We often receive questions about the policies related to AdSense referrals. In this post we answer some of your most common concerns. Live (OK -- pre-recorded) from the Googleplex, here's Laura Chen:
Laura addresses these burning questions:
1. Why am I receiving less than the full amount for each conversion in my reports? Is something wrong?
2. After I've referred a person to AdSense, can I see how much they've earned so far?
3. Can I ask users to click my referral buttons?
Friday, February 23, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Adsense New pricing structure for referrals
Last year we asked you for your feedback on referrals, and one of the issues we heard quite frequently was that it was too difficult to generate revenue with AdSense and AdWords referrals. To address this, we've just introduced a new pricing structure for both programs, which will be as follows:
AdSense Referrals:
When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5.
When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250.
If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).
AdWords Referrals:
When an advertiser you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5.
When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40.
If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).
These rules will also apply to users that you have already referred but who have not yet reached one of the new earning/spend thresholds. For example, if you referred an AdSense publisher who has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 if that publisher reaches the $5.00 mark. But, if you have referred an AdSense publisher who has already earned $10.00, you will not be paid $5.00 retroactively for that referral reaching the $5.00 mark. However, should that publisher eventually reach the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will be paid $250.00.
Finally, please keep in mind that publishers may not click on their own referral ads and will not be paid for referring themselves for any product. For more information about referrals, please visit our Help Center.
AdSense Referrals:
When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5.
When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250.
If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).
AdWords Referrals:
When an advertiser you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5.
When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40.
If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).
These rules will also apply to users that you have already referred but who have not yet reached one of the new earning/spend thresholds. For example, if you referred an AdSense publisher who has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 if that publisher reaches the $5.00 mark. But, if you have referred an AdSense publisher who has already earned $10.00, you will not be paid $5.00 retroactively for that referral reaching the $5.00 mark. However, should that publisher eventually reach the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will be paid $250.00.
Finally, please keep in mind that publishers may not click on their own referral ads and will not be paid for referring themselves for any product. For more information about referrals, please visit our Help Center.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Right Internet Marketing Technique
Finding the right Internet marketing technique that works best for you is probably going to be trial and error. Different web marketers have found their successful by using different marketing ideas. Each person’s target market is different as well. You will have to try a variety before you find the Internet marketing technique that works best for you and your web-based business. Here we will throw out a few suggestions to try and see what works for you.
The Internet marketing techniques that we will discuss first have to do with the basics of a website. Ask yourself these questions to determine what steps you may try to find the Internet marketing technique that works best for you. Does your site’s URL have search engine keywords in the title? Is your site easy to use for beginners as well as experienced web surfers? Do you offer easy accessibility for prospects to contact you? These three issues should be clear before you start to evaluate a certain Internet marketing technique.
Determine what your website’s visitors are really looking for before choosing on an Internet marking technique. Understand what they want to find on your website and make it easy for them to locate it. Trust, credibility, and site loyalty are crucial factors to build into your website. The main aim is to get your visitors to buy something. Give them the opportunity to cruise your site and not be barrage by pop-ups and other annoyances.
One Internet marking technique that is sure to please your site’s visitors is the same as in the real world. That is customer service. Make your site is as user-friendly as possible. To generate revenue from your website start by asking “How can I help?" Friendly service always attracts more buyers than making it difficult to use your system. Don't start out with the attitude, "How can I sell ‘em?" Instead lead your customers to make their own decisions rather than forcing your favorites on them.
The Internet marketing techniques that we will discuss first have to do with the basics of a website. Ask yourself these questions to determine what steps you may try to find the Internet marketing technique that works best for you. Does your site’s URL have search engine keywords in the title? Is your site easy to use for beginners as well as experienced web surfers? Do you offer easy accessibility for prospects to contact you? These three issues should be clear before you start to evaluate a certain Internet marketing technique.
Determine what your website’s visitors are really looking for before choosing on an Internet marking technique. Understand what they want to find on your website and make it easy for them to locate it. Trust, credibility, and site loyalty are crucial factors to build into your website. The main aim is to get your visitors to buy something. Give them the opportunity to cruise your site and not be barrage by pop-ups and other annoyances.
One Internet marking technique that is sure to please your site’s visitors is the same as in the real world. That is customer service. Make your site is as user-friendly as possible. To generate revenue from your website start by asking “How can I help?" Friendly service always attracts more buyers than making it difficult to use your system. Don't start out with the attitude, "How can I sell ‘em?" Instead lead your customers to make their own decisions rather than forcing your favorites on them.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
AdSense Stats and Performance 101
As more and more people are getting into the AdSense game, there seem to be many questions asked again and again by the newcomers. Here, I have compiled detailed explanations to some common AdSense terms, facts, and performance tips.
Terminology
Real Stats (Figures based on actual performance tracking updated several times a day)
Page Impressions: The number of times an ad unit (a collection of 1 to 4 ads). If you have two ad units on a page, then every time the page loads you get two page impressions. Page Impressions DO include PSA (Public Service Ads) and Alternate Ads.
Clicks: The number of times someone clicks on an ad. Clicks on PSA will be included in this stat as well.
Earnings: Money you’ve made.
Derived Stats (Figures calculated from the real stats)
Clickthrough Rate: Clicks/Page Impressions. It is expressed as a percentage.
Effective CPM:. Earnings per thousand page impressions. Calculated by 1000 X Earnings / Page Impressions
EPC: Your EPC is not displayed because it does not really matter. EPC stands for Earnings Per Click (Earnings/Clicks) and is frequently talked about.
Facts 1. Stats Update Frequency/Delay: Although AdSense stats usually updates every couple hours, you don’t need to panic at all if you see no change in your stats for over 12 hours. Even if other webmasters are seeing normal updates.
2. Don’t worry about anomalies in your stats during the course of the day. These are not accurate. There could be delays in the update due to one reason or another. Only when you see figures for a new day can you know that the figures for the previous day are not going to change any more.
3. Sometimes the stats are carried forward several days. This happens when Google decides to freeze your clicks and earnings for fraud checking/tracking purposes or server delays. Thus, you may notice your earnings/clicks shoot straight up when you least expect it. It is possible for your CTR to go up by as much as 10% and your CPM to raise $200 over the normal.
4. The update on the different stats are not synchronized. For example, when you check your account, the page impressions may be freshed updated, while the clicks and earnings are from two hours ago. Thus, there may be a sharp drop/increase in the derived stats. Due to this, you don’t need to fret over all these little bumps.
5. Often delays in updates foreshadow changes to the AdSense program. For example, slow updates preceded introduction of channels, TOS changes, and addition of new languages.
6. Channels are a great way for you to track the performance of your ad on a particular page/site. If you want to use the same code for all of your pages, you can also use the recently added URL channels. Of course, channel data are delayed by two days.
Performance Tips
1. EPC doesn’t matter! That is because you have absolutely no control over your EPC. Your EPC is influenced by many variables including your webpage content, advertiser’s budget, seasonal fluctuations and more. Thus, the productive thing to do is concentrate on the factors that you have control over such as CTR and page impressions.
2. How am I doing?
Many of us probably wonder how we are doing compared to other AdSense users, including myself. However, we really can’t get a good sense of the average if Google doesn't disclose their figures, which they don’t. Since people doing well with AdSense generally don’t like to reveal their earnings due to the fear that they may be terminated by the program, any discussion about an average EPC/CTR/CPM is a waste of time.
3. From various experiments by myself and other webmasters, we can conclude (at least for now) that using image/text ads instead of just text ads will dramatically decrease you CTR because of various reasons. (i.e. fewer advertisers, banner blindness etc.) However, the EPC is usually slightly higher.
4. Blend in or stand out? This is completely site dependent. Sometimes, people will never click on your ads unless you “trick” them into doing so, although this is not so good for long term. Other sites will require your ad to scream in your visitor’s face to get good clicks. Do some extensive testing to find out what’s good for your site.
5. Make good use of the URL filter feature. Blocking repetitive (eBay ads) or boring ads (free smilies) will definitely increase your CTR.
6. Large rectangles placed above the fold will often generate most revenue. However, this may not be a good long term solution since such and ad is usually obstrusive and have little aesthetic value.
