09 December 2008

Match Google Adsense Font Type and Size to Increase CTR

Everyone talks about rotating and blending Google Adsense ads with your site layout and theme to increase CTR (click through rate). Basically there are 2 approaches to this - contrast the ads or blend them. Those who like the blending way, it is essential you match your ads exactly to your text in terms of font style and font size. This is a standard trick and probably you already knew it, but seems helpful enough to share it.

How to find the Google Adsense Ads Font Type and Size?

Remove the guesswork out of your web design. If you view the source code of the page, it will only reveal the javascript code.

In Firefox - Right click the ad, Select “This Frame” then “View Frame Source”. A new window shows you the whole source code with the CSS code too.
In Internet Explorer - Just right click the ad, select View Source.

For the leaderboard
Title
line-height: 12px; font-size: 11px; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;
text
line-height: 12px; font-size: 10px; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;

For the large rectangle

Title
line-height: 14px;font-size: 11px; font-family: arial, sans-serif;
text
line-height: 14px;font-size: 10px; font-family: arial, sans-serif;

Remember, it is right click. If you left click, the ad will click through. It is better to try on someone else’s ads rather than click your own ads by mistake. Always avoid these common adsense mistakes. In a similar manner as above you can easily find what the exact Google Adsense size font face / font family and font size is and blend your website better.



Tips Adsense 3, Dramatically Increase CTR

Here are three Adsense Tips, together with the required HTML code, to dramatically increase CTRs and Google Adsense revenue.

1. Correct HTML Code to Include Images or Graphics Above An Adsense Leader Board Block:

Expert SEO Forums have been abuzz over a new Adsense tip which has seen a dramatic increase in CTR's.

Many webmasters have reported increases over 400 percent after adding four images, expertly positioned horizontally over a 4 block Adsense Leaderboard, with no border.

I don't see any reason why this would not work on smaller blocks, but you would have to alter the following HTML accordingly.

Here is the HTML code you should use to align the images directly over the ads -- please be cautioned, so as not to breach Google's TOS, you should not use any other text around these images, apart from the required Adsense code:

[table cellspacing="0" width="728" border="0" cellspadding="0"]
[tbody][tr]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td colspan="4"]
GOOGLE AD CODE HERE 728x90
[/td]
[/tr]
[/tbody]
[/table]

NOTE: Please do change all [ ] brackets above, to the required HTML brackets < >.

Here is one of the relevant threads at SEO forums that has a clear "graphic" example, with before and after pictures clearly depicting how to add these images:

Forums Digital Point - Quadrupled Adsense CTR's thread

A website with thousands of drawings of little Piggies, was responsible for starting the above thread!

2. Maximize Google Adsense CTRs using the Competitive Ad Filter to exclude low-paying Blog related URL's:

Have you ever had days where 50 clicks would pay you the grand total of $1.50 - well that's the combined power of 3 cent clicks or low-paying Blog related ads. working against you.

This post Maximise CTR with Adsense for Blogs at the Shaolin Tiger blog gives you a good list of around 50 URL's to include in the "Competive Filter" of a Google Adsense account:

This will naturally filter out the low-paying Ads which Blog software and related domains seem to serve up.

3. Adding a Double Block of Large Rectangle Adsense Blocks at the End of each Post or Webpage

A number of the high-trafficked blogs, add a double block of 336x380 "Large Rectangle" blocks at the very end of a Post or Webpage, just as the visitor is about to leave.

Makes sense - a visitor is about to leave, and has one of two choices:

(a) visit another page on the site, or

(b) click on a high "paying" Google Adsense ad, prior to leaving the site

Serving them with a wide-choice of Adsense ads in the format which is statistically proven to have the best CTR, is an obvious choice. Trialling this placement has made a dramatic improvement in CTRs for the Marketing Defined blog.

So go ahead, use these 3 Adsense Tips to make a dramatic increase in your CTR's.

Copyright 2005 Roseanne van Langenberg

Roseanne van Langenberg is the Editor of the Marketing Defined blog which shares expert tips and strategies on how to increase Adsense CTR and Increase Targeted Traffic to a website using only current SEO and Marketing strategies.


15 Effective Tips to Increase Google Adsense CTR

How to make more money with Google Adsense? Get more clicks on ads. We all want to increase Google Adsense CTR i.e. click through ratio, because the higher times the surfer clicks the Adsense ad, higher is the payout to you. So here are 15 effective ways to improve your Adsense CTR.

How to increase Google Adsense CTR?

  • Post Adsense ads them on text rich pages and make sure that Adsense had a bunch of keywords to work with. Getting Higher paying keywords is better of course.
  • Get rid of public service ads, which pay you nothing for your efforts. Here are some ways to avoid getting PSA’s.
  • Avoid titles like the approved ‘Sponsored Links’ and ‘Advertisements’ above the Adsense ads. Why do you want to tell the world they are ads when google already puts ‘Ads by Gooooogle’ with them. These two terms are the only ones allowed by Google TOS. Any other terms will get your account terminated. Remember to avoid these 15 Adsense mistakes.
  • Use section targeting - you can target an ad unit to a specific section of your blog, as well as block out irrelevant sections like navigational links. Useful to get more targeted ads.

