How To Triple Your Traffic
Traffic is vital for any website to flourish, especially of it's a commercial one.
There are numerous different ways to develop traffic to your site, but what we'll be discussing here are the easier ways of driving traffic to your site.
1. Tell everyone This is the easiest and furthermore, free! If you have a lot of online or real life friends, incite them to drop by your site if they can. The more the merrier, as they say.
2. Using Crawlers Crawler-based search engines like Yahoo, Google and Ask Jeeves are the next easiest way to grow traffic. Crawlers work by picking up every website or page that matches a query. It crawls on individual pages, big websites and directories. Google in particular has a feature wherein you can instantly add your site's URL to its directory for simple recovery. Anyhow, this method doesn't guarantee that your site will be visited by hoards of visitors. Oh no. That will be determined by your page's ranking. Page rank is a measure of how relevant your website is. It's like a range of how much support your site gets. If you get a lot of back links to your site, then this does much to increase its page rank.
3. High quality content, increase in keywords and add a sitemap to your site.
A lot of webmasters use the content, keywords and sitemap to develop their traffic. How you ask?
Content As we've said, page ranking is how pertinent your site it. It doesn't matter if you have a hundred or so pages but they have in it nothing but spam. This is extremely irritating, specially to Google, who might even ban you from their list. High quality content however, is the first way to go about it. Even if you've got only 5 or so pages, but possess out up relevant and well written articles, people are certain to come back and visit. A lot of times.
Keywords For instance, your site is covering a topic like, Superman. Of course the typical person looking for a page on Superman will type "superman" on his query box. However, some search for more distinct terms like "super man" or "clark kent" or "lois and clark". If you have pages that have these keywords, there are better chances for your site to be found. The more specific the keyword, the better since it limits the number of the competition.
Sitemap A sitemap is effective for any website since it increases the number of internal links and pages that you have, therefore increasing the probability that a crawler will pick it up. It's also a big help to prospect who are looking for a specific page but wouldn't want to bother browsing through the whole website.
4. Exchange links with other sites Exchanging links with other websites will be a superb way to foster alliance and friendship. It'll increase traffic too, considering most people browse through the links page of websites, especially on fan sites.
At any rate, it wouldn't be adequate to ask for an exchange link for free or just out of the blue. Before a similar site can do an exchange with you, you must have been offering them something in return, like free content or downloads.
5. Article marketing Submitting your articles to online publications is a great way to increase traffic too. This is a bit harder than the other methods, since the publication need to accept of your article first. However, one approved, not only do you get to publish your work, you are also given a link back to your site. This way calls for quality not quantity so please do your best.
6. Submitting to directories There are free and open directories like imegamall.com and searchsight.com. You can submit your site to them and it may increase traffic to your site.
This method is quick and simple but not so reliable either. It might take weeks or months before your site can be listed or maybe not at all. So it's better to try this along with the other methods for greater success.
Tips For Maximum Adsense Content Relevancy
One of the most essential aspects of getting the most out of your involvement with Google’s Adsense program is to be certain that Google serves up the most relevant ads possible on your site. The concept is easy to grasp--visitors travel to your sites in search of certain content on their topic of interest. If they see advertisements directly related to those content desires, they are far more likely to click on the ads than if they encounter only tangentially related material or, in a worst case scenario, ads that are not even related to their interests. As such, it is in your best interests to make sure your site displays relevant ads. Here are few tips for improving your content relevancy to produce more accurately targeted contextual advertising from Adsense.
FIRST THINGS FIRST. Before you even begin to use Adsense as a monetization tool, make sure there are relevant ads for your site or pages. In most cases, you will have determined this long before you even embarked on site design or content development. However, if you are thinking of adding Adsense to an existing site built with other monetization strategies originally in mind, you may not have bothered checking to see if other advertisers were going after that particular market. Be sure you are addressing a topic for which ads exist in sufficient quantity. If related advertising is sparse, it will difficult to avoid irrelevant ads.