7. If you run a forum site, you may notice that your earnings are very low. Here is a solution: use a simple cookie-based php script that only displays AdSense ads once every 10 page views -- essentially a counter counts down from 10 to 0 and on 0 displays an AdSense block. Between the AdSense ads, display regular banner ads. Although your AdSense page impressions may be down, you will notice your CTR skyrocketing, and a large increase in overall earnings.
In conclusion: Play around with your ad to maximize your performance, and look at the big picture in your stats!
Terminology
Real Stats (Figures based on actual performance tracking updated several times a day)
Page Impressions: The number of times an ad unit (a collection of 1 to 4 ads). If you have two ad units on a page, then every time the page loads you get two page impressions. Page Impressions DO include PSA (Public Service Ads) and Alternate Ads.
Clicks: The number of times someone clicks on an ad. Clicks on PSA will be included in this stat as well.
Earnings: Money you’ve made.
Derived Stats (Figures calculated from the real stats)
Clickthrough Rate: Clicks/Page Impressions. It is expressed as a percentage.
Effective CPM:. Earnings per thousand page impressions. Calculated by 1000 X Earnings / Page Impressions
EPC: Your EPC is not displayed because it does not really matter. EPC stands for Earnings Per Click (Earnings/Clicks) and is frequently talked about.
Facts 1. Stats Update Frequency/Delay: Although AdSense stats usually updates every couple hours, you don’t need to panic at all if you see no change in your stats for over 12 hours. Even if other webmasters are seeing normal updates.
2. Don’t worry about anomalies in your stats during the course of the day. These are not accurate. There could be delays in the update due to one reason or another. Only when you see figures for a new day can you know that the figures for the previous day are not going to change any more.
3. Sometimes the stats are carried forward several days. This happens when Google decides to freeze your clicks and earnings for fraud checking/tracking purposes or server delays. Thus, you may notice your earnings/clicks shoot straight up when you least expect it. It is possible for your CTR to go up by as much as 10% and your CPM to raise $200 over the normal.
4. The update on the different stats are not synchronized. For example, when you check your account, the page impressions may be freshed updated, while the clicks and earnings are from two hours ago. Thus, there may be a sharp drop/increase in the derived stats. Due to this, you don’t need to fret over all these little bumps.
5. Often delays in updates foreshadow changes to the AdSense program. For example, slow updates preceded introduction of channels, TOS changes, and addition of new languages.
6. Channels are a great way for you to track the performance of your ad on a particular page/site. If you want to use the same code for all of your pages, you can also use the recently added URL channels. Of course, channel data are delayed by two days.
Performance Tips
1. EPC doesn’t matter! That is because you have absolutely no control over your EPC. Your EPC is influenced by many variables including your webpage content, advertiser’s budget, seasonal fluctuations and more. Thus, the productive thing to do is concentrate on the factors that you have control over such as CTR and page impressions.
2. How am I doing?
Many of us probably wonder how we are doing compared to other AdSense users, including myself. However, we really can’t get a good sense of the average if Google doesn't disclose their figures, which they don’t. Since people doing well with AdSense generally don’t like to reveal their earnings due to the fear that they may be terminated by the program, any discussion about an average EPC/CTR/CPM is a waste of time.
3. From various experiments by myself and other webmasters, we can conclude (at least for now) that using image/text ads instead of just text ads will dramatically decrease you CTR because of various reasons. (i.e. fewer advertisers, banner blindness etc.) However, the EPC is usually slightly higher.
4. Blend in or stand out? This is completely site dependent. Sometimes, people will never click on your ads unless you “trick” them into doing so, although this is not so good for long term. Other sites will require your ad to scream in your visitor’s face to get good clicks. Do some extensive testing to find out what’s good for your site.
5. Make good use of the URL filter feature. Blocking repetitive (eBay ads) or boring ads (free smilies) will definitely increase your CTR.
6. Large rectangles placed above the fold will often generate most revenue. However, this may not be a good long term solution since such and ad is usually obstrusive and have little aesthetic value.
7. If you run a forum site, you may notice that your earnings are very low. Here is a solution: use a simple cookie-based php script that only displays AdSense ads once every 10 page views -- essentially a counter counts down from 10 to 0 and on 0 displays an AdSense block. Between the AdSense ads, display regular banner ads. Although your AdSense page impressions may be down, you will notice your CTR skyrocketing, and a large increase in overall earnings.
In conclusion: Play around with your ad to maximize your performance, and look at the big picture in your stats!
Monday, February 19, 2007
Optimization for misspelled words
Optimizing a website for misspelled words is often recommended by many people within the search engine optimization SEO community. The concept is to capture the searchers who enter incorrectly spelled words into the search engine's interface search box. The theory is based on creating the wrong spelling, and placing it deliberately on your blog or static website. Theoretically, the pseudo-word will rank at the top of the Google search results, and receive a bonus visitor.
I do not share this SEO opinion; nor do I recommend spelling words incorrectly on a website or blog. The practice does more harm than good. It should be avoided by website owners and bloggers who want to establish a reputation for trustworthiness and professionalism.
The reasons provided by some SEO professionals for utilizing, what could be euphimistically called alternative spellings, are usually presented with good intentions. Of course, as with so many other well intended ideas, the practice doesn't match the theory. In fact, the very reasons for using misspelled words in the first place, are the reasons I don't recommend them at all. They do much more damage to a website than can be countered by any perceived benefits.
SEO theory: Incorrect spellings
The reasons for misspelling words on websites seem reasonable on the surface. In fact, some boosts in traffic can be measured as a direct result of the intentional errors. As with many statistics, the visitor traffic log can be a misleading metric if used improperly. In the case of spelling errors, the visitor traffic might not be of any value at all. It might even be harmful to your company reputation.
Let's examine why incorrect spellings are given such serious consideration as search engine tools.
It's well known that people type wrong letters when making a search query in Google. Instead of the standard and expected spelling, letters are often reversed in a transposition error, letters omitted entirely, frequently misspelled words, or letters adjacent on the keyboard are substituted by mistake. The theory holds that these are searchers who could be captured by way of the spelling error. Instead of losing those people to other sites, say these experts, they arrive at your site from ranking highly for the spelling mistake.
I do not share this SEO opinion; nor do I recommend spelling words incorrectly on a website or blog. The practice does more harm than good. It should be avoided by website owners and bloggers who want to establish a reputation for trustworthiness and professionalism.
The reasons provided by some SEO professionals for utilizing, what could be euphimistically called alternative spellings, are usually presented with good intentions. Of course, as with so many other well intended ideas, the practice doesn't match the theory. In fact, the very reasons for using misspelled words in the first place, are the reasons I don't recommend them at all. They do much more damage to a website than can be countered by any perceived benefits.
SEO theory: Incorrect spellings
The reasons for misspelling words on websites seem reasonable on the surface. In fact, some boosts in traffic can be measured as a direct result of the intentional errors. As with many statistics, the visitor traffic log can be a misleading metric if used improperly. In the case of spelling errors, the visitor traffic might not be of any value at all. It might even be harmful to your company reputation.
Let's examine why incorrect spellings are given such serious consideration as search engine tools.
It's well known that people type wrong letters when making a search query in Google. Instead of the standard and expected spelling, letters are often reversed in a transposition error, letters omitted entirely, frequently misspelled words, or letters adjacent on the keyboard are substituted by mistake. The theory holds that these are searchers who could be captured by way of the spelling error. Instead of losing those people to other sites, say these experts, they arrive at your site from ranking highly for the spelling mistake.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Making Google Adsense Pay
Are you earning a lot from Google Adsense? Google adsense does pay but it is vitally important to weigh up a few factors before proceeding. Find out what you need to know.........
From what I am reading in online forums and discussion boards, Google adsense is still ruling the roost, in terms of popularity, for those wanting to start earning money from home.
I personally, have Google adsense ads on most of my websites and I find that even with the lowest of daily impressions an income can be earned. Ok you won't make a fortune with a few hits per day but if you are constantly building websites and optimizing them for adsense then the income can REALLY add up.
