Despite our SEO oriented looks, we've always had a weak spot for the thrill of online advertising here at SEMrush.
Since we already have a history of exploring the perspectives of people who manufacture and launch digital advertising, we thought it would be fair to take a closer look at what's happening on the other side of this business in 2021.
This is how we target the people who help deliver these ads to a wider audience - the vast and diverse network of online publishers, content creators and influencers scattered across the virtual plains of the Internet.
So, to uncover the secrets of online publishers, we've done what SEMrush marketers do best. We googled it. While this method worked in most cases, this time it did not.
To our confusion, we couldn't find any comprehensive study of how the advertising business thrived. But we can't get away from the mystery, so our advertising department put together a team and began research.
The results were amazing to say the least.
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Publishers were missing out on the 79% of their monetization potential in 2020.
Yes, you read that right! Online domains that sell their ad space for life reach just 21% of their monetization potential.
So the average blog and ad website loses 79% of their potential third-party ad revenue, making them the 21st loneliest number you can ever have in online advertising.
Are you a publisher, blogger or marketing partner?
We hate to be cold, but chances are that you are participating in statistics, doing five times less than you could. Oh!
These statements seem bold, but we are ready to back them up with the data collected in 30 000 domains and 20 industries. However, don't just take our word for it - see for yourself. Why not set up your website, blog, or any other online medium for a quick reality check?
You can do it completely with the new tool Adsense Benchmarkwhich we collected during our most recent market research. Just enter your domain in the search bar below to see if you are making the most of your monetization campaign. What's the worst that could happen?
What to do to monetize your site in 2021.
So how did the test go? We know, right? The numbers you see can be intimidating, but you can always change that!
On the positive side, the wider the gap between your actual and possible advertising publishing revenue, the more opportunities you have to grow your online monetization business.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, it is not so difficult to increase revenue from monetizing your domain. from 21% to this precious hundred.
Outcome: no matter how high your advertising potential is, you can fully realize it there. All you need is a magic formula ... and we designed it for you!
The magic formula for website monetization.
Whether you use Adsense or direct advertising, advertising publishing revenue is ultimately built on three main principles:
- CPC levelwhich determines the average payout you can expect from advertisers for placing their ads on your domain. Basically, it sets the maximum price that an impression, click, or targeted action can bring you.
- Organic support - the lifeblood of your monetization efforts. The more organic traffic you get, the more resources you need to display, click, and convert those ads.
- Pillar CTR - if the pillar SEO attracts potential customers to your domain, it is designed to stay long enough to interact with your content, including ads. Better user experience ( UX ) means more clicks and conversions, and advertisers love conversions.
And now that we've got the magic formula out of the way, how about using it to your advantage? Theory is fun and all, but it is the practice that makes things perfect and fun. So let's practice!
CPC Pillar - Making the most of your ad space.
Let's start with the people's champion - the pillar of the CCP. Now if you are publisherthen building a robust CPC system comes down to choosing the most profitable industry / audience / region combination to target your domain and content.
And if you - creator - blogger, artist, musician, etc. - it actually works the same way. Even if it all started with just a love of art, every content producer wants to know if they will be able to monetize their creations at some point.
If you have solid data to justify a dozen daunting decisions you have to make, it will be much easier for you to make the huge payouts for the ads you're looking for.
Site monetization methods:
Choosing your target niche.
To be financially successful, you need to make sure your content is relevant to the right topic and market demand.
Naturally, choosing the right niche and thematic keywords should be of the utmost importance to you as a publisher or creator. Especially with monetization in mind, providing the most important step in your journey with reliable marketing data seems absolutely imperative.
Choice between "popular" and "expensive".
Many inexperienced publishers succumb to the temptations of the pass-through payments offered by advertisers in certain industries. Unfortunately, not everything that glitters is gold. A high payout ad offer is only possible if there are people willing to click on the ad.
Consider trying to advertise a castle in Scotland for sale. It's expensive, good, and you can count on a good payout from the advertiser. But there are not many people currently in the market for locks, so it may take longer than you would like someone to click on your ad.
That is, the generous payouts offered by the advertiser or the impressive “average CPC” do not guarantee you huge profits. The most expensive keywords and industries will not generate much revenue for you if there is a very small market for them. However, some "outsider PDAs" can compensate for what they lack in terms of price-quality ratio.