What is the best Google Adsense Placement for CTR?

  • Place Ads above the fold, i.e. you dont have to scroll down to see the ads. Moreover it loads before your entire page does. The more the visibility, the more chances a reader will click the ad.
    Best Placement for Google Adsense
  • Provide some free space around ads so that they stand out and users know where to find them. Dont clutter up the ads inside your content.
  • Experiment by changing the location of advertisements. Track them by channels to see which location works. Sometimes unusual locations can can do wonders for your CTR. Google Adsense support provides some good ideas for better blending
    Google Adsense Placement
  • Many experienced Adsense users have reported better CTR with vertical ads rather than the horizontal ones. But that really depends on your site structure.
  • Usually it is recommended to place towers on your right, as users tend to use the mouse to scroll the bar on the right side wiht a higher chance to see your ads. Some have reported doubling CTR’s by placing towers to the left rather than the right, as people have got bored of seeing ads on the right, it has something to do with the sidedness of the brain which I do not understand and there is a tendency to read from left to the right.
  • Many sites will have small ads in the top right hand corner, as they claim it is the first place where the eye sees.
  • An excellent article on Eyetracking - What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes helps to tell you where users actually see first and in what order.
  • Forums are tricky becasue they have a different kind of navigation, readership and participation. Here are some ad placements suggested by Google which work best for forums
    Google Adsense for Forums

Best Google Adsense Link Colors to get higher CTR?

  • Match the colors of your ads with the colour scheme of your site. Blending with your sites color profile helps to identify them not as ads, but as links similar to those of your site. The more the AdSense looks like part of your site, the higher CTR you will get. You can also match the Adsense fonts with your website font design for great results.
  • Blend ads with your page - remove the borders by having a similar color as your background helps to show ads as being part of your site. Do not blend text or the ‘Ads by Gooooogle’ with your background color as it is against Google TOS (Google does not like hidden text!). However, such blending may not work for you always due to banner blindness. Neither do they see the ads, not do they click on them. So sometimes a bold contrasting ad may work better depending on your website design.
  • Experiment by changing the colors, background of advertisements. You have to find out what works best for your site, not others. You can also rotate Adsense colors to reduce ad blindness.

I hope these tips help to get your Adsense CTR up by at least 100% if not more. Good luck and make more money!

How to Remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense

Google adsense has become a very popular tool for making money from your site by showing advertisements. But sometimes you see PSA - better known as Public Service Ads on your pages. These ads are displayed because adsense has not been able to find suitable ads for your page. Without commiting these 15 Adsense mistakes, here are some ways to remove PSA.

Why Public Service Ads are bad?

  • Most important fact is that there are no payments for clicks on PSA’s. So even if you have a good CTR (click thorugh ratio), it is of no use.
  • It spoils the look of your site. Lets say you decided to place a big 160×600 vertical banner on your site and no ad showed, the PSA ads will have big monocolour fonts since one big ad wil be shown instead of 5 ads there, which looks bad to the surfer.

How to remove Public Service Ads?

  • Develop sufficient good content with keywords on your webpage related to the topic of interest. Google is a great fan of good content websites.
  • Ensure that META tags like ‘title’ & ‘description’ and the headings tags like h1, h2 etc. have content which matches the rest of your site. They are main ways google judges your pages content.
  • Add specific keywords in your text which will help the google bot to determine and understand the content of your website. Repeat related keywords which will better help to understand site content. Do not fill your page with simlar keywords, it might work against your favour.
  • Try to keep the entire website focussed on a particular theme, so that even if the content on a particular page is lesser, the ads wil show.
  • Do not place multiple ad units if there are not suffcient ads to display on all of them. Also Google TOS do not allow placing more than 3 ad units on a page.
  • Use section targeting - you can target an ad unit to a specific section of your blog, as well as block out irrelevant sections like navigational links. Useful to get more targeted ads.

Is your site Still showing Public Service Ads?

