Ads & SEO can coexist — we say it all the time. 

We even have a whole blog post on that exact topic: How Mediavine Optimizes Ads & SEO Together. 

Why? We run our technology on our own sites, all of which have search engines as their #1 traffic source. We’d never want to compromise speed or SEO for ad income, so everything we do at Mediavine is with both in mind.

That ads and SEO don’t play together is a myth we hear about often, so that’s why we started our SEO Case Study series. We want you to meet real publishers and show you how they optimize for SEO and pagespeed in tandem with Mediavine’s tools and dashboard. 

This week we’d like you to meet our publisher Mix That Drink. They have utilized Mediavine’s resources like our RPM Challenge and Facebook Lives, as well as our dashboard settings Optimize Ads for Desktop and Mobile Pagespeed to keep RPM, SEO and speed top of mind. 

How long have you been blogging? When did you join Mediavine? 

I stared building websites in 1996. I started blogging in 2001 or 2002. I joined Mediavine in 2018.

What is your current ad density setting in the dashboard for desktop and mobile? 

Default

When did you start focusing on SEO and/or site speed?

1998. With pre-broadband modems, site speed was even more important than it is now.

How has working with Mediavine impacted your SEO, site speed and site overall? 

Site speed improved noticeably, especially after recent tweaks to the video player. That has given a noticeable bump to my SEO.

What steps have you taken to improve your SEO and/or site speed? What resources/tools have you used?

I learned SEO back when Google was the only way to get found on the web. We didn’t have SEO tools or social media – we just had to learn SEO manually. And that’s still how I do it. I do use the SmartCrawl plugin to manage SEO settings and save me some manual keyword density calculations.

Are you taking advantage of any of the site speed tools offered by Mediavine, like Optimize Ads for Mobile or Desktop Pagespeed? If yes, which ones? 

I’ve been using Optimize Ads for Mobile since December and seen only revenue increases along with the speed. I just turned on Optimize for Desktop. Desktop is only about 20% of my traffic, but I always put speed first.

Did you find any Mediavine resources useful as you optimized your site speed or SEO? 

All of your RPM Challenge blog posts. The spreadsheet you issued for checking the site and individual posts. I’ve watched all the Facebook lives on SEO (I think?) and listened to several Theory of Content podcasts. The info Mediavine gives us about SEO and how to make ads work with it is invaluable.

Have you asked for help when optimizing for site speed and/or SEO, either from Mediavine Publisher Support or elsewhere? If yes, please tell us where from. 

I have asked some specific questions on site speed in the Facebook Mediavine group. Members — and Eric — have helped me figure out confusing issues from Google’s Pagespeed tool.

What advice do you have for someone who would like to increase their organic search traffic? 

I always tell them: Read every blog post on the RPM challenge. Listen to Theory of Content. Check out anything in the Facebook group that Mediavine mentions, links to, or posts as video. Then start reading old SEO blogs around the Mediavine website, because there is no substitute for knowing how to do it without tools.