Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Say, if I have a cooking site about "How to make fried widgets," the same advertisers are displayed, whether I'm explaining how to freeze them, can them, or cook them.
But when I try to change the subject of a page, say to, "How to grow widgets," the hubby says, "Your getting away from the theme of the site."
So what's the input on this. Do I have to have a themed website? Can't I have a page for different topics? Can I go from a "How to repair your Astrovan" to "Crocheting 101?
How themed does a website have to be?
Can I go from a "How to repair your Astrovan" to "Crocheting 101?
There's a difference? :)
You can pretty much do whatever you want.
I'd think growing green widgets and cooking them would fall into the same "green widgets" theme.
Repairing your Astrovan and Crocheting 101, while probably a little different than green widgets might work too. It depends on how bradly your overall site theme is.
A "Life in the big city" theme could cover both of them nicely.
But with a theme like "Cooking fried green widgets to perfection in sunflower oil" it might be a little harder.
Now I'm off to crochet some seat covers for my Astrovan.
[edited by: Woz at 10:53 pm (utc) on June 16, 2005]
[edit reason] Formatting [/edit]
Can I have a page about my vacation and then add a review page for the type of camera I used, or shoes I wore?
Can I have a page with poems on it, on the same site as a page with pictures of my neighbors cats, and the history of Japan?
In other words does it matter what kind of content you add to your site? Does each page have to be related in some way? Maybe I should title the site... "This is my Life?" Something general like that? :)
It'd probably be good if you could tie the varioux themes together in some all encompassing theme, but not nedccessary.
You like to cook green widgets.
You have to buy, or grow, them somewhere.
Are some varieties of green widgets tastier than others? Do some have a better texture? Is it easier to cook them on a gas stove, or electric? Does it matter what kind of pan you use?
Did you grow them in your garden? Did you go somewhere to buy the seeds? Is one seed store better than another?
How did you get to the seed store? In your Astrovan? Did it break down on the way to the store? Did you fix it yourself, or have it towed to a repair shop. Would a pickup truck have been better for the task? What make of pickup truck?
Did you photograph your garden? What brand of camera did you use? Was it digital or film? Is one easier to use for this purpose than the other?
Green Widgets
Seeds
Gardens
Stoves
Cookware
Cars
Towing
Repairs
Cameras
etc
etc
etc.
You could carry this out to infinity I suppose.
With a multi or sub-themed site I'd guess that one of the more important aspects is to keep the themes organized on your pages.
So rather than talk about the camera on a recipe page, put a picture of the dish and a small link under the picture, or in the page footer, that leads to a page about cameras, or details your picture taking process and mentions what kind of camera you used. Of course somewhere on your homepage or nav bar you want to show a link to each sub-theme section on your site.
Since this is the adsense forum, I'll mention the issue of site themed ads.
That's probably where this multi-theme idea could run into trouble, at least in the beginning.
Sometimes adsense seems to assign a "theme" to a whole site for some reason. The result can be that all your pages might show green widget cooking ads, even if the page is about cameras.
IF that happens, and it apparently doesn't always happen, it might straighten itself out in a few days or weeks, or never.
I had that problem to some degree and had to take adsense off my home page and a few sub-index pages before I got decent ad targeting on my other pages.
Themes [searchengineworld.com]
The non-themed sites do get ads that pertain to each page's topic but now and then there is some "bleed-thru" and ads for multiple topics will appear on one page. I've also seen at different points in time that the ads will totally change on one page from one topic to a completely different one that is covered by that page's content. Both sets of ads could be considered proper ads. Wild ride!
I suspect that the problem I'm having with my site may be because of a lack of advertisers? That's why I'm thinking of adding pages that are not directly related, but indirectly related.
Even if I went into my site and optimized it for a different keyword, the same ads show up, because of bleed-over, as you mentioned, yet if the page gets refreshed the ads will be relevent, but not always. So...
I really don't know what to do. On the other hand, many visitors reach my site from an inside page, and they might be interested in the ads, but if it's a visitor that is "totally" reading my entire site, and the same ads, (I know) are on ALL the pages. They would think it looks junky right? and wonder why I have ALL the same ads on every single page?
But, maybe there are "more than enough advertisers," and only the same ones are showing (like in the preview tool} because they are the highest bidding?
I am reluctant at times to add nonrelated content because it wouldn't make a difference. For instance, say I have a huge website about coins and most of the pages are about US coins. But then I add 3 pages of foreign coins, and a couple pages of US tokens. The US Coins ads bleed to the token pages, if the visitor goes from a US coin page directly to the token page, and he is not served "token" ads.
So is the solution, making subdomains for foreign coins and US tokens? Will that do the trick?
Or is it just... "test, test and double test."
Ann
Sometimes the ad topics get fixed right away, sometimes they revert back, and sometimes it may take a week. But in general, they get fixed over time.
Except for the ones that NEVER get fixed. I emailed Adsense once, and got the ads I wanted within hours. But it only worked once. I think that the big factor is who you happen to get - some will agree with you and fix you right up. Others will just give you the standard canned response "Google has targetting software ....blah-blah."
I have no doubt that buttons can be pushed. But under what circumstances this can happen, totally escapes me. You just need the luck of someone agreeing with you, and taking the time to do it.
So Ann, are your Astro ads the same on every page, and do you have a bleedover of jewelry ads? and visa versa?
It seems that if you build a site around a theme, then, whatever else your visitors might be interested in, you could add a page about that to, hoping for a bleedover and more of a variety in ads. But not necessarily relevent ads, because the advertiser does the bidding on the keywords. So we really don't have any control.
I guess when the advertisers run out of budget...then the ads will change.
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Sally, your hobby site sounds a bit more like one of my sites, with different pages on different topics. I guess it reminds me of the old "personal pages," which seem to have all but vanished from the serps.
I have a couple of themed sites, and they seem to be running the same ads across the board and no matter what I do to them, (including updating the adsense,) the ads don't change.
So I'm really thinking about not wasting my time building a huge themed site anymore, and concentrating on a smaller, indirectly paged site.
Sure do appreciate the input all, thanks :)
