I took for granted the importance of relevant keyword on my post titles.

Here, relevancy is understood as the ‘exact keywords’ the internet users are typing into Google.

What’s the point of being #1 in Google if no one is using that keyword to search online?

It is very unlikely to receive any traffic from Google so no matter how much efforts are put into developing the site or marketing it, those efforts will be futile as nobody is looking for the search term, for instance, “Lest You Make This SEO Mistake Too”.

In short, I didn’t write for search engines.

It was a mistake.

And since I have Adsense on my blog, that SEO mistake alone translated into more ads impressions and ultimately poor click-through rate (CTR).

Less is More

Here’s the thing, when a site is getting more impressions and less clicks, it will affect each and every site in your Adsense account. They call it, “Smart Pricing”. Basically, if you are smart-priced by Google, you’ll be getting only $0.10 for what’s supposed to be worth $1.

Yes, it does affect your entire Adsense account.

And for this reason alone, I’ve decided to show Adsense to search engine traffic only. After all, what’s the point of showing Adsense if you don’t click on it?

Put simply, if you are monetizing your content with Adsense, you want to use it on sites that get most of the traffic from search engines.

And through proper use of relevant keywords on your post title, you might have a decent shot at increasing targeted traffic to your site.

Perhaps, the above words of wisdom should have been

Uncover what your readers and internet users really want and write with theirs in mind. If you master the art, the rest is cake.

Let’s put it another way,

Unless you are a social blogger and your blogging success is defined as having the most no. of Twitter followers or hitting the front page of Digg, Google is still your best friend.

It’s free, targeted and more importantly, it pays your bills.

PS: With the help of Platinum SEO, the title of this article has been changed to How To Increase Targeted Web Site Traffic?

Walmart $4 Prescriptions – Paydex Score

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Tagged as: Adsense, Google, organic traffic, target traffic