A few of my most recent websites are only getting 10-20 impressions per day but really high click through rates. Some days I can earn $2-$3 per site for a couple of clickthroughs from these low traffic sites. This denotes HIGH interest from advertisers paying big bucks to Google for certain keywords.
Unbelievably, many entrepreneurs are earning six figure incomes per month from adsense revenue alone.
The smart earners are building site after site then building out the ones that show potential.
The idea is to set up sites in relatively unknown markets but also balanced with some interest in the advertising field. For instance, if you choose a niche with little or no interest from advertisers then the income will reflect this lack of interest, ie. no one will be paying google for advertising in your niche or they will be paying very little and you will earn pittance per click thru.
One site of mine in an obscure niche gets hundreds of unique visitors per day and loads of adsense clickthrus, yet the income is only a dollar or two daily. This tells me that advertisers are paying very little, probably in and around 10 cents, for keywords in my niche.
At the other end of the spectrum you DO NOT want to choose a niche with so much competition that you cannot get any traffic at all. The "work at home", "home business", "internet marketing" niches are not good examples for a newcomer to make money from Google adsense. The competition is just too great. If you DO already have an established home business site then by all means add some adsense ads to your site.
Like everything else I have done online I have learnt through trial and error, Google adsense has been no different. If you don't put the ads out there then you will never know the potential.
I do get some clickthrus from my home business sites and the click thru rates can be anything from 10-15 cents to $1-2. Not bad!Google adsense is definitely here to stay for the forseeable future and we can all see why. If you have any vision at all you can see the potential in earning from Google adsense and exactly why it has become so popular.
From what I am reading in online forums and discussion boards, Google adsense is still ruling the roost, in terms of popularity, for those wanting to start earning money from home.
I personally, have Google adsense ads on most of my websites and I find that even with the lowest of daily impressions an income can be earned. Ok you won't make a fortune with a few hits per day but if you are constantly building websites and optimizing them for adsense then the income can REALLY add up.
A few of my most recent websites are only getting 10-20 impressions per day but really high click through rates. Some days I can earn $2-$3 per site for a couple of clickthroughs from these low traffic sites. This denotes HIGH interest from advertisers paying big bucks to Google for certain keywords.
Unbelievably, many entrepreneurs are earning six figure incomes per month from adsense revenue alone.
The smart earners are building site after site then building out the ones that show potential.
The idea is to set up sites in relatively unknown markets but also balanced with some interest in the advertising field. For instance, if you choose a niche with little or no interest from advertisers then the income will reflect this lack of interest, ie. no one will be paying google for advertising in your niche or they will be paying very little and you will earn pittance per click thru.
One site of mine in an obscure niche gets hundreds of unique visitors per day and loads of adsense clickthrus, yet the income is only a dollar or two daily. This tells me that advertisers are paying very little, probably in and around 10 cents, for keywords in my niche.
At the other end of the spectrum you DO NOT want to choose a niche with so much competition that you cannot get any traffic at all. The "work at home", "home business", "internet marketing" niches are not good examples for a newcomer to make money from Google adsense. The competition is just too great. If you DO already have an established home business site then by all means add some adsense ads to your site.
Like everything else I have done online I have learnt through trial and error, Google adsense has been no different. If you don't put the ads out there then you will never know the potential.
I do get some clickthrus from my home business sites and the click thru rates can be anything from 10-15 cents to $1-2. Not bad!Google adsense is definitely here to stay for the forseeable future and we can all see why. If you have any vision at all you can see the potential in earning from Google adsense and exactly why it has become so popular.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The AdSense Formula for Making Money
I often get asked what the secret is to making money with Google's AdSense program. This often comes from people who are dreaming of setting up websites chock full of high-paying keywords for particular niche subjects and then sitting back and watching the money roll in. "What's the magic formula?" they ask me. If they're non-technical, I point them straight to my first AdSense book, Make Easy Money with Google, and assure them that they'll learn everything they need from it. They may think it's hard, but it's not.
But what about the technical people? By this I mean the people who've already set up a blog or website, who have registered domain names, who are comfortable with basic Internet terminology and concepts. What is the "AdSense formula"?
The only AdSense formula that you need to know is this:
earnings = number of clicks * average price per click
This is what I call the Fundamental AdSense Formula because you can derive almost every AdSense "secret" directly or indirectly from this formula. Do you want to earn more with AdSense? You have two ways of doing it:
Increase the number of clicks, and/or
Increase the average price per click
Your earnings will only go up if you do one or the other, and ideally both. It's an obvious formula, yes, but it's amazing how many people lose sight of it in their quest for increased AdSense earnings.
Increasing the Number of AdSense Clicks
Increasing the number of times the ads on your site or blog are clicked is the most obvious strategy. There are two general strategies you can follow:
Increase the traffic to the site, and/or
Adjust the ads to make them more "clickable"
Getting traffic is hard and takes time, so don't look at it as a quick fix. The best way to get traffic is to provide useful, unique content and to rank highly in search engine rankings for keywords related to that content. In other words, use standard search engine optimization techniques. DO NOT "buy" traffic or use "link farms" or other dubious techniques. Other tips for getting traffic:
Publish articles, even free ones, with links back to your site.
Include a link to your site in the signature at the bottom of your emails or in any forum postings you make (if the forum allows it).
Participate in forums/groups related to the content of your site or blog. The key is to participate, not lurk, and don't just post messages promoting your site.
Add comments (relevant ones only, please) to other blogs, you can usually link back to yours. (This won't help your search engine rankings, but it may allow others who are reading those comments to find your own site.)
Syndicate your content (trivial if you have a blog) and make sure that the content is registered with syndication aggregators.
List your site in relevant directories.
Adjusting the ads is something you can do almost immediately:
Position the ads on the page in order to make them more noticeable. Google even publishes a helpful heat map for AdSense publishers.
Choose the best AdSense ad format that works for your site.
Change the ad colors either to make the ads blend in with your site or to make them stand out. Again, it varies depending on the site.
But what about the technical people? By this I mean the people who've already set up a blog or website, who have registered domain names, who are comfortable with basic Internet terminology and concepts. What is the "AdSense formula"?
The only AdSense formula that you need to know is this:
earnings = number of clicks * average price per click
This is what I call the Fundamental AdSense Formula because you can derive almost every AdSense "secret" directly or indirectly from this formula. Do you want to earn more with AdSense? You have two ways of doing it:
Increase the number of clicks, and/or
Increase the average price per click
Your earnings will only go up if you do one or the other, and ideally both. It's an obvious formula, yes, but it's amazing how many people lose sight of it in their quest for increased AdSense earnings.
Increasing the Number of AdSense Clicks
Increasing the number of times the ads on your site or blog are clicked is the most obvious strategy. There are two general strategies you can follow:
Increase the traffic to the site, and/or
Adjust the ads to make them more "clickable"
Getting traffic is hard and takes time, so don't look at it as a quick fix. The best way to get traffic is to provide useful, unique content and to rank highly in search engine rankings for keywords related to that content. In other words, use standard search engine optimization techniques. DO NOT "buy" traffic or use "link farms" or other dubious techniques. Other tips for getting traffic:
Publish articles, even free ones, with links back to your site.
Include a link to your site in the signature at the bottom of your emails or in any forum postings you make (if the forum allows it).
Participate in forums/groups related to the content of your site or blog. The key is to participate, not lurk, and don't just post messages promoting your site.
Add comments (relevant ones only, please) to other blogs, you can usually link back to yours. (This won't help your search engine rankings, but it may allow others who are reading those comments to find your own site.)
Syndicate your content (trivial if you have a blog) and make sure that the content is registered with syndication aggregators.
List your site in relevant directories.
Adjusting the ads is something you can do almost immediately:
Position the ads on the page in order to make them more noticeable. Google even publishes a helpful heat map for AdSense publishers.
Choose the best AdSense ad format that works for your site.
Change the ad colors either to make the ads blend in with your site or to make them stand out. Again, it varies depending on the site.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
AdSense Stats and Performance 101
As more and more people are getting into the AdSense game, there seem to be many questions asked again and again by the newcomers. Here, I have compiled detailed explanations to some common AdSense terms, facts, and performance tips.
