What relation do ads have with search engine rankings? This is a question that would puzzle even a popular SEO company in India. This is because there is no definite answer to this question. However, due to some recent developments made by Google, one can have a better view of the scenario. Let us try to decode the curious connection between removal of ads and improvement in search engine rankings.
An algorithm change has recently been launched by Google for ad positioning. According to it, no advertisement can be put by any website above the fold. This was long due as it was reported by a lot of people that they found it quite difficult to search the content on a given page because of the dominance of advertisements. The top of the searched page was filled with commercials and one had to scroll down in order to locate the actual content. This prompted Google to come up with ‘Above the fold penalty’.
If you do not want to be penalized and want to improve your rankings, put your advertisements either in the middle or bottom of your content.
Excessive number of commercials keeps your target audience away which ultimately affects your SE rankings. This is how it happens: When a user visits your page via Google search and finds out that it contains too many advertisements so that the content cannot be easily read, he goes back to the search page and explores other options. When this happens repeatedly, your bounce rate increases which is interpreted by Google as negative data i.e. the content available on the site is incompatible with the search query. This brings down your ranking significantly in search engine.
This problem can be tackled by maintaining a healthy ratio between content and advertisements, feels SEO company in India.
If the ads are removed from the pages, you can be benefited in a number of ways such as:
- Improvement in page load speed since addition of third party advertisements code increases page load execution time
- Decrease in bounce rate because of easy availability of content on your site
However, there is one big problem with removal of commercials. We all know that most website owners and bloggers earn a part of their revenue by placing ads on their sites. If these commercials are removed, it can result in a big loss of revenue. Though it might not affect website owners very greatly, bloggers can be severely affected by it and the whole effort of blogging might come to waste.
But it has to be understood that the trick lies not in removing ads altogether but using them with discretion and smartness so that they bring in the required revenues without hampering search engine rankings.
Here are some tips for that:
- Avoid mixing ads and content
- Text ads are better than video or image ads because the page load can be kept as low as possible
- Keep an eye on the ads unit per page and try to adhere to the ‘3 ads unit per page’ rule suggested by Google AdSense
Follow these guidelines and see your ranking go up remarkably.