  • Google may take time to crawl your site. Although most of the times the ads show immediately, at times it takes upto 48-72 hours for google to assess the content of newly created webpage. This usually occurs if your site has not been indexed before by Google. The time is reduced on newer pages of a site already running adsense. Google claims the ads will get better and more focussed to your pages with time.
  • Your page may contain objectionable content. This may be against Google Adsense policies. If you feel your page has no such content, then look for any objectionable keywords or phrases which may be present accidentaly. Removing such content can cause PSA’s to dissapear.
  • Your site maybe using a robots.txt file, which will may not be properly set up and prevent the AdSense crawler from crawling your web pages. Add the following two lines to the top of your robots.txt file:User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Disallow:
  • Frames may occasionaly cause difficult in indexing your page. Always remember to tick the Framed page checkbox from the Ad layout code page when generating your ad code. Similarly IFRAME’s also prevent effective indexing and cause PSA’s
  • There may not be any ads configured to show in your region. Lets say that these ads may be working in United States, but maybe showing PSA is Zambia. This is because Google Adwords payers can select regions where to display their ads, where they believe their target surfers are. After all why should an eye surgeon in US want to promote his service in Zambia? Try using the Google Adsense Preview Tool (works on IE only) which helps to determine probable ads in different regions.
  • Recheck your Adsense code was inserted properly on your webpage. Do no attempt to modify the code in any way, as it is against their terms of service. Adsense gives enough options to cutomisethe ad colours and sizes to suit your site. USe only the official code available from their site.
  • Remove session ID’s from urls - they changes every time a different user views a page, and the URL will not be in the indexed everytime.
  • Reduce your filter blocked urls. This feature is in place to allow you to block competitors ads from showing on your pages. If you block too many such urls, there may not be any advertisers left to display ads.
  • Use the Google Adsense Sandbox tool Simply enter the URL or keywords in the box below, and you will see up to 20 sample AdSense ads for the URL or keywords.


15 September 2008

5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.
The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on yourAdsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage. 2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

John Ugoshowa. You are welcome to use this article on your website or
in your ezines
as long as you have a link back to
href="http://www.quickregister.net/partners/">http://www.quickregister.net/partners/
For more information on Google Adsense see the Internet section of Quickregister.net Free Search Engine Submission Service

2 Surefire Ways To Maximize Your Adsense Earnings

Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the lists that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet, after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages, the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in.
What is it that they are doing wrong?

Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.

The thing is, to get visitors to your high paying keyword pages, you need to optimize your site navigation.

Stop for a moment and think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page, they have the tendency to click on another page that sounds interesting. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. This is site navigation. It is all about enabling visitors to move about your site. And one way of maximizing your Adsense earnings.
A typical website have menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what grabs a visitor’s attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have “free’ or “download” are oftentimes good attention-grabbers.

This navigation logic can also be applied to driving traffic to your high paying pages. There are some websites that are getting a lot of traffic from search engines, but have low earnings. The trick is to try and use come cleverly labeled links to get the visitors off that pages and navigate them to the higher earning ones. This is one great way of turning real cheap clicks to real dollars.

Before you begin testing if this same style will work for you and you website, you need to have two things. Something to track and compare and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is ensuring fast result to come by.

Now, the next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. Come up with a catchy description for that link. Come up with a catchy and unique description for the link. Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about.

You can also use graphics to grab your readers’ attention. There is no limitation to what you can do to make your link noticeable. If you are after the success of your site, you will do everything it takes just to achieve that goal. Just be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned, there are no written and unwritten laws to follow regarding what they write. Just as long as you do not overstep the guidelines of the search engines, then go for it.

Also remember that it is all about location, location and location. Once the perfect attention grabbing description has been achieved, you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page.

There is nothing wrong with visiting other websites to see how they are going about maximizing their site navigation. “Hot pages” or “Most read” lists are very common and overly used already. Get to know the ones that many websites are using and do not try to imitate them.

Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to mix things around also. Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom too. This is how you go about testing which ones get more clicks and which ones are being ignored.

Let the testing begin. Testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for you site.

John Ugoshowa. You are welcome to use this article on your website or
in your ezines
as long as you have a link back to
href="http://www.quickregister.net/partners/">http://www.quickregister.net/partners/
For more information on Google Adsense see the Internet section of Quickregister.net Free Search Engine Submission Service

Adsense Income Secrets to Success

Adsense sites need planning and work to be successful. If you are thinking of producing sites for adsense income, or perhaps you already have sites that are not producing a good income if any. To be successful, takes a lot of work no matter what you may read because there are so many people promoting products that promise to make adsense income easy.

Well some of these products may help, but there is no simple solution to receiving great income quickly.

Extensive planning is required before you start. It is important to carefully consider the topics or niches that will be targeted. It is very important to see what type of competition there is for certain niches.

If you are beginning with your adsense sites, it is better to start with niches that are not too competitive. The reasons for this are that in any niche it will take time to get traffic to the sites and make money.
Extensive keyword research must be carried out before building new sites. It is far better to target say 20 keywords that are not at the top of the keyword results.

Many newcomers make the mistake of seeing the high prices that certain words achieve, but do not realise what is involved to compete with these words.

So choose 20 related words to the main keyword, and then build a page for each of these sub keywords. It is very important to have closely themed sites as well, meaning that you are not trying to offer information on a variety of subjects.

Search engines are now looking for sites that offer their visitors good quality information following the keyword searches entered.

It is also important to have sites that are easy to navigate, so that visitors are able to find what they are looking for easily. Clear navigation linking is essential.

