When it comes to converting traffic on niche sites sometimes keeping it simple can go a long way.
In this article i’m going to share my experience with niche marketing and give you some of my best top 3 conversion tips to help you monetise your niche traffic with Adsense and Amazon effectively.
I’m not one for fluff, so let’s dive right in …
Tip #1: Don’t Be Lazy With KW Research & Know Thy Traffic!
You’re probably asking yourself “Errr Adam! What the heck does Keyword Research (KW) have to do with traffic conversion?”
In a word and from someone who has learnt this 1st hands in the field, everything!
Effective keyword research is like having a rock solid blueprint to a house where how well your house (=website) is built depends on how well you do your homework!
If you don’t know who your visitors are then you won’t know how to convert your visitors.
You also won’t have any metrics to provide your visitors with useful information that THEY need and be unable to segment and monetize efficiently.
We’ll cover the monetization aspect below but what do i mean by segmenting?
Segmenting 101 in a nutshell:
Let’s take an example — you want to build a website on baby prams.
So after you’ve assessed the market value of this keyword e.g., how much advertisers are paying per click (aka CPC or cost per click) and gauged the competition you’ve decided to go with a baby prams reviews keyword.
All fine and dandy but what’s next?
Well, the next step would involve segmenting that keyword into 3 High Traffic Keywords (=at least 200 local searches each with a high CPC) which will be your categories.
So now you have 3 categories for “3 types of baby prams” that you could base on the top 3 top brand names selling baby prams you’ve got some very useful intelligence that will mould the structure of your site.
You can create 3 different pages for those categories and now know EXACTLY what the visitors on those pages are looking for!
Hence in this way you won’t be alienating your traffic and providing content for your demographics.
This results in a HUGE drop in your bounce rates i.e., how fast people leave your websites because they haven’t found what they’re looking for which is an important on-page factor that determines your ranking.
Hope that makes sense?
Tip #2: Make Use Of “Proven Hot Spots” On Your Sites!
There are 2 hotspots that are the most viewed on a website but unfortunately inefficiently used.
1) 160×600 Ads On The Left Side Instead Of The Right
The hottest Spots for 160×600 ads are NOT on the right as many would have you believe. Kinda odd considering a lot of themes don’t allow you to customise your banner content to place them on the left.
However, we need to discuss a little why placing these ads on the left and NOT the right is the smart thing to do to help your conversions especially when it comes to Adsense.
The reason behind this is the way we read i.e., from left to right and NOT right to left unless your site’s language is in Arabic for example.
Have a question for you!
When was the last time YOU moved your mouse all the way to the right side of a blog you visited to click on an Adsense unit for example?
Unless that ad was REALLY enticing than probably not so often right?
So what ever action you want your visitor taking and think will give them the best value, then make sure when you’re using a 160×600 ad unit that it is on the left side of your site!
If you’re blending the ad into your content (which i briefly discuss in tip #3 below) than this will work in your favor!
2) 468×60 Ads above the fold dead center on your site.
On occasion, visitors will visit your site just out of curiosity and may not be interested in your content.
When that happens they either scroll up after having read your content, scanning as they go along or they don’t scroll down at all.
On both occassions they will see the 468×60 ad and you want to maximize the chance of them seeing the ad and clicking it.
Tip #3: Blend Your Ads Into The Content Of Your Site
The major problem with banner ads is a phenomenon called “banner blindness”.
Back in the day, where websites looked like vegas casinos with flashing banners left, right and center they would grab attention but today you’d need a REALLY eye grabbing banner to catch your visitors’ attention!
So the best way to avoid banner blindness is to once again keep it simple and try avoiding them if you’re starting out.
Instead of using irritating banners that no one is going to see anyway, start using contextual banner ads that list 3 powerful benefits and/or a solution to the problem your visitor is trying to solve.
One such contextual banner ad that is really cool especially when it comes to monetising with amazon based products is amazon’s very own Omakase.
Omakase is actually a japanese phrase that means “I’ll leave it you” and is a common term used to indicate entrustment.
So if you have a page on your site comparing 3 products with discounts via banners placed side by side, then what would be your next step?
I want you to think about this one for a second or two …
Having an Amazon Omakase banner ad on the far right that automatically matches the content on the page showing the latest discounts for the products from Amazon might be a viable step.
Why?
Because the visitor on that particular page is looking for a discount and the ad gives them EXACTLY what they’re looking for and more – A list of discounts.
And there you have it …
3 short tips to help you convert and monetize niche traffic that you might now know with Amazon and Adsense.
Hope you liked it 🙂
What about yourself? How are you converting YOUR (niche) traffic?
Share your thoughts in the comment box below and let’s synergize!
Image Credits:Toni F
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