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One-page AdSense site - how risky?

by Knocks
19 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I bought a niche domain in a private transaction (paid a lot for it) that is getting excellent traffic from years of backlinks from all over the Internet. I made an original site logo from a photo, wrote three paragraphs on the topic with relevant keywords, and put 2 text-only AdSense banners, one at the top and one at the bottom.

The old site used to include a large amount of information that I don't have access to (and besides it's probably copyrighted by the old owners), so writing a couple of blurbs was the best I could do.

Since I've put up AdSense, I am getting excellent CTR, around 30-45%, so I'm making about $20-25 a day from a one-page site, and that worries me. From what I understand, most sites dont' get CTR that high. I've read lots of horror stories about Google banning accounts for low-quality content, but quality is so subjective! I can make an argument that I'm sending my high-quality (likely convertible) traffic directly to advertisers, so it's a win-win for everybody, but no one will probably listen to my arguments if I get banned. I've read Google-published articles that warn about sites made just to collect AdSense, so I am really torn. Love to have this income, but I don't want to get screwed if Google gets a red flag.

What are your guys' thoughts?
#adsense #onepage #risky #site
  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    You better hire writers and get the content flowing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Carl Brown
      Could you go into detail about your layout? I get about 3%
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  • Profile picture of the author Knocks
    Layout: horizontal graphic logo, text-only leaderboard, content, and text-only banner.

    You're missing the point though. The high CTR is happening because the users are basically not finding what they're looking for (the old site's unique content), and because the ads are so well targeted, the visitors simply bounce away to advertisers' sites.
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    • Profile picture of the author Carl Brown
      I got the point. But I still want a CTR somewhere like that.

      When I was able to use Craigslist as a traffic source I got CTR consistently in the 20% to 30% range with no problems from google. That changed when I had to depend entirely on search engine traffic (now 3%).

      If you admit your content isn't useful to the searcher then you do have a problem though. You need to find a way to add the sort of content they're searching for.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        For adsense sites, you don't want literally fantastic content
        that satisfies. You want it to be a tease that just offers
        enough, then snag them with an adsense click.

        Adsense sites are not really the same as others.

        They can be, but then you will get a lower CTR.

        If people are coming to your page for a specific
        reason, and, the ads shown are for THAT specific
        reason, that's exactly what adwords users want.

        How much content is irrelevant as long as you
        are breaking no rules of adsense.

        CTR is of no consequence either, as long as you
        are not breaking any rules. I have a site that is
        well over 80%.

        Paul
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        If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Sounds like you bought a really good aged domain & by aged I mean, you probably have a lot of old internal links that are getting 404 traffic.

    If that was my site I would check for old 404/dead links & rebuild those pages with similar/new content. You can probably get an idea what the old content was, based on the URL/text & the external pages that the old backlinks are on.

    I would defiantly build out the site with a lot more internal pages.
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    • Profile picture of the author Knocks
      Yes, there are a few 404s but they redirect to the home page, so the user doesn't see any errors. And since they all bounce (half of them through ads) after reading my three paragraphs, I don't see a reason to rebuild.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Knocks View Post

        Yes, there are a few 404s but they redirect to the home page, so the user doesn't see any errors. And since they all bounce (half of them through ads) after reading my three paragraphs, I don't see a reason to rebuild.
        Good luck keeping your Adsense account If you ever get an Adsense review on single page site & trying to rank a single page in the SERPs.

        You can rank a single page all day long, but it's a lot more work IMO.
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        • Profile picture of the author Knocks
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          Good luck keeping your Adsense account If you ever get an Adsense review on single page site & trying to rank a single page in the SERPs.

          You can rank a single page all day long, but it's a lot more work IMO.
          You just lumped 3 different issues into one. At this point, my only concern is being safe for AdSense. I am not concerned with ranking. The traffic from referrals and type-ins is good as it is. Even when the site had zero content (i.e. parked) under the previous owner, it still ranked well for years due to the domain name and sheer strength and age of referrals.
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Knocks View Post

            You just lumped 3 different issues into one. At this point, my only concern is being safe for AdSense. I am not concerned with ranking. The traffic from referrals and type-ins is good as it is. Even when the site had zero content (i.e. parked) under the previous owner, it still ranked well for years due to the domain name and sheer strength and age of referrals.
            I think you already know what you should do, but it seems like your looking for someone to say it's ok to have a site that consist of 3 paragraphs of text on a single page for the entire site.

