Google AdSense Tips

By: Sharon Housley
Viewed: 248 Times
Approximate Word Count: 791

AdSense allows website publishers to display contextually relevant advertisements on their website. If a web visitor "clicks" on an advertisement, the web publisher will earn a percentage of the advertising revenue generated as a result of the click. Many webmasters have built content websites around the Google AdSense model. In many cases the specific intent of the webmaster is to profit from Google AdSense. Other webmasters use Google AdSense to supplement their revenue. Regardless of the webmaster's intent, the following tips will help webmasters looking to profit from AdSense.

Top AdSense Tips:

1. Niche Sites.

Targeted niche sites that have a clear theme, tend to generate more advertising revenue simply because it is easier to achieve decent search engine placement. Be warned though, you want to chose a niche where there is a sufficient number of advertisements available.

2. Target Keywords.

When determining the sites focus, consider how much the advertisers pay for the advertisements. If the site is focused on ringtones, like Ringtone Central http://www.ringtones-central.com the payout per click is going to be very small, as ringtones are not high ticket items, advertisers will not spend a lot on pay per click advertisements. With less obvious markets use Overture to determine how much advertisers pay per keyword, it is usually similar on Google. Search Overture for a keyword then click "View Advertisers' Max Bids" in the top right corner. This will show the Overture inventory and how much is paid per keyword. Because the market has become very competitive, it will be difficult to rank well in search engines with a new website that is optimized for the terms that have the highest payout. Consider targeting terms that are moderately priced.

3. Aged Sites / Time.

Over time as a website is spidered by Google, advertisements will generally increase in relevance. In general, older websites will rank better in search engines. The closer the advertisements relate to the webpage's content; the higher the "click-through" the publishers will see.

4. Coding.

In order to minimize a websites maintenance place the Google generated AdSense code in the website template or an include file. This will allow you to easily experiment with different advertisement sizes and ad placement, and keep the web maintenance to a minimum.

5. Tracking Channels.

In order to know how effective a specific website or ad placement is use distinct channels and subchannels within Google. This will allow you to discern what performs best on a specific website. Using channels will tell you what sites are making money, what advertisements are making money and what ad position is the most profitable on a specific website. Keep in mind that you should run an advertisement for a full week, in order to properly test its effectiveness, different days of the week will vary the web traffic so comparing one week to another will give the most accurate reflection of how effective a campaign performs.

When testing different advertisement sizes, placement or color schemes be sure to leave campaigns in place for one week, different days will often result in web traffic fluctuations. Comparing web traffic, week to week will give a clear indication of what ad formats perform the best.

6. Integrated Ad Placement.

Many webmasters have been successful at integrating advertisements into a website. The easiest way to integrate an advertisement into a website is to remove the advertisement border. This will allow the ads to better blend with the webpage. Google recommends contrasting the link colors with the website colors to increase click-throughs. It is also suggested that webmasters randomize the color of the advertisements, so that frequent users will not naturally "filter" the ads.

example of integrated ad placement: http://www.golf-clubhouse.net or http://www.security-protection.net

7. Number vs Value of Advertisements.

Up to three advertisements can be listed on each page. This decreases the value of the advertisements served, so publishers should cautiously add advertisement units, as it dilutes ad inventory. In other words you want to serve the most expensive ads at all times.

8. Hot Spots.

Like web copy above the fold holds true with AdSense as well. This means that advertisements that appear without having to scroll will be read more frequently. Hot Spots are areas on a web page that result in a higher percentage of click-throughs. According to Google the highest paying advertisements are located on the hot spots.

hot spots map - http://www.small-business-software.net/heat-map.htm

Google does not indicate if image advertisements or text ads perform better, so webmasters are encouraged to experiment with both.

9. Highest performing Ad Sizes.

According to Google the 336 x 280 rectangle, the 300 x250 rectangle and the 160 x 600 sky scraper result in the highest number of click-throughs. Depending on the website's design and layout, publishers may experience different results with different ad sizes, placements and color schemes. Expirement and track the results for each website to maximize the AdSense payout.

This article was posted at iReprint.info on 2006-03-23. Webmasters and publishers are free to reprint this article as long as the resource box and all the links remain intact.