Another point to remember is that search engines will reward sites that are constantly updated with new content. It is best to work to a plan with new sites that allow new content to be added on a weekly basis.

Incoming links to sites are very important to achieve good rankings in the search engines. There is only so much on site optimisation that can be done. This includes different keywords and descriptions for each page, use of H1, H2, H3 tags etc.

It is essential that good quality original content is offered to visitors. Due to the abuse that occurred in the past where many people were using various software to produce hundreds of pages of worthless content in literally a matter of minutes to try to make money with adsense.

It is a good idea to work on getting links back to sites on a weekly basis also. Another good idea is to register with directories also on a regular basis.

Adsense can be a good source of income, but it involves a lot of work before the results appear. Extensive research must be carried out to check competition. It is vital to do thorough keyword testing. Then produce sites that are closely themed with a separate page for each targeted keyword. Then new content and links must be on the agenda for good adsense results.

John is the owner of 1st Make Money Online, the site that will offer help to anyone looking to make money online. http://1stmakemoneyonline.com

12 September 2008

Start Making Money With Google Adsense: The Secrets

Adsense is considered as one of the best money earning source for a webmaster. It enables you to monetize your sites easily. If used properly, it can generate a very healthy online income for the sites.

How you can start earning money with Google Adsense can be done easily and quickly. There are actually 3 steps to put into mind before you begin writing your ads and having an effective Google Adsense.

1. Keyword search. Find some popular subjects, keywords or phrase. Select the ones which you think has more people clicking through. This is actually a keyword selector and suggestion tool that some sites are offering to those who are just their Adsense business.

2. Writing articles. You need to write original content with keywords from the topics that you have achieved in your search. Take note that search engines are taking pride in the quality of their articles and what you could write that should keep up with their demands.

3. Quality unique content site. Build a quality content site incorporated with Adsense ads that is targeting the subject and keywords of your articles and websites. This is where all that you’re done initially will go to.

The proper positioning of your ads should be done with care. Try to position your ads where surfers are most likely to click on them. Some of those who are just starting at Adsense may think they are doing pretty well already, however thinking that their clickthrough rates and eCPM figures are quite healthy. There are more techniques and styles to generate more clicks to double your earnings. By knowing these techniques and working them to your advantage, you will realize that you will be getting three times more than other people who have been previously doing what they are doing.

Finally, Adsense has some excellent tracking statistics that allows website publisher to track their results across a number of site on a site by site, page by page, or any other basis you wanted. You should be aware oft his capability and make the most of it because it is one powerful tool that will help you find out which ads are performing best. This way, you will fine tune your Google Adsense ads and focus more on the ones being visited the most rather than those who are being ignored.

To really start making money with Google Adsense, just do not ignore your site and your Adsense performance once you have finished accomplishing them. Spare some time, even an hour or two, making adjustments to the Adsense ads on your sites to quickly trigger your Adsense earning.
About the Author:
Want to make money with Adsense? Be sure to checkout this powerful Adsense site builder to turn you PLR articles into instant Adsense websites. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

04 August 2008

Why does google ban you?

Google banned you? is this your 3rd account or more than that? here i ve given reasons on what basis google bans you.

For new users.., (got banned for first time)

1. Invalid clicks

If you click all the ads and open and close it, before the ad page opens, it is invalid clicks.

Eg, if you click all the four links in skyscrapper ad and close it before the ad page opens,

In this case you are paid nothing. But you are registered in google fault vaults, by which they may ban you at any time..

2. Fraud clicks

If clicks done are more than 3 from single system, or you click your own ads, it come under fraud clicks and so you will be banned

3. Click through rate

Generally google expects 1 click from you site for 100 impressions. So it has a reporting field called CTR. If it is maintained between 1-10, you encounter no problem. Else all earnings are returned to providers itself and thus ban you.

It is good practice to maintain CTR between 4.5 to 7.5

What is more Important in CTR
Many may think that finally when reviews your CTR should be below 10. So after considerable amount of clicks, they will try to reduce it. This is stupid thing. Google does reviews on all days. So your CTR for all days should be maintained in same range.

4. Referrals

No one knows about it. This is also the main criteria for banning of your account. If you ve placed any Referral ads in your site, and if any one has clicked it and filled wrong information, google assumes that this is done by your cause and bans you.

Note: Even unknown users fills wrong information, only you will be caught. So it s better to place minimum amount of referral ads in your site


ACCOUNT BANNED EVEN AFTER YOU VE FOLLOWED ALLTHESE
Your account got banned even after following all these.. Then definitely it must not be your first account. Here i ve given you the reasons why you ve been banned.

Reasons
1. Your created account contains already existing adsense users address(ie two account)
2. Your account contains address which is already banned.
3. Clicks are done from only specific ips.

Making Google Adsense Work For You

If you have been online for quiet some time you might have noticed those tiny ads on many websites with the little "ads by google" notice beneath them.