            Basically, you've created a parked page (single page site) which is against Adsense TOS.

            IMO you risk losing your Adsense account.

            Your risking what could be a good thing (existing traffic for Adsense), what's so difficult about building out the site?
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            • Profile picture of the author Knocks
              yukon, no, I do appreciate your advice, but you might have missed the part where I said that the original site contained proprietary information that I can't simply re-build or re-write.

              Yes, I could create a few dummy pages and a navigation menu to throw Google off, but then I would have to either 1) keep writing about the same very narrow subject over and over, which is even more dangerous, because it's basically keyword stuffing to an extreme degree, or 2) write about other things which would dilute the highly targeted ads and lower both CPC and CTR.
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              • Profile picture of the author Jordan Kovats
                Originally Posted by Knocks View Post


                Yes, I could create a few dummy pages and a navigation menu to throw Google off, but then I would have to either 1) keep writing about the same very narrow subject over and over, which is even more dangerous, because it's basically keyword stuffing to an extreme degree, or 2) write about other things which would dilute the highly targeted ads and lower both CPC and CTR.

                You can't throw Google off....maybe for a little bit, but they eventually catch on. It's their game, their rules, and they use their own referee. You can appeal the decision, or play by the rules.

                You may think you would be writing about the same narrow subjuect over and over, but for $20, you could probably find a great writer who would love to reasearch and write about three related topics. And then, a couple weeks later, invest the same amount for 3 more articles. Do that a few times, and you may be able to sleep a little easier.
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    • Profile picture of the author Danny Cutts
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Sounds like you bought a really good aged domain & by aged I mean, you probably have a lot of old internal links that are getting 404 traffic.

      If that was my site I would check for old 404/dead links & rebuild those pages with similar/new content. You can probably get an idea what the old content was, based on the URL/text & the external pages that the old backlinks are on.

      I would defiantly build out the site with a lot more internal pages.
      Sound advice that.... pick up some of that old traffic :-)

      Danny
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  • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
    Banned
    I've read lots of horror stories about Google banning accounts for low-quality content, but quality is so subjective!
    If you yourself are wondering if your site quality might be an issue, it probably is. Make it better.
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  • Profile picture of the author zharlene
    Smart! Best thing to do is add more pages to the site, but place the link to the subpages at the footer or some place on the site that is not too obvious. That way, the information is there for the visitors but it's not really your fault if they click on the Adsense links and not the menu to the subpages.
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  • Profile picture of the author etvconnect
    Is adsense your only income? I would not rely on Google, eventually they will ban you unless you have an account with them for many years in good standing and a professional looking website with tos and privacy policies.
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  • Profile picture of the author dbwebdesignz
    Someone has done all the hard work creating a very big website for you with all the link building done, just follow the same structure of links and recreate those pages, get some writers from odesk. If you are earning $xx amount per day then i would just re-invest the lot in odesk getting 5-10 new articles each day with the keywords you are previously being found for. If you do this correctly you could proper times your earning by a minimum of 10.

    Best of luck

    Edit: Also you should listen to 'yukon'. I have seen a lot of his posts and he speaks sense and does know what he is talking about.
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    • Profile picture of the author Knocks
      In this case, no writer can replicate the previous site's content. It was a proprietary database available for free to everyone for many years. Now that the database is gone, the visitors come to the site, see links to similar databases in the ads (which most often is just Yahoo's ads promising to find what they need), and click away. That explains the incredibly high CTR.

      There was an article a while back about how the most successful CPA sites don't have the actual needed information but serve as a useful gateway to connect interested visitors with businesses that have what they need (see also paulgl's post above).

      The question is how to do it without pissing off the provider of the ads.
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  • Profile picture of the author seoace
    Never liked the idea of a 1 page adsense site. A 1 page amazon, cpa or any other monetization methods is fine but I don't want to risk it with adsense on it.
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