CTR Theme - My experience

[TheEditor]

The only reason I'm putting this review here instead of under "White Hat", or "Blogging", or "Adsense" is because I did a search and found more threads here concerning Eppie Volt's CTR Theme for Wordpress.

On I go:

In June I moved an EMD site from Socrates over to a version of CTRT I snatched either here or on another like-minded forum. Forget where. Here were the traffic numbers for this site *before* CTRT install:

Jan 2011 14,154
Feb 2011 15,763
Mar 2011 18,162
Apr 2011 22,154
May 2011 24,732

The site is entertainment related with just 4 posts on it. As you can see, pretty good traffic. Thru June and July, the traffic numbers were as follows:

Jun 2011 6,902
Jul 2011 6,527

Yikes! The traffic declined about 6-7 days after CTRT was installed. But the money made on Adsense went *up*. Why? Well, CTRT's main claim to fame is better conversions, right? I should say so. My CTR went up by 456%. And that made up for the traffic decline in a big way.

So in late June (23rd, maybe 24th) I moved another EMD site of mine, also in entertainment, over to CTRT. This site has been around a bit longer. Its EM phrase has about double the traffic according to the G keyword tool. Its got more posts, though not a lot: about a dozen.

BTW, all the posts on both are pure white hat. Lots of snark, penned mostly by myself and a bit by my surprisingly acerbic wife.

So here were the recent traffic #s for site #2:

Jan 2011 25K
Feb 2011 20K
Mar 2011 21K
Apr 2011 25K
May 2011 24K
Jun 2011 21K

I don't see how you can get much steadier, can you? CTRT improved the CTR over Socrates on this site as well. #2 converted better than #1 so the improvement isn't quite as huge: 246%. But the bad comes with the good. Like #1, about a week after converting to CTRT I saw a traffic drop:

Jul 2011 11K

And it would have been worse. I've really done little promo work for either site - a bit more for #1. But almost nothing since February. Well, the drop in #2's traffic spooked me, and I did a ramshackle Scritty/Cash202-styled promo cycle in late July that bumped up traffic quickly. The traffic bump from that promo cycle began to peter out just a bit late last week.

It worries me: why the traffic decline? But the $$ has gone up on a pair of sites that converted terribly so overall I'm happy for now.

Bad news comes from another CTRT user today on the IJ forum. I won't mention more; you should check it out.

I've got more to say on this, but I'll open it up now for questions.

 

[angelas111]

i would have someone re-name the theme and all its files. google may be hip to it.

 

[omida86]

just add in robots.txt to not crawl the folder...

But it can't be that, it's probably just that the CTR theme doesn't provide a good user experience, so people don't want to come back...

 

[TheEditor]

The nature of the site doesn't really lend itself to big repeat visits. However the pages/visit number has actually gone up a little. Not a big amount mind you, but just enough to suggest statistical significance.

just add in robots.txt to not crawl the folder...

But it can't be that, it's probably just that the CTR theme doesn't provide a good user experience, so people don't want to come back...

 

[TheEditor]

I've renamed the theme folder, and gone into style.css and changed the identification stuff at the top. This is where WP itself grabs much of the info you see on your Themes page.

And if you do this, I'd recommend getting rid of the old folder (default name: "ctr-theme") completely.

But I did this a bit ago and have not seen a traffic bump other than the one immediately after the promo cycle on #2.

i would have someone re-name the theme and all its files. google may be hip to it.

 

[blackmamber]

Yup, seems the drop in traffic is common, heard it from a few peeps. If you think like the visitor, you will draw the answer to why sites with CTR theme drop traffic, the user experience is battered basically after all the first things visitors see is ads, and in the mind of the viewer the ads may seem deceptive.

My tip on this is to have one 160x120 ad on top left, 2x 336 ads on the bottom. Since employing this layout, traffic has gone up along with CTR.

So, when you set ad$ence options, only select this layout and traffic should be restored and CTR high my advice, dont let it rotate ads!, wil drive visitors away like no tomorrow.

Give it a whirl

Final thoughts:
With CTR in its native state, it looks like a MFA site and you can bet G will get pissed in the end and start closing accounts

 

[TheEditor]

I *do* show content on the first screen, depending on the layout. Being entertainment sites, there are lots of pictures. I make sure its the first thing in the post. I do NOT use pushdown images, so the surfer definitely gets a bit of what he came for immediately. But this site isn't really built for repeat traffic anyway. 99%+ of the traffic comes straight from Big G. The reduced traffic is G's doing.

Your post does bring up a gripe of mine. There are no CTRT tutorials on how to set up the AdSense channel tracking.

Yup, seems the drop in traffic is common, heard it from a few peeps. If you think like the visitor, you will draw the answer to why sites with CTR theme drop traffic, the user experience is battered basically after all the first things visitors see is ads, and in the mind of the viewer the ads may seem deceptive.

My tip on this is to have one 160x120 ad on top left, 2x 336 ads on the bottom. Since employing this layout, traffic has gone up along with CTR.

So, when you set ad$ence options, only select this layout and traffic should be restored and CTR high my advice, dont let it rotate ads!, wil drive visitors away like no tomorrow.

Give it a whirl

Final thoughts:
With CTR in its native state, it looks like a MFA site and you can bet G will get pissed in the end and start closing accounts

 

[Roundhouse]

I would just of kept the previous wordpress theme you had and add in the adsense code manually in the php.
I used heatmap pro before and noticed that my rankings dropped after doing so. I switched to the twenty eleven theme and placed in google ads myself. Since, I noticed my rankings improve slowly.