These ads are called "Adsense", they are paid advertisements and can be a very lucrative income source for the person posting them on his/her website.

Whenever someone visits your website Google displays these ads which are very targeted to your websites content. This is what its all about, since people come to your website with a specific interest Google will display ads reflecting that topic.

That means that any ad that is displayed fits the interest of the person viewing it.Since Google pays you for each click through this can be very lucrative if done right. Here are just a couple of examples on how you can get the most from Adsense.

Focussing on one specific topic helps increase your click throughs because the ads Google displays will be extremely targeted to the topic the person is allready viewing.

For example you could make a website purely on growing flowers. People who visit your website are already interested in gardening and Google will likewise display ads on that topic.

A great tool to check wich keywords might be shown by Google on your website is http://www.about-adsense.com/adsense-web-tool.html

The more targeted Google's ads are the more click throughs you will get and the more you will earn.

Search for the keywords that have the highest bids and optimize your website to them.

When you setup an account at http://www.adwords.com you can use Googles keyword tool to view wich keywords pull the most visitors and how much the advertisers are paying for each click. Some keywords are as much as $100 a click, think of what you earn when you optimize your website to them. Next you optimize your sites content to these keywords, you can do this by either creating content yourself or by using other peoples content like for example articles from third parties wich you can find at for example http://www.ezinearticles.com.

Remember its all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is the more target Google's ads will be and the more clicks you will generate. Have fun!

Erol Alici

Copyright 2005 Erol Alici

About The Author

Erol Alici publishes "Home Based Business Success" an informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people build their online business. If you`re looking for the best opportunities, the latest tips and helpful support from an honest friend in the business then grab your F-R-E-E subscription today at:

http://www.homebasedbusinesssuccess.com or send a blank email to

mailto:newsletter-79@norabots.com you'll be glad you did! http://blog.sellitbuyit.ca

Don't Use The Word 'Ads' - It's A Dirty Word

I want to tell you a secret. Don't tell anyone - unless
you want to forward this email onto another website
owner you know who would benefit from this advice. ;o)

Here's the deal;

The best way to boost your AdSense clickthrough rate is to
stop thinking of the ads as ads. The moment you do this
you start to see the whole thing in a new way.

Think about this logically for a moment. You're surfing on
the Internet and you see something that is unmistakably an
ad. What do you do?

a) Rush over to click on the ad because you love those
things

b) Laugh excitedly at the prospect of being taken away from
the interesting content you're reading

c) Ignore it saying to yourself "that's an ad"

It's c) right? Well I hope it is! But the point is -
people hate ads, we're all suffering from ad-blindness,
ad-avoidance and ad-overload. So what if you could make
your AdSense ads look less like ads and more like helpful
snippets of information?

Woah there Michael! You're scaring me now, what are you
suggesting to me?

All I'm saying is that if you put this theory at the heart
of your mission to build a cash-generating AdSense empire
you will get there before everyone else.

Alright Michael - how can I do this? Give me some examples!

Look, I don't want to give ALL my methods away because I've
saved that for serious, dedicated people who buy the videos
(nudge, nudge!) but here's some tip-ettes;

- Don't use the standard Google colour scheme, it just
screams "I am an ad, hate me and ignore me!"

- Get a picture in your mind of what the most typical ads
look like on the web then create your AdSense ads so that
they are exactly the opposite

- Ads are garish creatures that like to be bright, loud and
stand out in a crowd. We all know this. So making your
AdSense ads exactly the opposite means they can 'sneak under
the radar'

- You've seen a boxing match right? Where's all the action?
In the middle. In the ring. Where are the ads that are
paraded around between rounds? In the ring - the centre of
everyone's attention. Where's the 'action' on each of your
pages? Your ads need to be in the same place.

Let's just be clear about this. I'm not talking about
misleading your visitors. I'm just saying that you need to
have ads that don't look like the standard ads people
expect to see. Obviously your visitors will still know they
are ads because they'll have the 'Ads by Google' text next
to them.

This is not about pulling the wool over visitor's eyes - it's
about creating a browsing experience which makes them feel at
ease rather than on edge.

about keywords

I want to talk to you about keywords.

I'll be honest - there's an enormous amount of cr*p 
around to do with using keywords to get higher AdSense 
earnings so I'm going to set the record straight.


** What Keywords Can And Can't Do

When I first started using AdSense (remember I was pulling 
in a poxy $2 per day) I shunned the high paying keyword 
lists you see everywhere.

I thought they were a scam. The thing is - although there 
are some low-quality ones out there, if you do the research 
(and BELIEVE me, I've done that alright) then you can find 
lists that are worth TEN TIMES more than people charge for 
them.

So how does it all work?

Well, quite simply, what you get paid by Google is 
determined by how much advertisers are willing to pay, per 
click, for any given phrase. To get paid more you need to 
focus on the higher paying phrases so that, on average, 
you will get paid more per click.

Is it really that simple?