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About the Author
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

$1 Million in Google AdSense Earnings

By: Scott Adams
Viewed: 612 Times
Approximate Word Count: 514

They are calling him the million dollar man. Jason Calacanis recently revealed in his blog that he is on track to earn a million dollars from AdSense over the year ahead.

And if that number doesn't wake you up and have you sitting on the edge of your seat, consider for a moment that he reached this level in less than a year. His company only started using AdSense in September 2004.

Calacanis runs Weblogs Inc., a network dedicated to creating trade weblogs across niche industries. And he's quickly proven that AdSense is a credible advertising partner.

As their network has grown, so has their AdSense revenue. In January 2005 they earned an average of $580 per day. In March it was $737. In May it was $1,585. One day in July, just before he made the blog entry referred to above, they earned $2,335. Remember that is just for one day. If they can take that daily average to $2,740 they'll be earning a rate of $1 million for a year. And Calacanis predicts that reaching daily earnings of $3,000 or even $5,000 is quite achievable.

That's quite an achievement. Keep in mind that Calacanis has 103 bloggers on the payroll and nine staffers. Even so, many webmasters would give an arm or a leg to have even a third of that.

Google's AdSense has been revolutionary. It has become firmly established as the darling of the online advertising industry. Although rumors are heard of major competitors launching a similar service, AdSense's premier position seems secure for now.

In essence, AdSense has made it possible for almost anyone with a web site or blog to earn some revenue from advertising, without having to employ sales people or spend precious time searching for advertisers.

AdSense works like this. Webmasters sign up for an account in just a few minutes. They receive a small snippet of code to include on their web pages. Google will then automatically serve advertisements that are relevant to the content on the webmaster's pages. When someone visits the webmaster's site and clicks on one of Google's AdSense advertisements, the webmaster earns a fee. Advertisers can pay anywhere from five cents to a hundred dollars per click, and the webmaster receives a percentage of that fee.

Many webmasters are content with earning five to ten dollars from AdSense to cover the cost of web hosting. But many, unsurprising, have higher ambitions. At a popular WebmasterWorld forum, participants share tips and encouragement on reaching a goal of $300 per day from AdSense. So it is no wonder that Calacanis created quite a buzz when he made his million dollar blog entry.

Google have proven once again that they excel at designing innovative Internet services. If you are in the web industry and have not yet used AdSense, then perhaps you should try it out. Or if you are already using it, perhaps Calacanis' impressive results will encourage you to track the performance of your AdSense units more closely, fine tune their positions and formats, and take your earnings to a new level.

Calacanis' million dollar blog entry can be viewed at: http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000403051129.

This article was posted at iReprint.info on 2003-12-27. Webmasters and publishers are free to reprint this article as long as the resource box and all the links remain intact.

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About the Author
Scott Adams is an internet entrepreneur, and earns a living by marketing affiliate programs on pay-per-click search engines, including Google's AdSense. He explains the remarkable system he uses in his book, Affiliate Adventure, which is available at http://www.AffiliateAdventure.com.

Search Engine Optimization - A Must

By: Alec Duncan
Viewed: 166 Times
Approximate Word Count: 1112

As you surf the web take a look around at many of the sites you see. Do you notice anything that seems strange? Well, let me point it out to you. There are hundreds of thousands of web sites that just don't get much traffic. Some of these sites house hundreds of articles, reviews, tutorials, tools, products, forums to mention a few things, yet still they do not receive large amounts of traffic. What is their problem? They have the content. What is left?

The problem is these sites aren't optimized for the search engines. SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SE Friendliness, however you refer to it doesn't matter, the fact is it works and I'm going to tell you what's involved.

Before we continue let me familiarize you with some relevant terminology in my own words.

Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization can be referred to as the addition and modification of all variables and extended variables of a web site in hopes of achieving a better position in the search engines. By variables I mean components of a website such as META tags and content. By extended variable I mean things such as links from other sites.

Different SEOs, search engine optimizers, may have different opinions on this but alas this is only my own.