KEYWORDS MATTER. You do not want content that is overstuffed with particular keywords to point of destroying readability and value, but you do want to make sure your materials make liberal use of on-topic keywords likely to spawn the most relevant possible ads. Experts maintain that using keywords with your titles and H1 tags is an excellent way to assist in getting the most relevant possible ads. This has added advantages in terms of search engine optimization, as well.
METATAGS. Once upon a time, metatags were a critical aspect of search engine optimization in general. Although the engines rely upon metatags far less than they once did, there is some evidence to suggest that using ad-triggering keywords in your pages’ meta-tags may increase the relevance of the advertisements displayed. This strategy may help, and it certainly cannot hurt.
LOOK FOR LACKLUSTER CONTENT. Many sites to a great job of supplying content related to particular themes or keywords in the main portion of a page, but have sidebars, headers and footers filled with less targeted terms and material. Take a long look at your navigational elements and other “side of the page” text and remove keyword terminology that may be leading to irrelevant ad service. Alternatively, you can use Adsense’s section targeting tool to remove those areas from Adsense’s consideration completely, so long as you do not plan to display ad blocks or ad link units in those areas.
TIGHT THEMING. You want to keep content tightly themed. That means you do not want to feature long, rambling articles that cover multiple topics. Instead, rely upon materials that address singular issues. You also do not want to feature multiple chunks of content on disparate matters on the same page for that very same reason. The value of tight theming may extend past individual pages. Many publishers argue that Adsense tends to reward tightly-themed overall sites with more relevant ads, as well. Even though this aspect of theming is not as well researched and proven, it makes sense to follow the practice, because of the search engine optimization advantages of having a focused site.
BLOCK THE BAD ADS. Monitor your site regularly and take note when irrelevant ads appear. Then, take the time to add them to your blacklist for the site. Google does give you the ability to block individual ads via the Competitive Ad Filter. If you block out commonly served irrelevant ads, you may improve your chances of featuring more ads upon which your visitors will actually click.
The more contextually relevant the ads appearing on your site are, the more clicks you can expect to see. As such, it is important to make an effort to use a combination of proven SEO methods that also work well with Adsense and some program-specific maneuvers to secure the best possible ads on your site.
The Best Place to Put Adsense Ads
Where’s the best place to put your adsense ads? On your web pages of course. Ok, just kidding. The real question should be: “Is there really any truth to the rumors that where you place those Google AdSense ads can actually improve response?” According to my best information, the answer to that question is: Yes.
Google’s own AdSense experts say that that there is a direct correlation between the placement of the AdSense ads and the resulting clickthrough.
When ads are placed in “content zones”, rather than in “advertising zones”, response rates on Google AdWords goes up. There are also indications showing that ads appearing on the right side of the page get clicked more than ads appearing on the left side.
Advertising analysts with degrees in human behavior and psychology have spent thousands of man-years (people-years?) studying how people read printed and Internet content and what it takes to get them to respond to ads. While some of these studies are proprietary, or are only available to anyone with $10,000 or more to spend on a copy, other studies have been made public and can be read by anyone who is interested.
Google themselves has released some relevant information which is focused directly on increasing your Google AdSense response. You can read their findings here.
Of course, all of the studies in the world aren’t worth a hill of beans if the findings don’t work on your web site. That’s why it is important to test, test and test again. Experiment with your Google AdSense placement and track the results over a period of time. Google provides response tracking tools in your AdSense control panel. Learn how to use them. As you begin to see what may be only subtle differences in response, you’ll be able to determine what works best for your particular site. But don’t get complacent. What’s working for you now might not work next month if you change your site design or content.
One of the most important factors in determining placement of your ads is the type of content that your site delivers. If you are primarily an e-commerce site, and you have a lot of pictures and ad copy for your own products competing for attention against AdSense ads, then it is going to be a particularly tough challenge getting any kind of decent Google AdSense clickthrough. It is situations like this that require very thorough testing and a lot of trial and error.
Blogs seem to have a lot of success generating high response rates to Google AdSense listings. Perhaps it’s because blog readers realize that ad revenue is the only way that their favorite blogmaster can keep the lights on, so the readers think of clicking on ads as a way to make a donation(possible adsense click fraud though).