Terminology
Real Stats (Figures based on actual performance tracking updated several times a day)
Page Impressions: The number of times an ad unit (a collection of 1 to 4 ads). If you have two ad units on a page, then every time the page loads you get two page impressions. Page Impressions DO include PSA (Public Service Ads) and Alternate Ads.
Clicks: The number of times someone clicks on an ad. Clicks on PSA will be included in this stat as well.
Earnings: Money you’ve made.
Derived Stats (Figures calculated from the real stats)
Clickthrough Rate: Clicks/Page Impressions. It is expressed as a percentage.
Effective CPM:. Earnings per thousand page impressions. Calculated by 1000 X Earnings / Page Impressions
EPC: Your EPC is not displayed because it does not really matter. EPC stands for Earnings Per Click (Earnings/Clicks) and is frequently talked about.
Facts (What we've discovered)
1. Stats Update Frequency/Delay: Although AdSense stats usually updates every couple hours, you don’t need to panic at all if you see no change in your stats for over 12 hours. Even if other webmasters are seeing normal updates.
2. Don’t worry about anomalies in your stats during the course of the day. These are not accurate. There could be delays in the update due to one reason or another. Only when you see figures for a new day can you know that the figures for the previous day are not going to change any more.
3. Sometimes the stats are carried forward several days. This happens when Google decides to freeze your clicks and earnings for fraud checking/tracking purposes or server delays. Thus, you may notice your earnings/clicks shoot straight up when you least expect it. It is possible for your CTR to go up by as much as 10% and your CPM to raise $200 over the normal.
4. The update on the different stats are not synchronized. For example, when you check your account, the page impressions may be freshed updated, while the clicks and earnings are from two hours ago. Thus, there may be a sharp drop/increase in the derived stats. Due to this, you don’t need to fret over all these little bumps.
5. Often delays in updates foreshadow changes to the AdSense program. For example, slow updates preceded introduction of channels, TOS changes, and addition of new languages.
6. Channels are a great way for you to track the performance of your ad on a particular page/site. If you want to use the same code for all of your pages, you can also use the recently added URL channels. Of course, channel data are delayed by two days.
Reading more here
Terminology
Real Stats (Figures based on actual performance tracking updated several times a day)
Page Impressions: The number of times an ad unit (a collection of 1 to 4 ads). If you have two ad units on a page, then every time the page loads you get two page impressions. Page Impressions DO include PSA (Public Service Ads) and Alternate Ads.
Clicks: The number of times someone clicks on an ad. Clicks on PSA will be included in this stat as well.
Earnings: Money you’ve made.
Derived Stats (Figures calculated from the real stats)
Clickthrough Rate: Clicks/Page Impressions. It is expressed as a percentage.
Effective CPM:. Earnings per thousand page impressions. Calculated by 1000 X Earnings / Page Impressions
EPC: Your EPC is not displayed because it does not really matter. EPC stands for Earnings Per Click (Earnings/Clicks) and is frequently talked about.
Facts (What we've discovered)
1. Stats Update Frequency/Delay: Although AdSense stats usually updates every couple hours, you don’t need to panic at all if you see no change in your stats for over 12 hours. Even if other webmasters are seeing normal updates.
2. Don’t worry about anomalies in your stats during the course of the day. These are not accurate. There could be delays in the update due to one reason or another. Only when you see figures for a new day can you know that the figures for the previous day are not going to change any more.
3. Sometimes the stats are carried forward several days. This happens when Google decides to freeze your clicks and earnings for fraud checking/tracking purposes or server delays. Thus, you may notice your earnings/clicks shoot straight up when you least expect it. It is possible for your CTR to go up by as much as 10% and your CPM to raise $200 over the normal.
4. The update on the different stats are not synchronized. For example, when you check your account, the page impressions may be freshed updated, while the clicks and earnings are from two hours ago. Thus, there may be a sharp drop/increase in the derived stats. Due to this, you don’t need to fret over all these little bumps.
5. Often delays in updates foreshadow changes to the AdSense program. For example, slow updates preceded introduction of channels, TOS changes, and addition of new languages.
6. Channels are a great way for you to track the performance of your ad on a particular page/site. If you want to use the same code for all of your pages, you can also use the recently added URL channels. Of course, channel data are delayed by two days.
Reading more here
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
What Makes Adsense Work
Some adsense sites are performing well and others just exist in the abyss of cyberspace. Make sure your adsense site is the successful one and keep it out of the abyss.
What does make Adsense work – there are as many ideas as there are theories. Some maintain it is the placement of the ad on the page, some say integrate it into the page and it must have the look and feel of the webpage. It should be at the top and in this format and so the secrets continue.
There is only one real secret to adsense success; it is nothing more than traffic. Without substantial traffic your adsense pages will not make you money. There is proof of this statement, just look at the click through rate that you are receiving on your current pages and you will immediately notice that it takes a lot of visitors to generate a click.
If things go really well you could have as high as a fifty percent and upwards CTR. This is possible, has been done and proven, but it won't just happen on any old page.
Placement of the ad does play a role but it is not so big as many would like you to believe. Information on the best placement of adsense code on your page is no secret and is free information on Google. It is called a heat map and will show you exactly where to place your ads for maximum exposure and CTR.
The problem with most adsense driven sites is exactly that, they are adsense driven. Nobody nowadays seem to care about the visitor landing on the page, they have just become click machines supposed to make you money. According to most adsense sites they are there for you and not the other way around. No second thought is given to the surfing experience of the visitor.
You have been made to believe that you need a multitude of sites and use all sorts of templates and secret positioning tactics for maximum income. So every second would be adsense millionaire is putting up thousands of crappy pages all over the internet to get those adsense clicks that will elevate them to the illusive four and five figure adsense earners. They tend to forget the internet marketplace is probably the most dynamic market there is, and changes every day. Certain elements of course remain the same but you have to be able to broaden your thinking and think out of the box sometimes.
Let's go back to the least important person for most adsense publishers, the visitor to the page. These poor souls land on your pages either through generic or PPC traffic. Either way you have the possibility that they might be clicking on one of your adsense links. The only driving force for the visitor to click your link is he found the information on your page that related to his search, and after going through your page he will click on one of your links in adsense to further his search.
Now adsense displays relevant ads on your page based on the content of the page. If the visitor is not finding what they are looking for how on earth do you expect adsense to find related content ads to place on your page.
By taking your visitor into account and actually providing for them you are also insuring for yourself that the correct adsense ads will be displaying on your pages, and hence will deliver a good CTR. Just putting up one thousand new pages with some template or other automatic page creating device will certainly not hit the mark.
You would most probably be much better off with ten well designed and optimized pages, not only for the search engines but for your visitors, and you might then really be able to ensure a profitable adsense campaign.
What does make Adsense work – there are as many ideas as there are theories. Some maintain it is the placement of the ad on the page, some say integrate it into the page and it must have the look and feel of the webpage. It should be at the top and in this format and so the secrets continue.
There is only one real secret to adsense success; it is nothing more than traffic. Without substantial traffic your adsense pages will not make you money. There is proof of this statement, just look at the click through rate that you are receiving on your current pages and you will immediately notice that it takes a lot of visitors to generate a click.
If things go really well you could have as high as a fifty percent and upwards CTR. This is possible, has been done and proven, but it won't just happen on any old page.
Placement of the ad does play a role but it is not so big as many would like you to believe. Information on the best placement of adsense code on your page is no secret and is free information on Google. It is called a heat map and will show you exactly where to place your ads for maximum exposure and CTR.
The problem with most adsense driven sites is exactly that, they are adsense driven. Nobody nowadays seem to care about the visitor landing on the page, they have just become click machines supposed to make you money. According to most adsense sites they are there for you and not the other way around. No second thought is given to the surfing experience of the visitor.
You have been made to believe that you need a multitude of sites and use all sorts of templates and secret positioning tactics for maximum income. So every second would be adsense millionaire is putting up thousands of crappy pages all over the internet to get those adsense clicks that will elevate them to the illusive four and five figure adsense earners. They tend to forget the internet marketplace is probably the most dynamic market there is, and changes every day. Certain elements of course remain the same but you have to be able to broaden your thinking and think out of the box sometimes.