Well, not quite. You also need to take into account that 
just because a certain phrase pays well doesn't mean that 
you can get a good search engine ranking for it or that you 
can attract any people to your pages who are interested in 
it.

That's why I recommend using multiple tools to help you get 
the definitive answer on the best phrases to use. (I go 
through this in detail in Video 2).

Should I go after high paying phrases regardless of topic?

No siree! This is another big no-no. Don't jump on the 
bandwagon unless the phrase is related to what your website 
is about and more importantly:

WHAT YOU HAVE A PASSION FOR

Did I just use the word 'passion' in an email about AdSense? 
You bet I did!! If you're not passionate about the chosen 
theme of your website then this will come across to your 
visitors. If you are not passionate about your chosen theme 
then you will soon tire of putting in the hours to update 
the site and make those big bucks with AdSense!

In a nutshell - find the best phrases for your theme based 
on:

- How much they are likely to pay you per click
- What level of competition there is out there for these 
phrases
- Your chances of attracting good traffic levels for these 
phrases

Big Content Mistakes

Did your Mother ever tell you that 'everything in
moderation is okay'? Well, she was an AdSense genius
that woman!

There is a definite road to disaster with AdSense and
it comes by doing too much of one thing.

1. Don't have a site built purely from your own content.

Why? Because it will take too long to grow lots of pages.
Although unique, quality content is the bees knees if you
ignore other sources of content you are, to quote the
cheese-gurus, 'leaving money on the table'.

2. Don't have a site built purely from other people's
content.

Why? Because you'll have little that's unique on your
site. Every man and his dog tries to borrow other people's
content and use content that already exists elsewhere.
But that doesn't make it right:

"If you do what everybody else does, you'll get what
everybody else gets."

Search engines can frown on duplicate content so if you
use sources of content that are not unique you'll need to
do things to make those pages unique. But the best plan is
not build a site entirely from other people's content

3. Don't have a site built purely of 'synthesized' content.

Why? Because using fancy article-crawling-machines and other
'automatic content machines' will backfire on you eventually.
It might make you some revenue in the short-term but it's
like trying to build a house with bricks but no mortar.

Sure - it's WAY quicker, but I know which house I'd rather
live in and which one is still going to be there in a
year's time..

Google Adsense: How Much Money You Can Make and URL Channels Explanation

How Much Money Can I Make With Google Adsense?

How much do you want to make? How hard do you want to work? And how much time do you want to spend working the Google Adsense program?

These are the questions you must ask yourself in order to answer that question.

Look at it this way: how many business opportunities come your way where the only requirement is hard work and the time it takes to work hard? Not many. Almost any business venture requires some kind of start-up money.

If your total earnings is showing 0.00 after a week, not to worry. Keep reading and learning and working. If however, you’re still showing 0.00 after a month, it may be time to implement some of those optimization tips you’ll find on the Google Adsense Support Site. Play around with the placement of the ads on your site. Consider changing the colors. Look again at the content. Is it interesting?

As with any other business, with the Google Adsense program, the sky is the limit. Work hard. Work smart. Have fun. After all, you’re the boss.

What Are URL Channels and How to Organize Them in Google Adsense

URL Channels allow you to view detailed information about the performance of your Adsense for Content pages.

Suppose you have a blog at writingup.com and you also have a blog at bloggerparty.com. It might be interesting and profitable to track which one is getting more clicks. Log in to your Adsense account and click on Adsense for Content. Scroll down until you see Channels and click on manage channels. You may need to scroll up when the next page loads. Under Manage URL Channels you would type writingup.com and click on Create New Channel. You will immediately see writingup.com in the Active URL Channels dialogue box Now type in bloggerparty.com in the same channel text box and again click on Create New Channel. You now have two channels and you will be able to track your progress on each channel. You can view channel reports from the Advanced Report page under the Reports tab. Choose Adsense for Content, choose the date range and then select the Channels Data radio button. Choose any number of active channels by holding down the CTRL key. Next click on Display Report. It’s as easy as that.

02 August 2008

The 5-Step Plan to Success

Once you’re accepted, you want to maximize the opportunity. In this section, we
look at some of the most effective strategies for generating optimum revenue
from the Google AdSense program.

Step 1 - Formatting Ad Blocks

You can let Google decide for you the type of ads that will be displayed on your
webpage, but as the website publisher, you may be in a better position to decide
what ads suit the content of your website and how you would like them displayed.
To the extent possible, whether chosen by Google or you, make the ads seem
like part of the site itself.
Most internet marketing experts believe that the ads on your website have a high
probability of getting clicked if they blend in with the rest of the content of your
web page. Factors such as color scheme, font size and type, and the
appearance of your ad should match your web page. Borders are optional and
we think often you should opt out – why put a box around the ad that says “Hi!
I’m an ad!”?
Also, regardless of other design choices, text links should be blue. Why are text
links blue? For the same reason Henry Ford said of the Model-T “They can have
any color they want so long as it’s black.” They just are.
Though we think text ads are generally better than graphic ads, also known as
image ads, Google does offer them with the program.
Actually, you don’t need to struggle much with whether graphic ads or text will be
better on your pages, as Google’s technology will suggest whether an image ad
or a text ad will be more suitable and which will earn you maximum revenues
(since you earn part of they earn, they have motives to get this mix right).
However, it remains totally up to you whether you wish to run image ads or textbased
ads. You can select only image ads, or text ads or a combination of both
these formats on your entire AdSense account or on one page at a time based
on your discretion.

