Using Your Most Viewed Articles For Better Conversions

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If you have noticed, when it comes to making money online, I am a strong advocate for putting up ads – in the right places. Ads should in my opinion be visible while being non intrusive. If you ask me, I totally disagree that any ad should be placed within the body of your content. Your content should be totally free of such eye pollutants in order to provide users with better reading experience. After all, you do want them to read what you have to say, right? Also please note, that I am not talking about images that complement your posts (those are good and highly recommended). Now, you maybe asking what the h… does this have anything to do with better conversions? Read on.

Placing Single Ads On Most Visited Articles

You all have heard of related topics, right. How about related ads? Related ads can also be good complements to your post. If you are writing something about keywords, a premium keyword plugin would be a related ad. If you are talking about web hosting, a web hosting service would be good ad too. And so on.

The ads placement now comes into play and I strongly recommend for you to put it at the end of the post (not before or in the middle). This way, it will still be non intrusive and not distract your readers.

Why most visited articles and how to spot them?

This sounds obvious, but really, this is where you should leverage on most of your organic visitors. These are the ones that normally bring targeted users and are the ones that interest you more to improve and increase blog conversion rates. I am talking about using this method only for older articles and not fresh ones. Older articles are already indexed and cached and hopefully have good rankings on search engines. Use your webmaster tools, analytics, SEO Tools, or any other tools for internet marketing that you’ve got to find which articles are mostly visited by users coming from search engines and specific referrers such as StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc. here is an example.

Using Google Analytics Tool:

Log in to your GA account and from your dashboard select content. This is where you will find everything you need to know about your contents behavior. At the bottom part of your stats, you will see “top content”. This is what you are looking for. Now head over to those pages, edit them, and put in your ads or add some affiliate links, as described above.

content_analytics_analysis

What kind of ads should you set up?

A 468X60 banner is what I have found to work well. Obviously you can experiment with different types of ads or if you do not want to add any ads at all, search for keywords in the body of the post and create some links to affiliate products if you think that it may work better for you. The idea is to take advantage of the fact that these pages are the ones that are driving more traffic to your website.

There you have it. Simple but effective. There are a lot of other ways to increase conversion, and this is one that can work well. Give it a try and see how it goes for you. If you have tried this before, I will be interested in knowing what your experience is. How effective was it? Did it increase your conversion?

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

37 thoughts on “Using Your Most Viewed Articles For Better Conversions”

  • Hi DiTesco, thank you so much for starting this topic today. I have a question that I’m sure you can help me with. I’m using a plugin called AdSense Optimizer and I configured it to place the ads at the bottom just as you suggested. Last week when I published a post all of a sudden the ads were appearing on top of the post – Yuck! So I took the ad down but maybe I just need to try another plugin. Which one is your favorite?

    Thanks for this advice – taking a closer look at Google Analytics is a great idea to start off the week with.

    • Hi Ileane. My favorite is “AdSense Optimizer”. That is the plugin I use for all of my wesbites. I do not use it here because I only put ads on certain posts as per my recommendation above. You can individually disable AdSense ads when using optimizer with the tag when you want. Check your settings under the “single post & static pages” and make sure you have the right placement (position: bottom, alignment: whatever) and put zero for characters. Those that you don’t use and under multiple post, I usually select all as “don’t show”.

      Hope this helps.

  • Hi DiTesco

    I haven’t started putting ads on my site yet. Just my Etsy store button…don’t know if that counts?! I found this post very interesting cos when I do start introducing related affiliate products I was wondering where I would put them as I don’t want them taking over my site. Thanks for sharing. This post has been really helpful.

    Patricia Perth Australia

    • Hi Patricia. No that Etsy button does not count 🙂 and YES, I think it is in the right place. It is not intrusive and the button is simple and yet effective. As for the future, yeah, try to put related products only in the bottom. Let your visitors read first what you have to say and when they reach the end, they will eventually see it.

