Hello, As you may have seen in some of my other threads I have been talking about what the average CTR of websites are for adsense, etc. Now, I have a question here, my website portfolio (Adsense one) is ONLY created mostly for making money via Adsense, we are going to revamp them to try to work on CTR and things of that nature, and I want to know. Do you think the type of template/theme you use for your website will matter as far as rankings go? For example would a site rank higher if it used a premium paid theme vs a free adsense optimized theme simply because it offers users a "better look and feel".
sure it may impact your CTR. There are several factors to consider when changing your theme to another one if you are using adsense. You have to analyze where you will put your ads, if you have to keep the same ads or change them, etc... changing theme do impact the CTR, because of the different exposure ads get, different colors, layouts, positions, and an overall different user experience. Also consider premium themes offer better SEO integration and a cleaner structure that should like to search engines (cleaner code, scripts) and "may" have some sort of impact in rankings because of the better site structure, but this is not a constant and maybe you won't get any rank change (choose premium themes that offer a clean structure, not just the first premium theme you like). I would suggest to use heatmaps over the new theme to test out where users are clicking and to obtain other information (google analytics offers a basic heatmap as well) and optimize accordingly.
IMHO, it doesn't really matter whether its a free or premium theme. Proper coding could actually help and HTML5 is a plus. If you're targeting mobile visitors, pick one that is responsive. Of-topic and just out of advice: Try to change the way you look at your sites, building them for the adsense shouldn't be the only reason. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be motivated by making more and more money, instead prepare for the worst, and try to engage your visitors with the site. Its been years since my last adsense cheque, but offering something of quality and be it related to the niches you're targeting actually pay back overtime. You can have a kinda independent site, keep adsense as a secondary source of income, and grow a list of potential buyers. Bottom line: Focus on the content, link building, and social presence. That's my opinion though, good luck with whatever you're doing.
It gives some advanced options/features.. But there is no guarantee depends on theme and creator of theme...how knowledgeable the theme creator is in SEO.
Thanks everyone for the responses and as some of you mentioned about quality etc. We have several "Brand" websites that are dedicated to quality and content over time, but we have some expendable sites taht we use only for adsense that is why I am asking.
I have done a test using different types of templates. I find CTR is affected by color blending, layout and relevancy of the ad. To me whether a template is premium or not doesn't really matter.
Depends on how much effort the developer has put into building in SEO friendly structure in the theme. Some themes do boast being SEO friendly - it depends on you, the user to actually trust the developer.
Its what you pour into your site that makes it rank well not what theme/template you have one it! As long as your site/theme is within the google guidelines google aint gunu give a damn if you paid for the theme, got given it, found it for free in a dark corner of the web, or stole it from your granny! In other works, no! Paid or free don't matter as long as the theme has been design and coded to be seo friendly!
It will depend on the individual theme. You are more likely to get badly coded free themes that could hinder your rankings than if you pay a professional theme developer. But you could also get a premium theme that's loaded with features and puts an extra 5 second load time on your site. It's about finding a fast loading, good-looking theme that also promotes a high CTR and time on site.
Definitely matters since there will be much scope for making any changes. most of the top ranking sites are all premium theme users.