[This is part of the Blogger's Guide to Earning More with Google Adsense.]
This is a great question but one that’s not necessarily complete. I get asked this a lot and the quick and simple answer is this: It depends.
As we discussed in the last blog post about Adsense and organic traffic one will generally see a higher CTR (click-through rate) on their advertisements with organic traffic as compared to direct traffic and/or referral-based traffic.
What that means, naturally, is if you’re trying to make a lot of income through an Adsense-based blog and/or website you’re going to want to concentrate on developing a blog that has a lot of search engine traffic.
But here’s the catch: Concentrating too much on SEO-based traffic might cost you in the long run as the formulas change and algorithms shift – you always want a good balance between the top three: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, and Search Engines.
If I had it my way I’d try to find a good balance between the three but you can’t always have a “perfect” mix – in fact, there really isn’t a perfect mix and it entirely depends on your monetization strategy short and long-term.
For example, here’s a screenshot of one blog that I manage that is destroying it in terms of organic traffic:
With over 80% organic I’m making some great money via Google Adsense and the like (and it’s not really that optimized either).
But, what happens if Google shifts their formula and/or ranking? I might lose that entire line of financial income! I’ve banked on it continuing to be a profit center but I’m not hedging my bets, so to speak, as wisely as I could. And, I’m not building a successful long-term brand with exposure through social media, social networking, and referral sites.
In addition, direct traffic increase not only brand awareness but also long-term followers and subscribers, extremely targeted traffic, exceptional loyalty (which can be capitalized long-term), and lead-generation for products, services, and small businesses. All good, right?
The point is this: Diversifying your sources of traffic is wise idea and you should try to balance your efforts from social networking site as well as organic search and depending on your particular goal (direct monetization vs organic monetization) you’ll focus on one more than the other.
It’s up to you. Cheers!
[This is part of the Blogger's Guide to Earning More with Google Adsense.]
Good point about finding a healthy balance between direct, referral-based and search engine traffic. Many people focus on only one type, usually search engine traffic only, but like you said, Google keeps on changing its algorithms and we never know for sure what sort of traffic can be more or less important down the road, so it is always good to spread your traffic a bit more and not be overly dependent on one type only.
-Jean
Good to know. All of my blogs have more than 40% Organic traffic, so that’s not too bad.
really, that’s great…! are you monetizing well?
I need to increase my referral and direct traffic to my health blog. I get about 70-80% organic traffic every day.
Contrary to what you’ve found, my organic traffic isn’t as high quality as referral traffic. Visitors arriving from referring sites normally view over 2 pages, while visitors from the SEs average about 1.4/5 page views.
Thanks for a fantastic blog.
James
sure thing james. go for it!
I like how you say balance.
Basically we shouldn’t rely too much on one stream. We should try to split it between direct traffic, social media traffic, etc.
I also don’t see as much value in organic traffic as I do referral traffic although in my case I know exactly why this is. First, I spend a lot of time commenting in other blogs (like this one) and second, much of my traffic is for a WordPress plugin. It also doesn’t help that my primary site is less than 2 months old.
I know your article is referring mostly to Adsense revenue, but what correlation have you seen between organic referrals and community?
it can increase community for sure.
I’m thinking of how to get more organic traffic, although most of my traffic sources come from Google search. Well balanced traffic source is really needed. Thanks for the post.
sure thing yanto!