A lot of webmasters talk about split-testing their ad layouts, trying to determine which layout or block position gives a higher CTR. Well, perhaps you should take it a step further.
I had a page on one of my older sites which targetted a fairly well-paying aspect of the site’s niche. I was making on average about $0.20 per click on this page, which wasn’t bad; most of the pages on the site have consistently been paying in the range of $0.05-$0.10 per click.
This week, I had a writer rewrite the page. The new version was slightly longer, but had a different feel and phrasing than the original. I updated the page with the new content late last night. This evening, roughly 24 hours after posting the new version, the page was delivering me an average $1.35 per click, nearly 7x the average I was previously getting.
It may be to early to completely rule out the possibility of today just being a fluke, but I suspect that the slightly different phrasing used when the page was re-written triggered different ads than the previous version. Perhaps a word was used in the new version that was not in the previous version. Perhaps a certain phrase came together which never appeared previously. I don’t know.
No matter what you pay per article, I would suggest that it is definately worth writing two versions of an article or page, and split test the content to determine which version gives you the best CPC. Even if you pay $25 per article, the difference will eventually be made up.
Tag:
Bookmark Murdok:
Did you like this article? Keep up with Brian’s expert search optimization tips and tricks at http://www.caydel.com
