Are Adsense microniche sites using Clickbump or CTR themes still working?

4 replies
  • SEO
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Just about every one of my sites got hit with the Penguin update and I was using the Clickbump theme/Adsense combo (where you have pics on top, followed by title, then Adsense block and then content) on a majority of them with a few exceptions (though those sites got hit as well). I think trying to recover these sites is more of hassle and time consuming (since they all went from ranking page 1 for their main keyword to like page 20 and beyond now) compared to starting new sites. All these were EMDs, had unique content, each site had anywhere from 3-15 pages of content each, etc.

I think the big downfall for my sites might have been using BMR for these sites, but then again other sites got hit as well that did not use BMR and my own SEO site that used BMR actually moved up. So my next theory is that I might have been hit with the overoptimization penalty where I was using pretty much the same keyword (80%+) as anchor text for backlinks that were mostly pointing to the homepage and few to internal pages.

So now I want to start new sites again with the ones that previously making me money with Adsense when they were ranking on 1st page of the SERPs.

However, my question is whether these types of sites (using Clickbump or CTR theme) will still be able to rank well if the offpage and onpage SEO is done what Google likes? Or using these themes now is no good as far as rankings goes? I guess what I'm trying to get at is if the having this sort of website setup can be harmful now or is that not an issue, but it's more with how we do our offpage SEO that really matters with rankings? As long as we we don't do keyword stuffing or over optimize the onpage content then it is not a matter of which theme or setup we use (of course we shouldn't have many ad blocks on above fold, etc.) but how we do our offpage SEO.

What I've noticed though that in the SERPs I hardly see any more of these type of sites when doing keyword research. Here is a site I found..."www[dot]cordlesstablelamps[dot]org". The site is ranking #5 for it's main keyword "cordless table lamps". So I guess some sites still rank, but I have noticed that majority of them are no longer on the first page like before.

Anyone have any insight or feedback if I should start these new sites again though I won't be able to get the exact domains any longer and it might take a bit longer now to rank, but if they can still rank and make me money in the long run than I'm not concerned. Anyone started doing this with some of their sites that got hit?
#adsense #clickbump #ctr #microniche #sites #theme #working
  • Profile picture of the author JoshuaG
    Well, I'm not here to give advise, but I also build adsense sites and several of my best earners were hit hard by the updates.

    I opted to develop those sites rather than create new ones and try to get my rankings back up.

    I would say that if your old sites failed, you're not very smart to repeat your errors with new sites. You should take what information you have and use it to improve your strategy.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    What's the connection between the theme & the SERP rank?
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    • Profile picture of the author mrtrance
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      What's the connection between the theme & the SERP rank?
      So then there should be no issue with using same theme across my sites and how they are setup correct? Just focus on better onpage and offpage SEO (especially varying anchor text, get more links to internal pages, and maintain link velocity) to get rankings possibly back or adjust this system when making new sites?

      Is there any issue with doing new sites using same hosting account and adsense account which although will have different domain will be talking about the same content? I'd like to focus on doing new sites on the niches that were successful before when they were on page 1 before getting the hit.
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      • Profile picture of the author Brendan Mace
        Originally Posted by mrtrance View Post

        So then there should be no issue with using same theme across my sites and how they are setup correct? Just focus on better onpage and offpage SEO (especially varying anchor text, get more links to internal pages, and maintain link velocity) to get rankings possibly back or adjust this system when making new sites?

        Is there any issue with doing new sites using same hosting account and adsense account which although will have different domain will be talking about the same content? I'd like to focus on doing new sites on the niches that were successful before when they were on page 1 before getting the hit.
        There's no problem with that at all. As long as you provide valuable content and don't trigger any Google penalties. The Penguin update penalized a lot of sites for spammy backlinks or over-optimized on page SEO.

        If you created another site that emulates your original site(s) without the problems that caused a penalty, then you should be just gravy. You've already proven that you can rank on Google. So just do it again without anything shady.

        Nothing wrong with using the same hosting or Adsense account. Adsense doesn't ban someone for having multiple sites.
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