Targeting local markets.
Adsense or not, if you want hard creative work to pay off in ad revenue, choosing one industry alone won't reduce it. Choosing your audience wisely and establishing your presence in various local markets is also important. For example, if your content is in English, you can try to resonate globally, or you can go to your local market and target a specific market - like the US - to increase your payouts. Thinking globally is good, but acting locally can be much more beneficial.
Solution: Map CPC.
The CPC Map does all the research for you, so you can make an informed decision about which industry, country, or keywords has the best monetization potential.
Our new tool handles gigantic amounts of ad data across 15 countries, various industries, and exactly 5,567,193 keywords to display in a concise, easy-to-read, fully interactive report that looks as great as this one:
Let us quickly scroll through the most common scenarios for which you can use a CPC card as a publisher or content creator:
1. A bird's eye view of the market.
The first thing you can do with a CPC map is to get a fairly detailed SitRep of what's going on in the advertising department in a particular industry, country, or state / region:
Just select a country and / or industry and get a good overview of the local ad market of your choice.
It's also a great way to find out the average CPC payouts you can expect from ad serving in a specific industry and region.
2. Researching price versus demand.
As we said, not all that glitters is gold. So, chasing the most useful keyword or industry based on payout metrics alone isn't necessarily the most lucrative option. High paying ads are unlikely to be useful to you as an ad publisher if there is little demand for the products they are trying to sell.
With a CPC map, you can compare price and demand for both industries and keywords, and find the perfect balance, or find industries and keywords that are popular and expensive to advertise in:
3. Trending.
For better or worse, little in online advertising lasts forever. Trends come and go; prices are falling and falling. But you can stay ahead of the curve with a very special section of the CPC map:
And that makes it to build the pillars of the CCP! If you're new to SEMrush tools, or more specifically the CPC map, and would like more pointers, check out our detailed workflow - How to Monetize Your Content with a CPC Map.
Organic post.
Our next guest needs no introduction - that's right; we're going to play out the SEO map in this section of our guide. Because no matter how you decide to monetize your domain - through advertising or selling your products - you can't go anywhere without organic traffic driving your entire business:
Advice for professionals: On average, moving one line in search results will increase your domain's CTR in Google search results by 30.8%.
Source: recent Baecklinko research.
We'll show you how to get fast organic traffic growth with minimal investment of time and effort. Let's call this "Occasional SEO for Busy People".
Website monetization errors.
Most publishers, bloggers and online monetization enthusiasts give up on the primitive sins of SEO.
After conducting an audit and analyzing more than 30 thousand sites using our tools, we found out the most common mistakes on publishers' sites:
The biggest SEO problems for your average publisher are pretty simple:
- Compiling a complete and honest list of your domain's SEO problems
- Eliminate problems on time
Solution: On-Page SEO Checker.
Eliminating all major technical issues alone will greatly increase the visibility of your site online, but you can always push your SEO game further. At the end of the day, reaching the top of the SERP is not only about fixing what's broken, but also about capitalizing on what's already good and improving.
You haven't heard of this from us, but it doesn't require a Ph.D. in SEO to get some professional results in a matter of months. Anyway, not with a reliable plan and smart tools that automate all the routine work for you. And, fortunately, we have a lot to offer!
Get to know SEO Checker on page.
Every hero needs an assistant. So please get acquainted! On-Page SEO Checker is a nicer and more attractive cousin to your average SEO tool that really loves people.
The short story is this: if you've ever hoped for an SEO tool that you could instantly find and start using right away, then you've got it. On-Page SEO Checker creates a list of practical (not just technical) recommendations and guides you every step of the way.
Get ideas - and act on them!
Once you successfully set up On-Page SEO Checker, it will immediately offer you dozens of optimization ideas for each page that you think needs to be improved. This data is extremely useful when it comes to pulling pages vital to your monetization campaign from deep within Google's shadow world.
The best part is that you get support from your closest online competitors! Basically, On-Page SEO Checker will gather information from the top performing competitors on your chosen page and show you how to use it to improve the odds ... in your favor.
We ourselves have harnessed the power of On Page SEO Checker to identify the 10 most common recommendations ad publishers typically encounter. Be sure to consider these ideas first, they can lead to quick and tangible results!
