Would you risk $46k a year for upto $184k a year?

Hi all, Important question, and could do with some advice...

I have a website that get's 190k people on it a day.

It's making about $46,000 a year with adsense -- I've predicted that if i change my site - it could be getting up to $184,000 -- and still have a very low CTR.

My problem is this -- the site is all static HTML. So to make the changes - would be a total redesign. This will change the way google sees the site, and change page links etc. I'll make sure all the pages redirect to the new locations, but still -- i dont know how bad it would be to make such a massive change. In my eyes, its risking what the site is getting.

The new site will be "better" coded. Much cleaner, with css. The old site is a code mess -- but it is at no.1 for all the keywords its been made for. Google should really like the new site more, but who knows with google

Putting more ads on the site -- could also put people off using it. The current design has really 1 adsense block, and 1 link unit. The new design has 2 of each. Double the ads = double the money? Thats what im hoping, but people may not like it, and leave the site. I've also heard the more ads, the less you get per click. But more clicks must = more cash???

I could just try putting the a new ad block on the index - changing only 1 html page. Just to see how it codes - but will putting this single new ad block in the index change the rank in google.

I'm basically scared to make changes to the site.


I'd really like to hear what some of you would do. I've just been lucky to get this site - i have no real knowledge of what i can/cannot do now to piss google off. Maybe i should just be happy with the cash? But maybe im being stupid, and adding these new ads wont effect google rank at all.


Cheers guys!

 

I have question, did you take your site on the top of all the keyword they needs to be? Did you worked on it's SEO? I would suggest you to don't take risk, but if you have done everything by yourself then you should go for it. And also please provide the URL of your website.

 

I have read your business model and the simple answer is NO. I do not think we could rely on Adsense as a source income. Adsense is not reliable and yet a stable predictable income for your business anyway. If you are going to risk $46k with some reasonable business model then it would be better.

 

double adverts dont mean double the income etc. I would spend time defending your keywords and also looking at other long tail keywords.
Perhaps changing logo's and color would refresh the site but dont do major changes.
perhaps add new pages with the new site design??
best of luck

to add: dont post your site here. if you need specific advice pm etc

 

Honestly, I would say go for it. Past experience tells me that if you feel strongly about something, that you should pursue it.

 

I would say not to go for it, I have redesigned many sites in the past (and everytime I ended up with poor returns - sales and search rankings). I'm not saying that you'll have the same problem but why take the chance on something that's already giving a decent return? Would you mind sharing the domain with us - or at least sending me a PM with it, if you want to keep it private.

 

I won't argue with your logic, as it is pretty risky... but think of other major companies, like facebook. They clearly aren't scared to change things up, and while users may be weirded out and complain at first, after a while it settles in and everyone is happy.

I honestly think that if you do it right, you won't regret it. I would love to have an opportunity like your own, and I applaud you for achieving even your current status (earnings like that are phenomenal for a single website).

 

Can you offer another revenue model besides Adsense, like ebooks or other services that you can sell or offer?

 

have you thought about redesigning parts of your site, maybe integrating some pages and seeing what the results are before doing a complete redo of your site.

 

Dont do it. I did the same thing and like others said lost sales and rankings.

 

I probably would not do it with the current site, but might have tried the idea on a different site.

 

I say don't risk it... $46k is a lot of money and if you do risk it and fail, you'll be losing it. You have a 50/50 chance, so are you going to gamble? Or make a for-sure win.

Choice is yours.

 

Changing code won't hurt your site. What will hurt your site in Google's eyes is a massive change of URL's, dead links. All the pages you have indexed in google are dropped and Google sets about re-indexing your site, maybe sticking you in the sandbox and you will see a massive drop in traffic. That's my experience.

On the plus side, if you can keep your URLS, meta tags,desc etc the same, go for it. I've changed complete sites - and kept the url's etc the same. The same content on the page, just the page was coded and designed differently. And google has done me no harm with those sites.

Hope this helps! Best of luck.

 

Thanks for all the replies guys -- some real mixed responses.


rockyg -- are you sure the actual code has no affect on the sites ranking?

For example, in my old version, all my links were like this (If my keyword was bubble bath):

<LINK>HOME - Go to the bubble bath homepage.<LINK>
<LINK>Read More - Read about the history of bubble bath, and how bubble bath was made!<LINK>
<LINK>About - All about bubble bath, and bubble bath products<LINK>

So ALL of the sentence is in the LINK tag. In my new verson...

<LINK>HOME<LINK> - Go to the bubble bath homepage.
<LINK>Read More<LINK> - Read about the history of bubble bath, and how bubble bath was made
<LINK>About<LINK> - All about bubble bath, and bubble bath products

Only the "titles" are the links, the other text is just info. But i'm losing the "bubble bath" keyword in the anchor text. This is a real worry for me.


Also -- does adding more adsense ads onto your page affect your keyword density, or the way google sees your page?


Thanks again all for your replies

 

The only way to see what way your site will perform best is to play around with it. But the first thing you should ask yourself is "is $46k a year enough for me?". That's a lot of money from one site. If you're doing a redesign that's cleaner and a lot more effective, then in reality, users should benefit from this and there should be little to no backlash from it, just remember that you will have to ensure that you keep the SEO as good as the first design.

Secondly, you mentioned 2 ad blocks and 2 link units, if these are both from adsense, then you'll be breaching their policy of no more than 3 lots of ads per page.

If losing the keywords in your links bother you, then gain some links external to your site to keep the backlinks up, and also consider use of the title property within your links to retain some keywords

 

I do believe those links could effect you. Though at the same time, proper coding could help you. I don't have any idea what your current site looks like or how it is coded, so its hard to say and give advice... but say for example it was highly outdated. A newer fully css driven website would outperform it by far in google as my experience has shown.

As others have mentioned though, you want to change the site, not the link structure. If it is running off of php scripting, which im sure it is... this should be hard. Just rewrite the main php files templates, and the link structure shouldnt change a bit.

 

What is your site age? If your site is new. It will be too risky.

 

I highly doubt its new. Earnings like that don't come overnight haha