SEO value of a 'Most Popular Stories' widget?
-
Hi there,
I work for a theater and live performances publishing site. We write 15-20 quality articles per day on the New York City and national theater community.
We show a "Most Read" stories widget on all of our pages, but click rates for these are really low - 1% of readers click to read a story from this.
As such we're considering replacing this with higher-value content.
My question, however, is this: Is there any SEO value in keeping this widget? I want to make sure we're taking this aspect into consideration.
Thank you!
-
At Moz, we've considered using one to better serve our content. Many allow you to "buy out" the ads and only show your own content.
-
For small brands, most definitely yes. But ESPN uses Outbrain and I don't think it damages their credibility or brand.
-
If you are referring to the "stinky" nature of these ads, then my personal opinion is "yes". Although, I have not seen any formal studies where someone devised tests to determine the impact upon the brand. I don't run them on my site because I think that they can damage the credibility of my content when those types of ads are adjacent to it. So, instead, I promote my own content, hoping to earn additional pageviews and the income from other forms of advertising that will come with those pageviews.
-
Is there any evidence that using Taboola, Outbrain, etc., style ads negatively affect the host brand, causing said host brand to lose future visitors?
-
but click rates for these are really low - 1% of readers click to read a story from this.
"Most popular stories" widgets are usually really valuable. Don't replace the widget until you test a better version.
If you go to some of the big news sites, at the bottom of articles you will see the content marketing ads run by Taboola, Outbrain, ContentAd, Gravity and Adblade. These have big, juicy, provocative images and quite honestly, they are a bit stinky. However, you can learn something from them. Learn their format and try a widget with very attractive images about your articles, with a caption that elicits clicks. I think that you will get more than one percent click rate.
IF "Most popular stories" does not work then try "Related Stories"..... Really nice images are very important for these to succeed, but they can succeed spectacularly if you have the right kind of image and content that catches the visitor's desire for more.
Look at the Gravity ads on the bottom of this Forbes article.
ADDED: Since you are a news site, you might make a "most recent" widget because people are looking for the fresh news.
Something important about running "most popular" and "related stories" widgets. If you have them on a page that is sleepy content or uninspiring the visitor might not be motivated to click your widget because they expect to find "more of the same". Including sleepy or uninspiring content in the widget will assure that it will not be clicked. Good images and spectacular images can perform very differently. Strive to have spectacular images.
Also, the widgets need to be updated frequently. If you have lots of returning visitors, if they have already seen your widget and clicked the interesting items, showing that same widget over and over again will produce worse results. We update our widgets several times per hour with all different content.
-
As the widget is on each page of your site, it is generating a lot of internal links to these articles. If these articles have value for search, it could help them to get better positions.
On the other side, widgets like these are very ofter positioned in the same column as advertising, newsletter subscriptionboxes, ...etc - so I am not sure if Google attributes the same value to these links as to the links which are really embedded/integrated in your content.
If you can replace it by higher value content I would do it - but you'll have to make sure that the new content has indeed a higher value for your visits (try some A/B testing and check vitals stats like bouncerate, avg time on site, pageviews/visit, clickrates,..)
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How important are 'anchor' text links now
We have started building some good links but I'm just wandering how important anchor based text ones are now.
Link Building | | nick-name123
I'm not talking about spamming/going too heavy but a few here and there. What's your recent experience?0 -
SEO value of links from international TLDs to local (.be/.nl) TLDs
I'm linkbuilding for a couple of websitew of mine with TLD's of .be and .nl. When i look at my competitors, i see they also have backlinks from .com, .cz,... But do those international backlink account for any value (link juice) being past on?
Link Building | | RoderickG0 -
How relevant are citations to SEO?
'How much do citations help your seo in view of the direction that google seems to be headed where content is king? Should the citations not be relevant to your site?'.
Link Building | | arthureray0 -
Does Adding Affiliate ID's to Link Affects it's Value
Hello, I have a question about adding Affiliate ID's to links. I receive a DoFollow link to my website with an affiliate ID in order to track the leads and the traffic that comes from each affiliate link/website. does this link (with the affiliate ID) pass Juice from the affiliate website? (I use canonical link element on my website pages)? how does Google deals with links with affiliate IDs ? is adding Affiliate ID to links reduces it's value?
Link Building | | JonsonSwartz0 -
My friend seems to have been hit my Negative SEO
A friend of mine has asked me to help him out as he seems to have been hit by Negative SEO. His ranks have recently dropped and that seems to coincide with the following email he got. I have changed the web address Small gif for you and you f%$£@£ seo spamers http://www.website.com/website keyword : website now your site go down in google you f$%$£@g bastard !!! urls list ofer 5000 They have then listed him in 5000 blog comments which has seemed to cause his ranks to drop off the radar. I am going to help him out free of charge as he is a good mate, I am seeing conflicting stories on here some saying Negative SEO is a myth, others saying its very real. Anybody got any tips on how to resolve this quickly? Thanks James
Link Building | | tempowebdesign0 -
Local SEO: Citation Consistency
My company manages local SEO campaigns for local-service SMBs (e.g. plumbers, dentists). One of the things we do is claim and manage directory listings. To provide trackable results, we apply tracking phone numbers to the directory listings, but those phone numbers don't match the phone number listed on the client's site. So we have a problem from a citation consistency standpoint. On the one hand, we'd like everything to be consistent -- business name, address and phone number -- to achieve citation consistency. On the other hand, we want to prove the value of what we're doing by showing the client data from tracked phone calls. Can we provide best-practice Local SEO and Maps Optimization - and achieve citation consistency - even if we're introducing inconsistency by using tracking numbers?
Link Building | | Aspirant10 -
How to focus SEO efforts on a single country?
I hope this one isn't too obvious a question to ask, as I'm sure it's been asked before. However - I'm considering a new site which would be focussed entirely on a UK market. US and other world traffic would be effectively useless. Using social media and standard linkbuilding techniques, how do I focus my efforts on the UK market? Getting links from .co.uk, I guess - what else? Or is it just "SEO generally and some of it'll be for the UK"?
Link Building | | Cairmen0 -
Outbound links and their pro's and con's
So I was wondering if there was a general consensis regarding the amount of outbound links you have coming from your domain to other domains and if there is a correlation between the more you have going out, the more (for want of a better word) damage you can do to your domain. EG: is a site with good domain authority better to keep the short leash on handing out links to external sites? Does this make the link juice from the site more valuable?
Link Building | | Daylan0