Step 2 - Ad Placement

“Location, location, location.” It is true in real estate and true in advertising,
including web advertising. Since the “location” of the user is your site already, the
“location” of the ad in this context means on which pages, where on the pages,
and so on. As noted, the less an ad looks like an ad, the more effective it is likely
to be.
Then there are general design and usability factors to consider.
If your webpage is cluttered and you can’t dispense with any content, you may
want to break it down further into sections or more pages to provide easier
reading. This also gives you the potential benefit of placing additional ads.
As noted, we generally recommend text-based ads. However, text-dense sites
may actually do better with image ads. If your site has very few graphics, you
may want to balance it out by putting image-based ads. In the monotony of a lot
of dense written information, image-based ads and graphics provide what’s
called visual relief. This can also prompt clicks.
Where should you put the ads? The chances of your ad getting noticed by the
visitors to your site increases greatly if you place ads as close to the top of your
webpage as possible.
If you choose to place so-called ‘skyscraper’ ads – in magazines these would be
called columns – on the sidebars of your webpage, it would be wise to place
them on the right side of your principal content areas. The reason for this is the
visitor to your page (in most languages) will read from left to right, he or she will
chance upon the ad ultimately, if not consciously then at least out of habit. Their
eyes will go there. From the left, they can visually “skip” the ad when they start
reading next to it.
Your ads should be placed in such a way that it matches the links to other
websites on your site. If you already have a links section on your site, put the
AdSense links in that section or list. This is not dishonest – if it were Google
would not allow it.
Obviously if you have a “most popular” area on your website, such as a page that
is updated daily with some kind of material that people bookmark to revisit often,
place your ad(s) there instead of somewhere else that may get less traffic. For
many websites the home page is not actually the most accessed area. If you
don’t know what the traffic pattern is on your sites, it’s easy to find out – ask your
hosting provider about usage logs.
One more thing: While some affiliate marketing programs encourage host sites to
encourage clicks directly, it is not appropriate to expressly ask your readers to
click on the ads served by the Google programs. Not only is it unprofessional
and arguably unethical, it also annoys people and moreover Google AdSense
actually prohibits any such activity. You can neither directly solicit clicks nor can
you do anything considered deceptive to encourage clicks.
In conclusion, the emphasis is always on quality of content on your web pages.
Good and interesting content makes your site better, more acceptable to Google,
more likely to win with AdSense, and therefore more profitable for you!

Step 3 - Researching Keywords

After you are done choosing the right format and location for your AdSense ads,
don’t sit back and wait for the money to roll in just yet. The next important step is
to choose the right keywords for your web pages. These will influence both who
visits your site, and how AdSense assigns ads to you.
The number one mistake most website publishers make is to constantly choose
high-paying (i.e. expensive!) keywords assuming that it will yield them more
income. While it is tempting to choose such keywords to get higher rankings on
search engines, be prudent when it comes to selecting the right keywords that go
with the AdSense ads that are to be displayed.. Remember the goal here is clicks, not SEO rankings. This is a case where you often do not get what you pay
for.
Consider this scenario. Your webpage talks about wine tasting courses. You
review search phrases and keywords with “wine” in it and you find “wine rack” is
in the top three and available, so you buy it. The corresponding ads also focus on
buying wine racks online, wine storage and building your own wine racks. After a
week when you check on the statistics of your webpage and AdSense account,
you see that you are losing visitors and your income is dipping! The keyword
selection is faulty in this case even though it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Why? The visitors to your webpage were actually looking for wine racks and
have landed on your webpage talking about wine tasting courses instead. The
wine course types want to sign up for the courses, maybe buy a book on wine, or
a wine of the month club. They don’t want to build a wine rack. Think
strategically, not tactically.
Just because a keyword is high paying and is seemingly related, does not mean
it is totally relevant and you need something relevant. Relevance is more
important than value! In the above case, you could have – and should have –
chosen wine tasting tour, wine tasting party, wine tasting event, wine tasting
class, wine tasting school, course tasting wine and so on. You are interested in
relevance more than popularity. Tasting is a match. Racks are not.
Let’s look at some of the ways in which you can research your keywords for
AdSense ads:
You can check out the popularity of various keywords if you already have
an account with Google AdWords. This way you will get an idea of the
popularity of various keywords as well as the cost and returns that entail.
Google AdWords also has a tool known as the AdWords Keywords Tool
which can sometimes help you search for alternate keywords and
variations.
Another tool known as Keyword Analyzer can generate numerous key
phrases that are typed by Internet users in different search engines.Consider getting a WordTracker account. They have an excellent tool that
suggests top 1,000 most popular keywords. This tool can also help you
create a list of relevant keywords for your webpage. You can learn a lot
from a small investment here.
Another great idea is to search for top 100 keywords on 7search
which will
give you an idea of high-paying keywords.
Your clickthrough rate will be boosted tremendously by including the right
keywords in your web copy, of course. Keywords occurring in your ads are
usually highlighted on the search engine results page. This also helps in drawing
additional attention to your ad.
The URL of your webpage is also an integral part of achieving success on
Google AdSense program, as it is on the Web generally. Current wisdom holds
that the keywords in the URL are equally if not more important than the ones
featured in the actual webpage content or in metatags. If you change your
ordinary URL to a keyword rich URL relevant to your market, it is possible to
raise your CTR as much as 200% or more without doing anything else.
Obvious domain names with the keywords that you want might be expensive to
purchase from a broker, but you can also buy used domain names that are no
longer active, often for just a few dollars per year.