  • If you have a product related to your article putting a link to it at the end, in my opinion, it complements the article offering something that may apply what you wrote about.
    So the main part is to have related ads, just my opinion

    • Hi Alex. Your opinion matters and I thank you for it. Basically this is what I talking about and having a product that is relevant to your article is indeed a good complement. It is actually wise to put it in there to see how it converts 🙂

  • thanks for your article, it’s helpful for me. i found ‘using google analytics tool’ section of your article useful for me. thanks again for sharing this.

    • You are welcome Rahul. Glad you found the GA section useful. Thanks for stopping by.

  • I haven’t had a ton of ads on my site until recently. I am not sure that anyone starting up a new website should have ads all over it, but I’m no expert. I have reached a certain milestone when it comes to google rank, alexa rank, and # of visitors so I began placing affiliate ads on the site. I have done some testing and found that placing an ad in the PS section of my post is clicked more than the banner ads I have in the sidebars. Weird.

    • Hi Susan. Just been over your website and your articles are free from ads and clean. You are right though that anyone starting a website should take extreme caution when putting up ads. They may scare potential visitors away and that is not good. All in all, you seem to have something going over there and I wish you very much success. Thanks for stopping by

  • You are absolutely right. The old content has proven already that it is valuable and useful, as otherwise people wouldn’t find it. So, this is an extremely powerful way to leverage the revenue from the blog.

    • Hi Peter. It is indeed powerful to leverage on old content specially if they have good rankings and are pillar type articles. It works well for me and I do not see any reason why it won’t for anybody. Just make sure you “get” those stats first and maybe look at trends in products. This way if there is any particular product that is hot and you may have a relevant article to display it with all the better.

  • Great advice! Another thing that I do to capitalize on high ranking posts is to list them on your About Me page. This is one of my most viewed pages and I find it helpful for readers to see your best posts.

    • Hi Kevin. That is a good idea and recommended too, although I do not think that it has such a good impact as we are talking about “searchers” landing on specific post and most of the time, they won’t be looking at your “about me” page. Thanks

  • Hi DiTesco, I read some another blog that explain about AdSense, but they commonly suggest to place ads in the article. They said this method more effective to get click on the AdSense. I need more explain from you why you suggest contrary. Are your method more effective? If your method more effective, and this method is proven, I think I will do your suggestion. Please answer my question. Thanks for your help.

    • Hi Ayati. My method is not necessarily more effective than others because it depends on several factors. The suggestions you see about placing AdSense ads within the body of an article can work, specially if they are “Made for Adsense” type websites. Here, I am recommending a technique that is specific for “most viewed” post only and not in general terms. Do I recommend to place AdSense within the body of you article? My answer would still be NO, but that is a choice that will only depend on your experience and how things work for you. I prefer to provide my readers with the less distraction possible and have them “roam” around if they want to later.

  • This was a really interesting article. Basically contextual advertising, but with regular ads or affiliate links. I haven’t yet gone back to place ads on my older posts, but it seems like a really good idea. I’ll have to review my posts for this purpose.

    • Hello Richard. Yeah! You can put it that way too, contextual advertising, although in this case targeted 🙂 Use your favorite webmaster tools to find those “killer” posts and use them to your advantage. I’ll be interested to know how it goes for you. Thanks!

  • Hi DiTesco, wonderful article indeed. The best way to make more money with your blog is by finding those articles which attracted large number of visitors and use advertisements in it. I am trying it with my blog, but I have seen results already.

    • Hello Sathish. Good to know that this method has already brought you some positive results. So to show you that it works and I am glad you shared your experience. This is further proof that when done properly, it may work well. thanks for stopping by

  • I have not thought of this, I have used my popular posts to drive more traffic but never used them to make more money. Why are the simple things so hard to come across? 😛

    • Hello Dean. The simple things that “matter” are sometimes hard to find simply because there are people who for some reason prefer not to share it with others. While this is simple, it does not work on its own and should be acted upon, just like anything else. Glad you found this useful and thanks for stopping by

  • Actually Ditesco, Google Analytic’s reporting has been very inaccurate for me of late so I no longer trust it. I do monitor the popularity of my individual posts using a WP plugin and the ones that are getting a lot of hits I have been placing relevant ads at the end of the post.

