Ready to increase CPMs and Impressions? Of course you are! This article is part of our Sweet Land of Money Series. Journey through our top tips and tricks on how to increase earnings.
Jump Buttons are always a hot blogging topic, whether you are using Jump-to-Recipe, Jump-to-Print, or some version of a Table of Contents that lets readers skip around.
Each of those options can have varying impacts on your earnings as well as user experience, so let's dig in and look at how to make the best Sweet Money decisions for you and your readers.
OFFER? or ENCOURAGE?
When you are making any design choices on your site this is a great question to ask yourself.
OFFERING a way to jump straight to the content the reader is after can enhance their user experience.
ENCOURAGING that behavior with every reader every time can really affect your earnings.
If you have a jump button (or any way to let your reader deliberately skip over your content) implemented on your site, the very first thing you need to do to evaluate its effectiveness is USE IT.
Open up your top post and use developer tools to view that post on mobile.
ASK YOURSELF
🍭 Is the option to jump in the very first screenview?
🍭 Can the reader see any of the content in the first screenview? Or is it just the option to jump? (Read more about prioritizing above the fold content for SEO.)
🍭 Are the colors of your jump button SUPER obvious and bold?
🍭 Are you offering multiple options to jump? (Jump to Recipe AND Jump to Print or Jump to Video, for example)
Now head to your Mediavine Dashboard and visit the Display by Ad Unit Report.
Take a quick look at site-wide viewability.
70%+ is always what we are looking for site-wide. In general, in-content ads will have much lower viewabilty than other placements due to things like site speed, but you will notice here that we are looking at viewability for both the recipe card units AND in-content ads.
If readers are skipping your content, you can make a few changes based on the questions you asked yourself as well as some adjustments in other places.
Now that you have made notes about your content as well as how other people might be using it, you can start to adjust accordingly.
DESIGN CHANGES YOU CAN MAKE
If you noticed that your Jump to Recipe button is VERY bright or obvious and is encouraging readers to use it (rather than just a convenient offer), you can try to:
Swap out the colors (black letters on a white background, instead of white on black, for example).
Move it out of the first screenview if your plugin gives that option.
If you are offering multiple opportunities to jump, try removing all but one. Jump to Recipe and Jump to Print are redundant and Print pages will not monetize well the way a post would.
SETTINGS CHANGES YOU CAN MAKE
Head to your Dashboard > Settings > In-Content Ads and scroll down to the section with Recipe Card Ad Settings.
If you are using a Jump Button on your site we highly recommend enabling the Jump to Recipe Arrival Unit.
It's important to keep in mind that Mediavine Ads will not serve where there are no readers, so even if you have many in-content ad slots, those ads do not exist for a reader that skips the content. That keeps user experience AND CPMs high, but it also means that we have to always be sure that an appropriate number of impressions are serving in the parts of your posts that readers are using.
Check the Recipe Instruction Density. If you are using WP Recipe Maker or Tasty Recipes, this setting will let you control the density of the ads in your instructions based on CBA Standards, just like you can control that frequency with your in-content ads.
If you use Create you can adjust that frequency in the MVP tab in your Settings.
The Default Recipe Ads setting will be targeted for 2 ads on desktop and 3 ads on mobile. You can adjust that down, but we recommend the default setting.
If you are using a Table of Contents plugin, use all the same tips and tricks here to evaluate how useful it is, and how it may or may not be affecting earnings. Adjust accordingly.
Want more tips? You can check out the entire series HERE.