Do you have advertising space on your pages? Do you count on making a quick buck by using unthought-of pixels on your pages? If so, you may need to reassess. In terms of organic search engine optimization, it’s now clear that advertising could be weighing a site’s rankings down.
Hosting advertisements has developed into a great way to monetise a site, but it has always been problematic. Ad-hosting site owners have always had to juggle advertising needs against user expectations. The appearance and arrangement of advertisements affects how a site is perceived. Too many advertisements can annoy users, and advertisements in the wrong places or with the wrong design can damage a site’s reputation.
These same issues are starting to affect SEO. Particularly in terms of the advertisement to content ratio, site owners have recently been encountering a number of problems in balancing SEO and marketing. Google is also starting to judge sites that put advertising before content. If you’re hosting ads on your pages, it’s time to think about the following:
*Are your ads deterring users? Organic search engine optimisation relies on traffic to keep rankings buoyant. It is absolutely vital for ad-hosting sites to consider how the advertising is affecting usability and appearance. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about finding the right balance on your pages. There have been numerous studies on ad positioning to prevent bounce rate increases.
*Are your ads deterring Google? All SEO issues have a search engine side to match the user side, and it’s no different with ad hosting. Until now, Google has been fairly quiet on the issue of ads, but with the search engine’s concentration on content quality this year, this has changed. Google now advises that any ad-hosting sites review content to ensure it is high quality, and ensure that content dominates the page.