What is a Search Engine Optimization Company?
A search engine optimization company is a company that offers the service of creating and adjusting all the variables involved in search engine optimization in order to get your web site the best ranking they can achieve, during the designated project period, for all the major search engines.

Search Engine Optimization Hurdles
Back to the question of why these sites rich with content aren't bringing in the numbers. There are several reasons why sites small and large aren't optimized for the search engines, fortunately these can be remedied.

1. Many webmasters/site owners believe in "If You Build It They Will Come". This attitude will get your web site no where fast. Sure if you build it you will get users maybe even a decent amount of users but you will not be unleashing the real potential of your web site.

2. Not feeling that your site can do better than it is. Websites can always be further optimized. Search engines change their algorithms all the time so what worked 2 months ago may not work as well or at all in present times. For any of you that fee you can get your site optimized better, think of the story of the Little Engine and don't think you can, KNOW YOU CAN.

3. Laziness is also a major contributing factor. Many webmasters feel it is just too hard or too time consuming to do search engine optimization.
This is partially true. Search engine optimization is not easy but then again, anyone can do it. It does take time though and time is a precious commodity. In situations where you just can't devote the time to search engine optimize your site I would recommend seeking the services of a professional search engine optimization company. You can choose one here http://www.lilengine.com/seo-companies.php

4. Time + cost = a deterrent. For a situation like this I would recommend optimizing little by little on your own. Eventually you will become better and better at it and be able to accomplish more in less time.

5. Another problem is many people think "Well my site is only a small site, there is no way I will be able to compete with the larger sites that have top spots in the search engines". If you think like this I'd like to say this to you. It is possible that that if you optimize your web site you may not be able to compete with the larger sites and may not be able to get a page 1 or 2 ranking in any of the search engines, BUT, what if you did. Always shoot for the stars so if you fall short you will at least hit the sky.

Now for those of you who plan to better your websites via Search Engine Optimization here are the stages you need to follow in order to have an efficient and effective SEO campaign.

Planning Your Search Engine Optimization Campaign
Planning is an essential factor in your SEO campaign. Knowing exactly what steps you are going to make and in what order and how you are going to go about achieving each of those steps will save you not only time but it will save you frustration as well. Planning is essential.

Researching the Most Effective SEO Strategies
What works and what does not. You will need to learn as many optimization strategies as you can that are currently effective with the search engines. This will be one of the most time consuming steps in your SEO campaign as you will have to sift through information as well as participate in SEO related forums to get additional information from professional. You can take this process in stages and apply your newly gained knowledge as you get it. There is also some useful software available both free and paid that will greatly help with this effort. WebPosition Gold is one of the more popular ones.

Search Engine Optimize Your Site
This should be done in stages so you can see the effectiveness of the applied strategies you are using. Don't change your entire site all at once, instead, change a few areas at a time and see what results they produce. If you are satisfied with this then move on and optimize another section.

Search engine optimization does not only deal with your site it also deals with the relationship other sites have with yours and yours with theirs. Keep this in mind when utilizing your link building strategies.

Monitor Your SEO Progress
There are many ways to do this you will have to find the best method for you. You will need to monitor your search engine ranking for the keywords you are targeting after each update. Changes should be recorded and used as references to monitor progress and for strategy adjustments. There are many tools for this process as well. I recommend SEOCount.com for monitoring your progress on the Google search engine as it is very easy to use and you can monitor several domains and keywords all from within the same account. It also gives you the option of viewing the number of backlinks.

These steps follow the Plan Do Review methodology which is a proven strategy for engaging in any task. It is again unfortunate that there are so many webmasters who overlook this entire process; hopefully this article will stop you from making this same mistake. For more information on search engine optimization visit http://www.lilengine.com.

This article was posted at iReprint.info on 2003-12-17. Webmasters and publishers are free to reprint this article as long as the resource box and all the links remain intact.

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About the Author
Alec Duncan is the founder of Li'l Engine a search engine optimization site. Get more great SEO tips at http://www.lilengine.com and visit their new Web Hosting Resource at http://webhosting.lilengine.com as well as http://www.grindinggears.com for Open Source Development information

How to Use Keywords to Improve Your Ranking in Search Engines

By: Kathy Joyce
Viewed: 230 Times
Approximate Word Count: 902

The importance of keywords
Keywords or key phrases you choose will determine how your site is positioned in the search engines. It is always better to have lots of pages each focusing on a small group of keywords. This will give them more relevance to each individual page.