This covers the basics. If you're looking for a place to start learning, check out this SEO beginner's guide to monetize in our knowledge base.
Ways to Increase Your Google Adsense Profits.
Optimizing CTR for Google Adsense is like distilling your entire monetization effort.
The better you advertise to your audience, the better you can expect to convert organic traffic to dollar bills.
Another thing worth noting is that CTR is also a measure of your viability as a publisher in the eyes of Google adsense and other advertisers.
How To Increase Your Google Adsense Income.
Poor ad placement, bad calls in web design, and technical issues all contribute to a degraded user experience for your domain.
Poor user experience has a huge negative impact on how willing your audience is to interact with your advertisements, resulting in a drop in your rankings and CTR.
And although most of the problems with UXwhich hurt the CTR the most are fairly easy to solve and can be a problem to spot.
Solution: display ads.
To increase your click-through rate, you can scan competitors for original ad placement or web design ideas using display ads. Just enter their domain name and see what ad formats they use, as well as explore their top performing landing pages.
Alternatively, if you want to attract the interest of a specific advertiser or industry, you can use the Advertising Ads section in the Advertising Ads section to find out which "Publishers" prefer the advertiser to distribute their ads:
If you want to know more about display advertising tool, all its functions and how to use them in your work, check out this article in our knowledge base.
Content - Don't knock on small wins.
Content is ubiquitous and should ensure that all three pillars stand firm. This is the lifeblood of any online domain, and every advertising publisher relies heavily on the constant supply of this valuable resource.
Therefore, whether you create your content yourself or delegate this task to others, we are confident that you will be able to take advantage of the set of tools SEMrush Content Marketing in their work. This is part of the package anyway, so you can try:
- Research topic. Coming up with fresh ideas for your content can be tricky. And finding a topic that resonates with the market is even harder. Luckily, the topic exploration tool will happily take this work off your shoulders and set you up to create killer themed content in just a few clicks.
- SEO assistant. Nothing hurts an author's pride more than rewriting their masterpiece of content to be subject to SEO restrictions. SEO Writing Assistant can help you avoid this by providing unobtrusive optimization ideas for your copy, just like you bring it to life.
And if you find yourself in the shoes of an editor working with external authors, this tool will help you quickly check if their content is doing everything right in the SEO department. They love it, you love it, but this tool makes sure Google loves it too.
- Trading platform. If you're not a great writer, don't want to over-strain your creative genius, or simply don't have the workforce to scale your content strategy, the new Marketplace service is right on your way. Just give us a name, place your order and receive an artfully crafted article straight to your inbox.
4. Conclusion. How to monetize your website in 2021?
And that's all we wrote! For now, at least. We first approached the idea of digital marketing and online monetization from this perspective, but we are not going to stop there. So don't forget to tune in for more content focused on this topic in the near future.
As always, we strive to find out what you think! What pillars do you think are the most important for publishers and content creators, what was your experience in creating them, and how did it work? Feel free to share your stories, ideas and suggestions with us in the comments section below.
Thanks for your time and keep monetizing!
✔️ How To Increase Profits With Google Adsense On Your Website?
Optimize your ads and drive quality traffic.
✔️ What is the cost of a click on Google Adsense?
The cost per click depends on the country and the subject matter of your site. You can estimate the cost per click on an ad by looking at the prices in Google ads.
✔️ What are the tricks for increasing Google Adsense profits?
Arrangement of blocks for clickable positions. Change ad colors and increase website traffic.
✔️ How to find the best ad unit colors and positions?
Use A / B testing tools. This is the only way to maximize your ad unit revenue.
✔️ How to monetize a website without ads?
Five ways to make money on your website (no ads or merchandise).
Host personal events with admission fees.
Buy and sell websites.
Accept donations from users.
Create exclusive content for paid members.
Modify and cross-promote your content.
✔️ How do I get paid for advertising on my site?
4 easy ways to attract advertisers to your website.
Promote your affiliate product on your website.
Joining an affiliate program of another company.
Use targeted ads with Google Adsense.
Contact the companies directly to see if you can advertise them.
Sign up for a blog ad program.
✔️ Can you make money with free WordPress?
First, WordPress offers its own way to make money. In particular, there is the WordAds program, which is the official program that WordPress promotes. This program is similar to Google Adsense, where you earn money from ads that people see.