Let's go back to the least important person for most adsense publishers, the visitor to the page. These poor souls land on your pages either through generic or PPC traffic. Either way you have the possibility that they might be clicking on one of your adsense links. The only driving force for the visitor to click your link is he found the information on your page that related to his search, and after going through your page he will click on one of your links in adsense to further his search.
Now adsense displays relevant ads on your page based on the content of the page. If the visitor is not finding what they are looking for how on earth do you expect adsense to find related content ads to place on your page.
By taking your visitor into account and actually providing for them you are also insuring for yourself that the correct adsense ads will be displaying on your pages, and hence will deliver a good CTR. Just putting up one thousand new pages with some template or other automatic page creating device will certainly not hit the mark.
You would most probably be much better off with ten well designed and optimized pages, not only for the search engines but for your visitors, and you might then really be able to ensure a profitable adsense campaign.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Step by step SEO: Chapter 5
Some search engines will allow you to submit (to replace or add a page to the index) a URL once every day and changes are usually live quickly (faster than other search engines), so use the search engine with the fastest indexing process to 'debug' your keywords and Search Engine Optimization tactics. Unfortunately this submission cycle varies, so you might need to submit pages to all major engines, but certainly not all 200 search engines. It is important to understand that the time it takes for a search engine to actually respond to a submission and to place you into their index varies greatly day-to-day. Search engine indexing was once a matter of hours, and now is weeks. You would be wise to consider submission to other engines as well to cover your bases. How search engines work is a wondrous thing, and every engine is different.
Once you have selected your major keywords, add the main words to your TITLE string, your META description string, your META keywords string, ALT tags (image tag parameter), and especially imbed them into your top-of-page displayed content. Try to use as many keywords as grammar will allow in your opening few sentences since this sets the topic for the page and contributes to the theme of the site.
Keyword tuning is an iterative loop (you keep doing it) until you rank reasonably well on several search engines. At that point you at least have the right words and a reasonable META keyword tag. But some search engines use different strings to determine keywords and their algorithms downplay or ignore META tags. These search engines extract keywords from the content on your page, so you need to place your best search words throughout the displayed content for your page. An example (grossly oversimplified) would be:
anchor-text-with-keywords
Note: If you are not "programming" the design of your own web site and are not familiar with how to add HTML code, please contact your web designer and request that they add these commands.
Hint: some search engines ignore content in comment blocks, but some other engines may process this content. Also, some engines processes ALT text for your images as keyword text as long as you do not spam these areas. However, at least one search engine has added indexing logic to consider the exact (or long-string) duplication of substantial portions of your keyword list in this fashion as spamming, and your entries will be removed within a week of their addition. To get around this, reword your keyword list to read as sentences, and place them in content appropriate to the page.Once the same words are in your META title, description and keywords, and also in other text (Alt and comments) and displayed content, and you are satisfied with your results, and only then, is it appropriate to submit your URL's to each major search engine. We suggest that you pace your search engine submissions, adding only up to five pages per day per site as a maximum, and not doing submission more than two or three times per week. As a result, performing the above add requests as scheduled will allow you to remain within the acceptable range for most search engines.
Hint: the engines will regularly discard search engine submissions without processing them. By resubmitting you have a higher probability of having one of your submissions "take". Also, some indexes appear to give preference to "fresh" submissions as determined by the date of last update and the last submission date. So you should update your site often following prescribed Search Engine Optimization tactics and resubmit at least twice per month.
Allow two to four weeks for each search engine submission to be indexed in each major search engine. If you do not show up (as is common), then resubmit. If you continue to miss the search engine rankings results you desire, then go back and review your keyword usage, either increasing or decreasing frequency until you have the desired results. Suggestion: on the Yahoo directory, register regionally instead of nationally (they will add you everywhere as well, but you get registered much quicker regionally), and on the others, register frequently until you are listed. Your ratings in the organic search results appear to be affected and while Yahoo is changing this is still a good move.
Once you have selected your major keywords, add the main words to your TITLE string, your META description string, your META keywords string, ALT tags (image tag parameter), and especially imbed them into your top-of-page displayed content. Try to use as many keywords as grammar will allow in your opening few sentences since this sets the topic for the page and contributes to the theme of the site.
Keyword tuning is an iterative loop (you keep doing it) until you rank reasonably well on several search engines. At that point you at least have the right words and a reasonable META keyword tag. But some search engines use different strings to determine keywords and their algorithms downplay or ignore META tags. These search engines extract keywords from the content on your page, so you need to place your best search words throughout the displayed content for your page. An example (grossly oversimplified) would be:
important-keyword-phrase
anchor-text-with-keywords
Note: If you are not "programming" the design of your own web site and are not familiar with how to add HTML code, please contact your web designer and request that they add these commands.
Hint: some search engines ignore content in comment blocks, but some other engines may process this content. Also, some engines processes ALT text for your images as keyword text as long as you do not spam these areas. However, at least one search engine has added indexing logic to consider the exact (or long-string) duplication of substantial portions of your keyword list in this fashion as spamming, and your entries will be removed within a week of their addition. To get around this, reword your keyword list to read as sentences, and place them in content appropriate to the page.Once the same words are in your META title, description and keywords, and also in other text (Alt and comments) and displayed content, and you are satisfied with your results, and only then, is it appropriate to submit your URL's to each major search engine. We suggest that you pace your search engine submissions, adding only up to five pages per day per site as a maximum, and not doing submission more than two or three times per week. As a result, performing the above add requests as scheduled will allow you to remain within the acceptable range for most search engines.
Hint: the engines will regularly discard search engine submissions without processing them. By resubmitting you have a higher probability of having one of your submissions "take". Also, some indexes appear to give preference to "fresh" submissions as determined by the date of last update and the last submission date. So you should update your site often following prescribed Search Engine Optimization tactics and resubmit at least twice per month.
Allow two to four weeks for each search engine submission to be indexed in each major search engine. If you do not show up (as is common), then resubmit. If you continue to miss the search engine rankings results you desire, then go back and review your keyword usage, either increasing or decreasing frequency until you have the desired results. Suggestion: on the Yahoo directory, register regionally instead of nationally (they will add you everywhere as well, but you get registered much quicker regionally), and on the others, register frequently until you are listed. Your ratings in the organic search results appear to be affected and while Yahoo is changing this is still a good move.
Double Your Adsense Income
As you probably already know, AdSense is revolutionizing the way many infopreneurs are creating revenue from their web site traffic. The reason for this is its simplicity. Through AdSense, revenue is generated when someone simply clicks thru the AdSense ads displayed on the webmasters web site.
In this article I want to give you a few simple ways to dramatically increase your AdSense income.
The bottom line:
To increase AdSense income all you must do is increase the number of click thrus you receive.
There are two ways for you to increase your total number of click thrus. You can either increase your website traffic or you can increase your AdSense click thru rate. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let’s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let’s focus on increasing your AdSense click thru rate instead.
4 Tips to Increase Click Thru:
Match your AdSense to your website:
You want your AdSense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to match every aspect of your AdSense ads to the theme of your website. What you want to do is remove the borders from your AdSense ads and match the background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the AdSense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.
For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of your hypertext links is blue you will want to remove the border from your AdSense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yep you guessed it… make the links blue.
Placement Matters:
Where you place your AdSense ads is just as important as how they look. Luckily, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your click through rate.
The more white space around your ads the better
The closer to the top of the page the better
The closer the left of the page the better
Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will see an increase in your AdSense click thru rate. (It really is that simply!)
Google Search:
Now this is one that I rarely see webmasters take advantage of. The Google AdSense program gives webmasters the ability to add a Google search box to there web site.
Why should you use this function?
Well, when a website visitor chooses to use this search box from your website your AdSense ID will be imbedded in ALL of that visitors Google searches. If that person does 1 search or 50 your AdSense ID will still be imbedded throughout process.
Why is this so great?
If that visitor clicks on any of the sponsored listings while surfing from your web site guess who makes money. YOU! If they hit the back button and click on another ad guess who makes money? YOU! This is absolutely huge. Through this function you now have the ability to earn multiple click thrus from the same visitor on the site visit. Please don’t overlook how powerful this is. Besides, most of your website traffic will just be browsing anyway, so I why help them find what there looking for and make a little coin along the way?
Tracking:
Just like any other type of marketing, you won’t know what’s working the best for you on your web site unless you track the different things that you’re experimenting with. Set up a few Google AdSense channels for the different ads that you’ll be placing on your website. Then just see which channels are working the best and stick to those.
That’s it!
Follow the tips above and I can assure you that you will absolutely double your AdSense click thru rate and your AdSense income. The best part about the four tips I’ve shared here is that you can put them into action immediately and see how they will work on your website right now. Who knows… you could be making twice as much by tomorrow by just making a few simple tweaks here and there.
In this article I want to give you a few simple ways to dramatically increase your AdSense income.
The bottom line:
To increase AdSense income all you must do is increase the number of click thrus you receive.
There are two ways for you to increase your total number of click thrus. You can either increase your website traffic or you can increase your AdSense click thru rate. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let’s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let’s focus on increasing your AdSense click thru rate instead.
4 Tips to Increase Click Thru:
Match your AdSense to your website:
You want your AdSense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to match every aspect of your AdSense ads to the theme of your website. What you want to do is remove the borders from your AdSense ads and match the background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the AdSense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.
For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of your hypertext links is blue you will want to remove the border from your AdSense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yep you guessed it… make the links blue.
Placement Matters:
Where you place your AdSense ads is just as important as how they look. Luckily, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your click through rate.
The more white space around your ads the better
The closer to the top of the page the better
The closer the left of the page the better
Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will see an increase in your AdSense click thru rate. (It really is that simply!)
Google Search:
Now this is one that I rarely see webmasters take advantage of. The Google AdSense program gives webmasters the ability to add a Google search box to there web site.
Why should you use this function?
Well, when a website visitor chooses to use this search box from your website your AdSense ID will be imbedded in ALL of that visitors Google searches. If that person does 1 search or 50 your AdSense ID will still be imbedded throughout process.
Why is this so great?
If that visitor clicks on any of the sponsored listings while surfing from your web site guess who makes money. YOU! If they hit the back button and click on another ad guess who makes money? YOU! This is absolutely huge. Through this function you now have the ability to earn multiple click thrus from the same visitor on the site visit. Please don’t overlook how powerful this is. Besides, most of your website traffic will just be browsing anyway, so I why help them find what there looking for and make a little coin along the way?
Tracking:
Just like any other type of marketing, you won’t know what’s working the best for you on your web site unless you track the different things that you’re experimenting with. Set up a few Google AdSense channels for the different ads that you’ll be placing on your website. Then just see which channels are working the best and stick to those.
That’s it!
Follow the tips above and I can assure you that you will absolutely double your AdSense click thru rate and your AdSense income. The best part about the four tips I’ve shared here is that you can put them into action immediately and see how they will work on your website right now. Who knows… you could be making twice as much by tomorrow by just making a few simple tweaks here and there.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Step by step SEO: Chapter 4
You are about to discover your real issue... you have insufficient or weak content. It takes a lot of words to convince a search engine that you are a subject matter expert. Also, most sites use images to relay their message to humans, but are now discovering that search engines are blind and do not see images. Or the site content comes from a data base and the data base has
little unique content. Or the site accepts feeds from other expert sites but
this makes all of their content someone else's, and they either get no
credit for it or are penalized for duplicate content. In any case, the
design and content on your web site may very well need to be restructured
and expanded. [If this is not you, buy yourself a drink -- you have earned
it!] Avoid mistakes, use clean optimized graphics and do it right, minimize
the use of flash, avoid pop-up windows, restrict the scope of forms except
where really needed, make JavaScript and css files external to the source
code, always use a site map, solve obvious problems first, and by all means
keep it simple. Web page layout problems really hurt SEO projects.
Even if tags are ignored today, it only takes a few minutes to do it right,
you would never be penalized for having them (unless you spam), and not all
engines will ignore them and maybe not forever.
You can never go wrong by using meta tags, and only hurt yourself if you
don't use them.
You must also unconditionally, absolutely, positively have keywords (and
certainly sufficient content containing them) throughout your body section.
We recommend that you have at least 400 words of clean sentence-structure
grammatically correct content on every page. You must also have your
keywords appear as the the most common (without excess) phrases on your
pages. In many cases there are ways to do this that work well for whatever
your page format or content, all of which is customized to the look-and-feel
of the site and the nature of the content.
And you also need to link pages together using the keywords of the landing
page in the anchor text of the sending page. This is a must... use text
links within paragraphs when possible, especially when the pages are
related. If the topics are not related, then use image links so the search
engines do not see the text and get confused.
And never, ever create doorway pages, or information pages, or hallway
pages, or whatever they are called today. Spam by any other name is still
spam. If you cannot make the real page into a subject matter expert, then
hire someone that can. But do not try to make a pig fly!
little unique content. Or the site accepts feeds from other expert sites but
this makes all of their content someone else's, and they either get no
credit for it or are penalized for duplicate content. In any case, the
design and content on your web site may very well need to be restructured
and expanded. [If this is not you, buy yourself a drink -- you have earned
it!] Avoid mistakes, use clean optimized graphics and do it right, minimize
the use of flash, avoid pop-up windows, restrict the scope of forms except
where really needed, make JavaScript and css files external to the source
code, always use a site map, solve obvious problems first, and by all means
keep it simple. Web page layout problems really hurt SEO projects.
Even if tags are ignored today, it only takes a few minutes to do it right,
you would never be penalized for having them (unless you spam), and not all
engines will ignore them and maybe not forever.
You can never go wrong by using meta tags, and only hurt yourself if you
don't use them.
You must also unconditionally, absolutely, positively have keywords (and
certainly sufficient content containing them) throughout your body section.
We recommend that you have at least 400 words of clean sentence-structure
grammatically correct content on every page. You must also have your
keywords appear as the the most common (without excess) phrases on your
pages. In many cases there are ways to do this that work well for whatever
your page format or content, all of which is customized to the look-and-feel
of the site and the nature of the content.
And you also need to link pages together using the keywords of the landing
page in the anchor text of the sending page. This is a must... use text
links within paragraphs when possible, especially when the pages are
related. If the topics are not related, then use image links so the search
engines do not see the text and get confused.
And never, ever create doorway pages, or information pages, or hallway
pages, or whatever they are called today. Spam by any other name is still
spam. If you cannot make the real page into a subject matter expert, then
hire someone that can. But do not try to make a pig fly!
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Step by step SEO: Chapter 3
You will end up with hundreds of words that you should sort by your perceived descending order of importance (how likely it is that they will be used by visitors as search words). If uncertain, leave them in the order used by the highest rated pages. Be sure to identify two-word or three-word phrases if used, or if applicable. It is also important that you add words to help clarify the use of your keywords. For instance "capital" might have very different meanings -- such as intellectual capital, state capital, capital letters, venture capital, etc. So a keyword or two that helps the index builders learn the context of your keywords will help raise your search engine rankings. Hint: each keyword in your META tags must also appear within your content to avoid spamming penalties. Also, consider common misspellings as additions to your keyword lists.
Once you have your personal list, validate each phrase for popularity as a search term. There are several tools that are free that allow you to get a glimpse of the usage of various words and phrases. The most popular free keyword suggestion tool is offered by Overture and it is very popular. The best tool for determining what stemmed word is commonly used is Word tracker. It is so good that we recommend it to our clients in our SEO training courses. The results will indicate what terms generate the most searches, thus those are the most important terms (if they are appropriate to your page). Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Advice: Excessive use of META keywords is going to cause a search engine to ignore or decrease the weight for that keyword. And if you use a single word as a keyword, and later repeat it in your keyword string, then you may also be penalized. The string "Web, Web Design, Web" would be considered spamming. Also, keywords like 'word, words, wording, worded' may cause indexing to fail. Things are definitely getting tough, and it is advised that you use extreme caution when creating your Meta Tags. If you are indexed by any engine, and remain indexed for a week, then you have probably passed their test
"For best results, the following Web publishing techniques should be avoided:
Overuse or repetition of keywords
Use of keywords that do not relate to the content of the site
Use of fast meta refresh
Use of colored text on same-color background
Duplication of pages with different URLs
Use of different pages that bridge to the same URL"
It is also important to discard potential keywords that are not likely to be used in a search if they do not contribute to your revenue. Properly done, you might end up with as few as ten or as many as a hundred major keywords. If you add all of the words it will dilute the importance of each keyword, so select well. In general, you will have a hard time keeping the keyword analysis list short if you include plurals and various combinations of words to maximize your frequency counts. This site has many keywords in various forms and combinations but we felt each word was important when we designed our keywords. The last keyword should be your site identification taken from your URL (ours is bruceclay.com), for ranking and placement reasons discussed later. Be sure that this string appears as content to avoid spamming (can be in a URL string or mailto at the bottom of your page). As for spamming technologies, there is evidence that the major search engines look across pages within their index for long-string repeats, so mix up your keywords in the ALT tags to be sure they are not identical in sequence to words used elsewhere (text or META tags). Duplicate content is a very bad thing, and it can cause site-wide penalties. Hint: Be very careful not to replicate content on other URL's, and if it happens (as with affiliate sites) you have a serious problem. Duplicate content is a real problem when doing SEO. Also, repeating your keywords in the content, as long as it is within a reasonable sentence construct and has appropriate context, will not be considered spamming. A search engine usually cares about spamming outside of the standard sentence construct when reviewing content instead of sentence spamming issues. Using exotic "hidden" text techniques will usually have you eliminated, so avoid them when possible.
Once you have your personal list, validate each phrase for popularity as a search term. There are several tools that are free that allow you to get a glimpse of the usage of various words and phrases. The most popular free keyword suggestion tool is offered by Overture and it is very popular. The best tool for determining what stemmed word is commonly used is Word tracker. It is so good that we recommend it to our clients in our SEO training courses. The results will indicate what terms generate the most searches, thus those are the most important terms (if they are appropriate to your page). Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Advice: Excessive use of META keywords is going to cause a search engine to ignore or decrease the weight for that keyword. And if you use a single word as a keyword, and later repeat it in your keyword string, then you may also be penalized. The string "Web, Web Design, Web" would be considered spamming. Also, keywords like 'word, words, wording, worded' may cause indexing to fail. Things are definitely getting tough, and it is advised that you use extreme caution when creating your Meta Tags. If you are indexed by any engine, and remain indexed for a week, then you have probably passed their test
"For best results, the following Web publishing techniques should be avoided:
Overuse or repetition of keywords
Use of keywords that do not relate to the content of the site
Use of fast meta refresh
Use of colored text on same-color background
Duplication of pages with different URLs
Use of different pages that bridge to the same URL"
It is also important to discard potential keywords that are not likely to be used in a search if they do not contribute to your revenue. Properly done, you might end up with as few as ten or as many as a hundred major keywords. If you add all of the words it will dilute the importance of each keyword, so select well. In general, you will have a hard time keeping the keyword analysis list short if you include plurals and various combinations of words to maximize your frequency counts. This site has many keywords in various forms and combinations but we felt each word was important when we designed our keywords. The last keyword should be your site identification taken from your URL (ours is bruceclay.com), for ranking and placement reasons discussed later. Be sure that this string appears as content to avoid spamming (can be in a URL string or mailto at the bottom of your page). As for spamming technologies, there is evidence that the major search engines look across pages within their index for long-string repeats, so mix up your keywords in the ALT tags to be sure they are not identical in sequence to words used elsewhere (text or META tags). Duplicate content is a very bad thing, and it can cause site-wide penalties. Hint: Be very careful not to replicate content on other URL's, and if it happens (as with affiliate sites) you have a serious problem. Duplicate content is a real problem when doing SEO. Also, repeating your keywords in the content, as long as it is within a reasonable sentence construct and has appropriate context, will not be considered spamming. A search engine usually cares about spamming outside of the standard sentence construct when reviewing content instead of sentence spamming issues. Using exotic "hidden" text techniques will usually have you eliminated, so avoid them when possible.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Step by step SEO: Chapter 2
How to Identify Keywords
If you find that there are no META keywords in the site, the chances are that the site is using a server technique designed to hide keywords (such as server side includes), such server scripts submit alternate pages when a specific search engine looks for the page. These stealth CGI scripts were designed to offer content to the search engine that is exceptionally keyword loaded in an attempt to bias the spider into a higher ranking position, or both. "Some people submit pages that present our spider with content that differs from what browsers will see. We strongly discourage the use of these techniques." - AltaVista Spamming Restrictions
Or perhaps the site author indexed then subsequently uploaded a keyword-less page to keep you from figuring out how to beat them with their own keywords. I do not recommend that you try this on your site because, in most cases, anybody can resubmit your URL, thus your site will drop from the search ranking results. As a housekeeping matter, the search engine will eventually revisit and reload registered sites without owner knowledge in order to purge deleted pages or to address spamming, so these sites will eventually vanish anyhow. Hint: the META tag "keywords" may work for some search engines (like Yahoo!) while Google and many others emphasize content and titles. As a result, it is important to have the most common words also appear at the top and throughout your site if it can be done without hurting the appeal of the site. If the search is for "search engine advice", put that string in the title, keywords, and top-of-page content.
If you find that there are no META keywords in the site, the chances are that the site is using a server technique designed to hide keywords (such as server side includes), such server scripts submit alternate pages when a specific search engine looks for the page. These stealth CGI scripts were designed to offer content to the search engine that is exceptionally keyword loaded in an attempt to bias the spider into a higher ranking position, or both. "Some people submit pages that present our spider with content that differs from what browsers will see. We strongly discourage the use of these techniques." - AltaVista Spamming Restrictions
Or perhaps the site author indexed then subsequently uploaded a keyword-less page to keep you from figuring out how to beat them with their own keywords. I do not recommend that you try this on your site because, in most cases, anybody can resubmit your URL, thus your site will drop from the search ranking results. As a housekeeping matter, the search engine will eventually revisit and reload registered sites without owner knowledge in order to purge deleted pages or to address spamming, so these sites will eventually vanish anyhow. Hint: the META tag "keywords" may work for some search engines (like Yahoo!) while Google and many others emphasize content and titles. As a result, it is important to have the most common words also appear at the top and throughout your site if it can be done without hurting the appeal of the site. If the search is for "search engine advice", put that string in the title, keywords, and top-of-page content.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs
When Google updated their AdSense policies this week, there was a lot of confusion about the removal of the a certain part of the competitive ad policy, namely the one that saw the removal of the following:
We do not permit Google ads or search boxes accessing Google search services to be published on web pages that also contain what could be considered competing ads or services. If you have elected to receive contextually-targeted Google ads, this would include all other contextually-targeted ads or links on the same page as Google ads.
Yet, as I posted yesterday, its removal from the policy pages did not mean much in itself, as the AdSense terms still included a clause (If You have elected to receive content or Site-based Ads, You further agree not to display on any Serviced Page any non-Google content-targeted advertisement(s).) that would prevent other contextual ads on the same page.
I followed up with Google on the situation, to find out of the removal of the clause would mean that competitor's ads would be allowed on the same page as AdSense, provided they didn't resemble or mimic AdSense ads, and that the AdSense terms would eventually be updated to reflect this policy change. And the answer is yes!
I spoke with Brian Axe, senior product manager on the Google AdSense Team on the issue. "As you and others have noticed, the AdSense Terms and Conditions haven't been updated since 2005, and we're working on an update to the Terms to bring everything into line. Traditionally, we don't update the Terms as frequently, since all publishers must re-agree to the Terms whenever they change."
"When it comes to enforcing policies on third-party contextual ads, we'll be following the updated program policies instead of the T&Cs on this point. That is to say, publishers may now display other contextual ads on the same site or page as Google ads as long as they don't have the same look and feel as our ads," Brian Axe tells Jennifer Slegg of JenSense.
So what does this mean for AdSense publishers? Well, it depends what you want to use with it. Using Yahoo Pubisher Network is still a no go, because the YPN terms still contain a clause (For any webpage or RSS feed that includes the Ad Code, you agree not to display or link to any other advertising (including but not limited to any listing) that is mapped to or responds to the content of the Ad Page) preventing publishers from using another contextual ad network on the same page as YPN ads. However, I am following up with Yahoo on this issue to find out if they will be loosening this clause now or in the future to permit AdSense and YPN to run on the same page. I will update you on this issue if I get information about whether or not YPN will decide to do this.