For example if your site is about shoes you may have lots of different types of shoes.
Your index page should have a menu leading into each of the different categories of shoes.
You might have a page for sandals, one for platform shoes as well as stilettos, court shoes and flat heel shoes.

Choosing keywords
First you have to think like your customer. What would they type into a search engine if they wanted to find the products you are selling.
Use phrases as well as single words. Often someone looking for a product or service will type in several words. For example a customer may want to buy a shoe with stiletto heels. They may type in "stiletto heel shoe", "black stiletto" "stiletto heel","stiletto high heel" or "high heel shoe"

Brainstorming keywords.
Start by thinking of as many keywords associated with your site as you can. To make it easier there is a free tool for this which can be found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. It will give you the number of times this word has been searched for in the last month. This will also give you a guide to the popularity of the keyword.

Try looking for similar sites to your own and viewing the source code. This will give you ideas for keywords that your competitors are using. Viewing the source code is easy, just right click the mouse somewhere on the page and click on view source.

A good idea is to open a file in wordpad or other text editor and call it "keywords" then if you find words or phrases relevant to your site copy and paste them into your file. You can then view them offline and even print the page out to study it. This can give you ideas for keywords you may not have thought of.

When you have made a list of keywords relevant to each page you will then need to check the supply and demand if you want an edge over your competitor.

You will already know the demand of each keyword the next thing you need to do is to take a sheet of paper or use a spreadsheet on the computer and make 3 columns naming them keyword, supply, and demand.

In the first column list the keywords that have the highest demand. Then in the supply column type how many times it has been searched for.
Lastly in http://www.Altavista.com or http://www.Google.com type in your keyword surrounded by quotation marks like this "stiletto shoes" and see how many sites come up. They will list the number of sites with that keyword in it.

Go through your list, and see how many have a large demand and lower supply. Of course the idea is to have as many large demand and low supply keywords as possible.

Optimise your site by creating theme based,keyword focused pages for each category of shoes or whatever it is that you are selling.
This will greatly increase your chances of getting a higher ranking in the search engines. Just concentrate on a couple of keywords in each page.

The title meta tag
The title tag is THE most important part of your webpage. It must appeal to the search engines and also the visitor to your site. The title of your page is used as the link to your site by the search engines and is visible to the reader.

Use your most important keywords in the title. Make the title between 15-20 words in length.
The title must be compelling for people to want to click through to your site.
Don't ever make the mistake of leaving the title tag blank.
Not a good idea if you want an edge over your competition!!
Every page on your site must have a keyword focused title.

The description meta tag
The description tag is also very important and some search engines display it as a summary of your site. Use some important keywords here but don't repeat them more than 3 or 4 times as it could be seen as spamming.

Keyword tag
This tag is not as important to search engines as it once was, but you should still use it to list your keywords.

The alt tag
This tag is used to describe images and is useful to the visually impaired.
If an image takes a long time to load the alt tag will appear first.
Add keywords to this tag as part of the description.

The main body of text
Place emphasis on your keywords in the first paragraph of the main text, and repeat them several times in the rest of the page. As each page is theme based the keywords will be relevant,and will appear naturally in the body of the text.

You will greatly increase your chances of getting your site in the top positions of search engines if you follow these ideas.

You must however regularly register all your pages with each of the main search engines to make sure the pages are still there as they can suddenly disappear, or drop down from a number 1 position to number 201!!
Normally about once a month is enough.

You can use a site submitter to make this a lot easier.
A good one that I use is http://selfpromotion.com or another one is http://www.submit-it.com

This article was posted at iReprint.info on 2003-12-17. Webmasters and publishers are free to reprint this article as long as the resource box and all the links remain intact.

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About the Author
Kathy is an artist and webdesigner for small businesses. She has designed sites for other artists to showcase their work, and has her own online business. Kathy has written several articles on promoting an online business. Visit her site at http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk.