Earn More: A Comprehensive Guide to Increasing RPMs, Optimizing Your Revenue, and Growing Traffic
As Q4 approaches we want all our publishers to be in the best position to optimize their ad earnings to take advantage of high direct advertising CPM dollars coming in. We’ve put together this comprehensive guide to give you all the information you need to optimize your site for higher RPMs, increased traffic and engagement and overall increase in your revenue.
In addition to industry best practices, and premium suggestions from our experts, we also have a range of products that are available exclusively to SHE Media Collective publishers.
We believe that every publisher can increase their earnings starting today by following the 5 advised steps below.
Update Your Ads.txt
Ads.txt is an important protocol that lists all the authorized providers to run their ad inventory on a site. Ads.txt was created to prevent harmful behavior on websites. All advertising networks and providers require these lines, so it's important to make sure that your ads.txt file is always up to date.
And ads.txt lives on a website's root domain. To Check if your ads.txt is up to date, on your browser type yourdomain/ads.txt (no www) and the image below should pop up which shows that your ads.txt file is up to date. If you don’t see this, contact support@shemedia.com
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
If you use the SHE Media WordPress plugin —SHE Media Infuse Plugin— your ads.txt file will always be automatically updated. If your site is on Squarespace, our onboarding process covers your ads.txt file regularly updated automatically.
Here are some important articles to help make sure your ads.txt is always up to date:
2. Implement Ad Layout Best Practices
SHE Media ad layout best practices meet and even surpass industry standards as we have honed and perfected them over the years. We are always up to date on trending ad sizes, new products, and more. For optimal ad layout to increase your RPMs, Follow these best practices.
Be open to changing your ad sizes.
As we mentioned above ad sizes can change in popularity for advertisers. Not that long ago, 160x600 ads were popular for sidebars, but inventory began to dwindle - so we've pivoted to using 300x600 ad sizes. Just by making a small change by switching to trending and high-performing ad sizes, you’ll see an increase in revenue. Ask our team if there are any swaps to make.
When in doubt, use a Flex Ad
We have quite a few ad types that are flex ads. Flex ad units contain many ad sizes that can fill that one slot, giving you endless possibilities no matter what inventory is available. Our flex in-content ad types are filled with sizes optimized for desktop and mobile. Our flex banner contains larger banners that are often used in the direct-sold campaigns we offer.
Optimize ad placement and use different ad types
Don't hesitate to try different ad types on your websites. We recommend placing a minimum of 5 ads per page. You can place Video, display, and native ads as they all work together to provide you with increased RPMs and the best income possible.
3. Activate SHE Media Products to Increase Earnings
SHE Media has several products that are available for you to increase your revenue and traffic. In addition to your standard ad revenue, these products provide additional ways to earn and reach wider audiences.
Some of you have these products activated already but there are still many publishers missing out on these opportunities. Look through the list of products and make sure you are opted-in to all. I want these products.
Video Ads: Run video ads on your site or monetize your video content for additional revenue. Opt-in
Whizzco: Place and rotate several native partners within one content recommendation widget for revenue lift. Opt-in
Hindsight: Include a content recommendation box that houses links to other articles within your site and an in-content ad unit. Opt-in
Remixd: Activate audio articles to convert blog posts and articles to audio format. Opt-in
Flex Ad Units: Install flex ad units to maximize CPM, and ad fill rate, and for better ad responsiveness on mobile and desktop. Opt-in
Simplefeed: Get placement in up to 6 industry-leading syndication platforms including Apple News, MSN, Google News, and more. Opt-in
Pushly: Prompt site visits, newsletter signup, etc. with desktop and Andriod mobile notifications. Opt-in
Tapbio: Convert your social audience to site visitors. Opt-in
Fewcents: Collect small contributions, payments, and tips from your audience. Opt-in
PubExchange: Recirculate your content for Traffic and audience growth. Opt-In
Click here to see a comprehensive explanation and breakdown of each product.
4. Grow Your Traffic & Audiences with Simplefeed
SHE Media’s new partnership with Simplefeed offers a tangible and direct path for our publishers for placements in 6 leading industry syndication platforms (AppleNews, MSN, Google News, Newsbreak, Smartnews, Samsung News). SimpleFeed uses its syndication technology solutions, experience, and relationships with leading news aggregators to streamline content redistribution for publishers. Content redistribution leads to significant increase in web traffic from referrals and ad revenue on each platform. These syndication platforms also offer in-platform earning opportunities.
SHE Media x Simplefeed deal offers syndication placement and technical services at an 80% discounted rate to SHE Media Collective members.
Simplefeed works on a rev-share deal MSN so getting started will require no upfront costs.
Syndication platforms frequently perform in the top 10 of traffic sources for Collective sites.
For more information, visit the FAQs page. To sign up for SimpleFeed, visit the Landing Page.
5. Increase Your Page RPM with these Best Practices
Page RPM is a metric measuring estimated publisher earnings and ad impressions for every thousand page views. You can find your RPMs on the SHE Media dashboard. The Higher your RPM the higher you’ll earn.
Create Longform and High-quality content
By now, you should already know this but it’s worth reminding you that the fastest and surest way to get and secure higher RPMs is by creating and maintaining high-quality content. Put simply, the higher your content quality, the better your RPMs. add value. Quality content should be well researched, offering a unique perceptive to the topic and providing comprehensive information to readers. Longform content also contributes to quality as it shows the author has covered different angles of the topic.
Shorter Paragraphs and Use More Subheadings
While you’re writing longer content and increasing your word count, keep the paragraphs short. Short paragraphs grab users' attention more as they are not intimidated by a large block of text. Also, break your content up with sub-headings and make sure to make them H2 and H3 (Heading tags appear in a range from H1-H6, H1 being the most important topic/Blog title). Using subheadings is also an SEO best practice as you can insert your secondary keywords into subheadings and that hierarchical structure signals the relevance of your content to Google Crawlers
Page Layout and UX quality
The quality of user experience on your site affects RPM. If the UX is difficult to navigate, filled with pop-ups, etc. users will leave the site leading to higher bounce rates. You should also grab users' attention with CTAs and internal linking to keep them on your site longer. Proper internal linking will keep users browsing, and visiting several pages and articles on your site.
Increase the Font Size
Increasing your font size and line height (i.e. the size of the space between lines) is one easy way to improve user experience and secure higher RPMS. When a font is large, it is easier for users to read and browse your site - particularly on mobile. We recommend you Increase your site font size to at least 14-16 pt.
Image Quality
Higher-quality images make for a better user experience and contribute to overall site quality. Images keep a user engaged as the visual stimuli make for a more enriching experience on your site. If your content is 800+ words add at least two images (header images + in-content image). Visit these two websites to get free high-quality images. Also keep users engaged by adding image galleries, videos, etc.
Fix Technical issues and site speed
Slow site speed leads to higher bounce rates lead to lower RPMs. If your site speed is slow, users will leave the page before your content loads and before ads are served. To increase your site speed, optimize your images, fix broken links, and optimize your core web vitals. Google Page Speed Insights is a useful tool to identify technical issues in your site so you can start to fix them.
Follow SHE Media ad layout recommendations and best practices.
We have outlined ad layout recommendations above. Flex ads, video ads, banner ads, and having at least 5 ads per page will help increase your RPMs.