However IntelliTXT is one I get plenty of questions on, and publishers can definitely run IntelliTXT with AdSense, provided the pop-up does not either mimic AdSense ads or obscure any AdSense ad units running on the same page.
And any other contextual ads are now fine to run, provided their own terms do allow other contextual ads on the same page, and they do not mimic the AdSense ad units on the page you currently run.
How can you ensure they aren't mimicking your AdSense? If you are using the border-less technique, the simplest solution is to add a border or change the background color of the competitor's ad unit. It is still unclear just how much of the text within a blended ad unit (an ad unit that matches the border and background to the background of the webpage) would have to be changed, but I would guess all three elements would need changing, the colors of the title, description text and the URL. So it is obviously easier to just throw up a different border or background on to the ad unit to make its appearance substantially different from your AdSense ad unit. The you can work on tweaking it later without borders once we get more confirmation on just how much of the text color needs to be changed within an ad unit to ensure you are not breaking AdSense policies. And of course, you can always contact Google support on this issue to ensure that your competitive ad units are different enough to satisfy the AdSense compliancy team.
All in all, this change is good because it does allow publishers to use competitive ad products on the same page as AdSense, something that was previously not allowed under the program policies. You just simply need to ensure that any other ads you use (whether contextually targeted or not) do not resemble the AdSense ads you run anywhere on that same site.
Update: I spoke with Yahoo Publisher Network on this issue, and they say that as of today, page level exclusivity still exists. This means you still cannot run YPN on the same page as another contextual ad network. However, they will listen to publisher feedback on this issue and take it into consideration for future YPN terms updates.
Update 2: I have had a few questions regarding whether using the same ad unit sizes would constitute having the "same look and feel", and some others are reporting that using anything in an ad unit in the same style as Google's (such as using something that looks like YPN) would violate this policy. Fortunately for publishers, the answer is no, just the fact the ad units share the same styling (as nearly all contextual ad networks do) will not break the policy as long as you take care to change the color schemes used by each.
Botton line, this means you can use the same ad unit sizes from two different programs, as long as there are clear differences in the color scheme (and things such as borders or backgrounds) used by your Google ads. It is also worth noting thaty proximity of the competitive ad units to each other also comes into factor when making changes to your site by adding competitive ads. I asked Brian Axe from AdSense to clear up just how different the ad units need to be so publishers do not inadvertantly violate the policy.
""We're asking that publishers use good judgment on how much they change the colors or formatting of the ads to ensure users don't confuse third-party ads with Google ads. Proximity plays a role as well - if you're placing the ad units directly adjacent to one another, we'd ask that you use clear borders and offsetting colors to indicate where one network's ad unit ends and the other begins. If the ad units are on opposite sides of the page, using different backgrounds colors and/or a different color scheme for ad text and borders should be fine. Ad units that are virtually indistinguishable from the Google ads on a site would certainly violate the spirit of this policy," Brian says.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Double Your AdSense Income Instantly
As you probably already know, AdSense is revolutionizing the way many infopreneurs are creating revenue from their web site traffic. The reason for this is its simplicity. Through AdSense, revenue is generated when someone simply clicks thru the AdSense ads displayed on the webmasters web site.
In this article I want to give you a few simple ways to dramatically increase your AdSense income.
The bottom line:
To increase AdSense income all you must do is increase the number of click thrus you receive.
There are two ways for you to increase your total number of click thrus. You can either increase your website traffic or you can increase your AdSense click thru rate. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let’s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let’s focus on increasing your AdSense click thru rate instead.
4 Tips to Increase Click Thru:
Match your AdSense to your website:
You want your AdSense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to match every aspect of your AdSense ads to the theme of your website. What you want to do is remove the borders from your AdSense ads and match the background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the AdSense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.
For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of your hypertext links is blue you will want to remove the border from your AdSense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yep you guessed it… make the links blue.
Placement Matters:
Where you place your AdSense ads is just as important as how they look. Luckily, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your click through rate.
The more white space around your ads the better
The closer to the top of the page the better
The closer the left of the page the better
Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will see an increase in your AdSense click thru rate. (It really is that simply!)
Google Search:
Now this is one that I rarely see webmasters take advantage of. The Google AdSense program gives webmasters the ability to add a Google search box to there web site.
Why should you use this function?
Well, when a website visitor chooses to use this search box from your website your AdSense ID will be imbedded in ALL of that visitors Google searches. If that person does 1 search or 50 your AdSense ID will still be imbedded throughout process.
Why is this so great?
If that visitor clicks on any of the sponsored listings while surfing from your web site guess who makes money. YOU! If they hit the back button and click on another ad guess who makes money? YOU! This is absolutely huge. Through this function you now have the ability to earn multiple click thrus from the same visitor on the site visit. Please don’t overlook how powerful this is. Besides, most of your website traffic will just be browsing anyway, so I why help them find what there looking for and make a little coin along the way?
Tracking:
Just like any other type of marketing, you won’t know what’s working the best for you on your web site unless you track the different things that you’re experimenting with. Set up a few Google AdSense channels for the different ads that you’ll be placing on your website. Then just see which channels are working the best and stick to those.
That’s it!
Follow the tips above and I can assure you that you will absolutely double your AdSense click thru rate and your AdSense income. The best part about the four tips I’ve shared here is that you can put them into action immediately and see how they will work on your website right now. Who knows… you could be making twice as much by tomorrow by just making a few simple tweaks here and there.
Good Luck!
If you don’t know where to start and you want to check out how I’ve incorporated the above ideas into of my website you can check it out below:
http://www.perfect-home-based-business-opportunities.com
In this article I want to give you a few simple ways to dramatically increase your AdSense income.
The bottom line:
To increase AdSense income all you must do is increase the number of click thrus you receive.
There are two ways for you to increase your total number of click thrus. You can either increase your website traffic or you can increase your AdSense click thru rate. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let’s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let’s focus on increasing your AdSense click thru rate instead.
4 Tips to Increase Click Thru:
Match your AdSense to your website:
You want your AdSense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to match every aspect of your AdSense ads to the theme of your website. What you want to do is remove the borders from your AdSense ads and match the background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the AdSense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.
For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of your hypertext links is blue you will want to remove the border from your AdSense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yep you guessed it… make the links blue.
Placement Matters:
Where you place your AdSense ads is just as important as how they look. Luckily, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your click through rate.
The more white space around your ads the better
The closer to the top of the page the better
The closer the left of the page the better
Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will see an increase in your AdSense click thru rate. (It really is that simply!)
Google Search:
Now this is one that I rarely see webmasters take advantage of. The Google AdSense program gives webmasters the ability to add a Google search box to there web site.
Why should you use this function?
Well, when a website visitor chooses to use this search box from your website your AdSense ID will be imbedded in ALL of that visitors Google searches. If that person does 1 search or 50 your AdSense ID will still be imbedded throughout process.
Why is this so great?
If that visitor clicks on any of the sponsored listings while surfing from your web site guess who makes money. YOU! If they hit the back button and click on another ad guess who makes money? YOU! This is absolutely huge. Through this function you now have the ability to earn multiple click thrus from the same visitor on the site visit. Please don’t overlook how powerful this is. Besides, most of your website traffic will just be browsing anyway, so I why help them find what there looking for and make a little coin along the way?
Tracking:
Just like any other type of marketing, you won’t know what’s working the best for you on your web site unless you track the different things that you’re experimenting with. Set up a few Google AdSense channels for the different ads that you’ll be placing on your website. Then just see which channels are working the best and stick to those.
That’s it!
Follow the tips above and I can assure you that you will absolutely double your AdSense click thru rate and your AdSense income. The best part about the four tips I’ve shared here is that you can put them into action immediately and see how they will work on your website right now. Who knows… you could be making twice as much by tomorrow by just making a few simple tweaks here and there.
Good Luck!
If you don’t know where to start and you want to check out how I’ve incorporated the above ideas into of my website you can check it out below:
http://www.perfect-home-based-business-opportunities.com
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