Just look at the CTRT, and see where they place the google ads, then manually ad them into your current theme

 

[wannabie]

I have just brought this theme so ill give feedback to see how it goes

 

[God of War]

You need to optimize the code to make it more SEO desirable; I played with the code to modify it to coding similar to other SEO themes and I went back up. You can always do that.

 

[BFHoodn!nja]

For anybody wondering what was meant with

Bad news comes from another CTRT user today on the IJ forum. I won't mention more; you should check it out.

Just an FYI to everyone using the CTR Theme, I just had one of my adsense sites making around $100 a month disabled. Yes, the content was good quality and I was using the CTR theme. Coincidence maybe, but I am switching the 2 other sites I have using CTRtheme to another theme.

Hello,

During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently
displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program
policies
(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en).

--------------------------------------------------
EXAMPLE PAGE:
removed

Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may
exist on other pages of this website or other sites in your network.

VIOLATION(S) FOUND:

It is important for a site displaying AdSense to offer significant value
to the user by providing unique and relevant content, and not to place ads
on auto-generated pages or pages with little to no original content.

Your site should also provide a good user experience through clear
navigation and organization. Users should be able to easily click through
your pages and find the information they are seeking.

Please review Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines (
Webmaster Guidelines - Webmaster Tools Help
) for more information.

ACTION TAKEN: We have disabled ad serving to your site.

ACCOUNT STATUS: ACTIVE
Your AdSense account remains active. However, please note that our team
reserves the right to disable your account at any time. As such, we
encourage you to become familiar with our program policies and monitor

I think people should know this without having the google. Source

 

[TheEditor]

Wasn't sure if it was kosher to directly cite that, but thank you.

For anybody wondering what was meant with

 

[TheEditor]

And *that* was one of the things I left out of the original post. I had to change the way CTRT handled both the TITLE and META tags. But not everyone would do that. Plugins that override default theme SEO are pretty common and that is why I didn't mention it. The changes I made restored the behavior I had under Socrates on both sites.

You need to optimize the code to make it more SEO desirable; I played with the code to modify it to coding similar to other SEO themes and I went back up. You can always do that.

 

[TheEditor]

1) Eppie did not sell CTRT. He said he was not comfortable with the winning bidders of that auction so he called it off.

2) I did see a drop in rankings. Now I *did* expect to see some drop in the rankings of site #1. If you refer back to the original post you'll see its traffic had increased somewhat in the preceding 60 days or so. This was due to the inclusion of some time-sensitive content relating to the Princess Kate wedding that was necessarily going to fade. Plus the other main source of traffic for that site involved a famous celebrity that has an awful lot of online coverage and the competition is pretty fierce.

But the magnitude of the decline was unexpected. And it was repeated on #2, most of whose content is fairly old.

The bulk of the site #2 traffic drop was on the inner pages while the homepage dropped much less.

Appreciate the case study Editor.

You said you had a decrease in traffic, but since all your traffic is coming from google search engine, does that mean your rankings dropped after using CTRT? If so, by how much?



Thought he gave up on CTRT since he sold it and all, not to mention not replying to support emails.

 

[nougattrout]

I've seen similar things with a bunch of sites still using the Heatmap theme lately. Looks like it's time to revisit them and see what a change in theme will do

 

[antsaoo]

Are you sure that the visitor drop is not from different format on blog. I mean , maybe the old theme had just some of the article but ctrtheme shows whole article so they don't need click to another site ?

I have ctr theme myself installed maybe 3-4 months ago but haven't done much to sites afterwards. so can't tell any diff :/

 

[TheEditor]

Most of the "articles" are actually quite short. Some are only a couple of sentences. I have to work harder to write stuff for web20 and AMR blasts.

Are you sure that the visitor drop is not from different format on blog. I mean , maybe the old theme had just some of the article but ctrtheme shows whole article so they don't need click to another site ?

I have ctr theme myself installed maybe 3-4 months ago but haven't done much to sites afterwards. so can't tell any diff :/

 

[nabyar]

Thanks for the study. I've been bouncing back and forth with the idea to buy this theme, but honestly, like others said, I think it's best to utilize a current theme thats clean but place adsense where CTR does, too.

It's also crucial to walk to the fine line between number of adds and how well the ads blend with the site.

 

[TheEditor]

This morning I amped up the "theme blindness" concept: I made a replacement for the screenshot.png file that WP uses to identify the theme on the Themes page.

In all likelihood that is a ridiculous step to take.

I noticed the 1.4.1 update is out. Anyone know what specifically is in this? Eppie hasn't updated the changelog page since v1.3.5. I submitted a support request to find out, but maybe someone here could share.

I've renamed the theme folder, and gone into style.css and changed the identification stuff at the top. This is where WP itself grabs much of the info you see on your Themes page.

And if you do this, I'd recommend getting rid of the old folder (default name: "ctr-theme") completely.

But I did this a bit ago and have not seen a traffic bump other than the one immediately after the promo cycle on #2.

 

[BFHoodn!nja]

My SERP rankings worsened when I switched from Heatmap to CTRT. But CTRT made me rank much better on google images which is my prime source of my visitors.
What I don't understand is why conversions are still this bad for me. Yesterday I was at 1075 Uniques and 2 Clicks (0,19% CTR) with a 55% bounce rate and 40s average time spend on the site (1.80 pageviews).