    People have actually been clicking on these ads but as of yet very little conversions. Still it’s early days yet.

    So, what I’m trying to say is that I reckon your post is right on the mark.

    • Hi Sire. Good to know that you are using this method and it really does not matter which “stat” tool you are using as long as it provides some information you can work with. I have been using this method and as you said, CTR has dramatically increased, although conversions are still somewhat low. Low but it does convert. What I found interesting is that once in a while I change the ads and see which ones converts better. Thanks for stopping by.

      • Say DiTesco, seeing as how you are the Google analytic guru, any idea why it’s not reporting my stats properly? I mean it’s telling me I’m getting less than 10 visits a day on Wassup and I know I get way more than that.

        • Hello Sire. Me, a GA Guru, hardly, but I do play around with it lots 🙂 Now, as far as your stats are concern, you are absolutely right, i is no way that you get 10 visitors a day. I’ll at the very add another zero in there and maybe it is still under… The only thing I can think of right now is that you have your code messed up somehow. Are you using a plugin to place the code or is it somewhere on your header.php, footer, etc… I had a problem once and what I did was to unistall the code and reinstalled a fresh one right before the closing body. That aside, it is a mystery to me. Any luck from Google’s support team? Sorry, wanted to be of more help

          • I haven’t asked them yet. Your suggestion sounds good though so I may try that. I’ll let you know how it goes.

  • Great post! Im glad that I saw this today because I was just contemplating putting ads in the body of my posts. You gave a good rationale for not doing it. I see a lot of A-list bloggers doing this and honestly its a bit annoying but it obviously works for them. Im leaning toward not doing it. Thanks for the post!

    • Hello Estava. Good to see you here, and you are right about those A-Listers. They are doing it because they already have a very established brand and popularity and not all of them do. We B-Listers (ahem), could pretty much do what we want to do, and I choose to not put ads within the body of my content. If your post is always good like the “commando” (still LMAO), I think you are better off putting your ads in the end.

  • Great way to optimize your pages DiTesco! I really need to get with the program with this. It’s just a matter of setting the time aside and being strategic about it.

    I love GA … such a wealth of information at your fingertips and a powerful tool if you CHOOSE to use it.

    Thanks for sharing this great idea… guess I’m going to have to add it to my to-do list. 😉

    • Hello Michele. Don’t you just love GA and the info it provides. As you said, it is a very powerful tool and one just have to dig into it a little deeper because there is something good to extract from it. As for putting this on your todo list, may I suggest using BaseCamp… I heard it rocks, LOL (just kidding)

  • I actually did this for one of my blogs; I took the top posts and went back through, checking out what links I had and noticed that I wasn’t really linking out in an optimized manner – took about an hour to dig through it all but already I’ve seen some affiliate commissions go up by at least 10-20%.

    I’ve also done this on my personal blog (Murlu) – I created a landing page that collected a lot of the best posts so when people do come to the blog, through a guest post, they can start off with a great set.

    The key point is that just because you’ve already complete a post; doesn’t mean that you should forget about it – optimize it!

    • Hi Murlu. I absolutely love your comment. “The key point is that just because you’ve already complete a post; doesn’t mean that you should forget about it – optimize it!”. That’s it and nothing really more to say. Good for you that its working well. I also like the idea about setting up a page of “best” collected post. Thanks for stopping by.

  • I have a banner ad at the top of my site, next to the site name. Would it be better if I moved it to the bottom? Thanks for the great post.

    • Hi Hunter. I have seen your banner and that serves its purpose, because it is sitewide and does not get in the way of your article. You should leave that there. Instead add some affiliate links or banner ads at the end of the post in your most viewed articles. See how it goes.

  • This is something I need to do more of, but I had limited success with one of my articles. I had an article about how to try and get a Canon printer to work with Windows 7 64 bit and thought advertising some other top printers in same class would be a good match, but haven’t had much luck.

    • Oh well Justin. Not every single promotion is a perfect fit and I found that “bulky” products such as printers are more unlikely to convert than say for example, some software specific for Windows 7. Not sure about this but, it is worth the try. Keep doing it though as it is a good form of promotion.

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