Authority (quality) of inbound links and smart pricing

Thinking out loud that quality IBLs likely boost your income several ways

[Webwork]

Awhile ago I mused that one possible RPC (revenue per click) variable that might affect smart pricing could be "click latency": the time between ads being delivered to a webpage and the time "of the click away". My theory was that MFA sites would have a history of a very short "click latency", allowing for an inference that there wasn't much of interest on the webpage or website save for the ads - which were clicked rather quickly after delivery.

Another consideration I'd have in mind, IF I were designing a smart pricing algorithm, (Who knows? Maybe I am. ;) ) would be to consider the quality/authority of the inbound links to a website or webpage, the theory being that such links are a significant indicator of quality and, presumably, topical relevance. Great links likely also deliver a nice load of traffic too.

Anyone see any indication that the quality of IBLs to a page or a site "give lift" to your sites revenue stream? Ever run an intentional or "happy accident" test? It strikes me as logical that if your website is about "green widgets" and the National Green Widget Institute (.gov) links to your site then your content/traffic value or traffic rating might benefit from that "signal".

This leads me to ask: Has anyone ever witnessed a RPC boost from recent luck in "being linked to"?

Has anyone ever tried to "fix" a sagging RPC by getting a few more quality links?

IF, in addition to signals of your writing skill and knowledge - inbound traffic quality matters THEN a few links from quality/authoritative sources SHOULD DO 2 things for your website: a) deliver a better quality of visitor (reasonable presumption) AND, b) also send a signal of a "further vote in favor of quality". (Unless the linking site is known to sell links . . ahem . . )

Try this: Slow the click latency of your webpages by moving the ad a bit lower on the content part of the page AND seek to upgrade your inbound links. Then tell me how your RPC varies.

Food for thought. Junk food? I dunno. My guess is that many of the sagging RPC websites are suffering from a form of link rot or rotten links.

"Evergreen content afterthought": Although content may be evergreen the fact that no one has linked to it lately may be a signal that "one man's evergreenness is another man's outdatedness". ;-P

[edited by: Webwork at 6:37 pm (utc) on Jan. 18, 2008]

[radix]

Should this work the other way, too? I mean what if you get the lowest quality links? What if your competitor places links to your site into a bad spammy neighborhood?

[FattyB]

I don't think this can be the case...not for my own site anyway. We have tens of thousands of links and lots from likes of BBC, big newspapers etc.

[europeforvisitors]

I'm very skeptical that quality of inbound links would have a direct, measurable effect on smart pricing, although there's no reason why Google Search "TrustRank" couldn't be one factor in the AdSense compensation formula. (Which isn't to say that it is--only that it could be.)

[FattyB]

Well trustrank would not surprise me and would in fact tie in with something that happened to us on Google News...though a little time apart and Adsense has continued to fall after the initial cliff drop.

[Hobbs]

As you said Webwork, a good link should boost the quality of that page's inbound traffic relevance, interest in the topic, which should translate to better conversions for on topic advertisers, no bariner.

But would it be part of Google's smartpricing algo?
Not so sure, I have well performing deep pages with no external inbound links, I also have low performing pages with quality inbound external links.

A fiend of mine toyed with the idea that an inbound link can affect the type of ads on that page, I told her I don't agree it could happen, but in Google land anything is possible.

A link is a good thing in general, period.

[jomaxx]

This ranks right alongside the "moldy content" theory as something that, to my mind, has no connection whatsoever to the quality or relevance of the traffic that is being delivered to the advertiser.

[europeforvisitors]

As you said Webwork, a good link should boost the quality of that page's inbound traffic relevance, interest in the topic, which should translate to better conversions for on topic advertisers, no bariner.

But why? Let's say you've got a site called "Behind the Bible: The Secret Life of Jesus." The BBC links to your home page, which has AdSense ads for Bibles. The BBC link may speak well for the editorial quality of your site,but it doesn't mean your readers are more likely to buy Bibles than the readers are at New-Bible-Translation-Reviews.com. In fact, your readers may be less likely to buy Bibles, since they're presumably looking for information that they haven't already read in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Again, I can imagine that Google could TrustRank or authority status to influence the percentage payout (why not pay a bigger cut to sites that benefit the Web and the Google Search experience?), but that's a whole separate issue from conversions and smart pricing.

[buckworks]

The foremost issue for the Smart Pricing algo to analyze would be the productivity of the traffic your site is sending to the advertisers.

It would be more important to discern whether those visitors are doing what the advertiser wants them to do, than to study where you're getting your links from.

[Hobbs]

but it doesn't mean your readers are more likely to buy Bibles than the readers are at New-Bible-Translation-Reviews.com. In fact, your readers may be less likely to buy Bibles, since they're presumably looking for information that they haven't already read in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

I have no idea why you assume so much about the link being to an info site and comparing against a review site, let's untangle, widgetize and simplify.

A link from BlueWidgetsDaily.org to your your blue widgets page will rank you higher for the blue widgets keyword and send you traffic interested in blue widgets, if you have ads about blue widgets on the page, you will see higher targeted traffic clicking ads on that page, plain and simple.

An authoritative related link will boost your targeted traffic hence earnings, leave smartpricing out of it if you want more facts than speculation.

[europeforvisitors]

An authoritative related link will boost your targeted traffic hence earnings, leave smartpricing out of it if you want more facts than speculation.

If you want to leave smart pricing out of it, we'd better ask the moderator to edit this thread's subject line and first post.:-)

[jomaxx]

It's old, old news that quality IBLs can increase your web traffic. To the extent that we're talking about Google using inbound links as part of its Smart Pricing algo, IMO the effect is probably nil.