Step 4 - Developing Content

Let’s assume you have good ads, good placement, and good traffic.
This step is all about how to tweak your pre-existing content to support the most
effective profitability from your new AdSense program.
One major mistake many web publishers make now is to lard up their pages with
a bazillion keywords for so-called “search engine optimization.” Do not fall into
that trap and clutter your webpage with high-profile buzzwords that do not
contribute to the value of your webpage or the experience of your intended
audience. Remember, we’re focused here on clicks, which means bringing relevant readers to your site and giving them a good experience that puts them in
an inquisitive or buying frame of mind.
As a general rule, all content shifts should make some kind of sense. You may
well be able to make connections between articles on sports, to articles on sports
medicine, to articles on herbal supplements which feature ads for those products.
On the other, a web page on bicycles should not have ads for other kinds of
pumps, if you know what we mean.
Before you decide to add that magic Google AdSense code on any page of your
website, you should have dealt with the following two important steps:
High quality textual content
Ensure that your web pages have enough textual content so that the
AdSense program can set up ads that are relevant to the content on your
pages. If you have very little content, it will be difficult for Google to
determine the focus of your page and end up displaying only public
service ads that do not earn any revenue.
Use different page titles for different pages
Have unique page titles based on the specific content of each page.
Avoid generic or vague page titles such as ‘Untitled Document’ or ‘Page
1’. Be crisp and precise and avoid using long phrases and difficult words
in the page titles. If your page has a very long title, it might get banned
from some search engines, so be pithy.

Step 5 - Tracking and Reports

Tracking the results of your marketing efforts can help you focus your efforts and
make adjustments to win. Google offers a great free tracking feature known as ‘Channels’. You can use
these channels to track ads on specific URLs or to categorize ads based on their
formats, keywords, location on web page and so on.
You can choose from two channel types offered by Google.

URL Channels

This will help you track the performance of your web pages without altering your
ad code. All you need to do to track your performance is to enter a full or partial
URL in the channel and you’re done. A full page URL will track the performance
of the specific page having that address. If you want to track all the pages on a
specific domain, you need to enter a top-level domain name.

Custom Channels

Custom channels are used to track the performance of your webpage based on
the criteria that you specify. You can choose what specific factor you would like
to track and customize the channel according to your requirements.
As the name suggests, custom channels are very flexible, and if you have ever
used any kind of data reporting tool you will find setting them up easy and logical.
You can have up to 50 custom channels!

You can compare the performance of different ad formats and the relevancy of
ads. You can also compare how ads on one page are performing when
compared with ads on other pages. You can do so by assigning each group of
pages to a specific channel and eventually comparing results in your customized
channel reports. You can also see where your clicks are coming from by
assigning a channel to each of your separate pages. Also, it is a good idea to
name your channel in such a way that it is easy to identify different channels in
reports, especially if you are using a dozen or more. Server Logs
In addition to the ‘channel’ program offered by Google to track your AdSense ads
on your web pages, you can also use any of the various high quality external
AdSense tracking software packages to track your performance in greater detail
(except actual revenues – you need to get that from Google). One major
advantage of such software is that it runs locally, which enables you to access
specific information that Google doesn’t track. Be aware that none of these thirdparty
software solutions are “endorsed” by Google currently but most of them
guarantee to operate within AdSense guidelines. Just make sure they do,
because you don’t want to lose your account status over a technical violation by
a third party.
Some of the information you can obtain by using tracking software:
Referring website of all your visitors
The type of web browser they are using
Where the actual ad-clickers are coming from
Search keywords typed in by the visitors to your website that eventually
brought them to you
You should use a combination of Google channels and a reliable AdSense
tracking program so as to get comprehensive information about your AdSense
account.