Regardless of what the experts say, your best bet is to tailor your Google AdSense ad placement to what your own experience shows works best for you. In the end, you’re the only expert who matters.
How To Maximize Adsense Earnings From Your Blogs
Earn Adsense income from your Blogs
Did you know you can use Google adsense on your blog? Don’t have a blog? Running, starting, and maintaining a blog is cheap, and in some cases free! So why haven’t you put Google adsense on your blog yet? Oh you don’t know how! Here’s why and how!
First if you are considering adding ads onto your blog, you should learn more about the specific rules Google has in regards to blogs, though it is very similar to the rules they have for sites.
Blog content is what Google likes
Using blogs for Google adsense plain makes sense! The content is original, and is considered high quality from Google’s concept, even though you and I know some of the Blogs on the net are plain idiotic! So qualifying a blog is often easier than a site!
Due to the nature of blogs, there is usually a lot of varying content, meaning on a Blog you can have thirteen different subjects, whereas on your site you are supposed to have only one or two. This makes getting very diverse and specific ads on your Blog, far easier than on your site!
A blog that invites feedback or interactivity with a user may attract a lot of clicks, because it attracts a lot of visitor’s. Your blog has the ability to attract a specific set of people who will be interested in your material. Thus your adsense ads will be even more specific!
You can also add a blog to your commercial site. Really! You can talk about your products or specific information that your customer’s might be interested in. You can talk about your company, or even get a little personal! Besides having the added benefit of getting you some adsense clicks, it might actually make people like you! Studies have shown that people will buy more from a person they find personable or that they know a little bit about. Tell them about you!
You can start a blog for free, like those on Yahoo! Or you can get software to start a blog on your site. The latter is best, because you will have the most control. Again you can visit Yahoo! web hosting and use the tool for free.
When you decide to get ads on your blog, remember there are a few ways to increase your click through rates, which are really about the same as on your site.
Optimize your Adsense ads
Make your ads as much a part of your website as possible. Use the same font, font-color and background for your Google ads.
DON’T use boxes, tables, or anything else that yells; Here are the ads for my site. Don’t hide the ads!Design your ads to closely resemble links for your site, or make them blend as part of your site. Use your preview toolbar when creating your ads, which will give you a clear indication of how your ads will look.
Remember, a good ad is one that does not distract, that blends in, but still arouses the interest of your visitors.
How long does it take to get a blog indexed with Google? Well unlike websites, blogs can be all-set with Google, in as little as three days or less in some cases!
Once you feel you are comfortable with Google adsense, you can then take the steps to get your blog to making you a little money! Go over all the rules for using the Adsense program, and remember, just because you are a blogger in this case, that doesn’t mean Google won’t remove your ads quicker than a dog can scratch a tick, if you are using profane, abusive, slanderous, or otherwise universally unaccepted public topics!
That in mind, the rest is easy. Google will explain the whole process, on the same site that I have already listed at the beginning of this article.
Use your blog to your advantage. Getting approved for ads on a blog is easier than a website, and if proper steps are taken to design your ad well, and provide interesting content, you can make some money with Google Adsense on your blog!
Top 10 AdSense Tricks To Boost Your Commission
Google AdSense is fast becoming the preferred way for people to earn an income online. Forget eBay and multiple affiliate programs. Whether you are a work-at-home mom trying to make a little extra cash or an Internet entrepreneur with hundreds of monetized websites, AdSense is truly the easiest way to earn money.
Simply sign up for a free account, grab your ad code and paste it in your site. But here's the amazing thing - no matter how much money AdSense is making for you right now, a few simple tweaks can increase that amount considerably. And I should know, after learning about these tricks, I more than doubled my AdSense commissions!
The self-proclaimed AdSense gurus and experts are sharing this insider knowledge, for a fee.
You can learn all these secrets from them, as long as you buy their e-book, sign up for their seminar or purchase their newsletter. But I'm going to share all their AdSense tricks for free. Here they are:
1) Color code your ads to match your web site palette *exactly*. Don't use frames around your ads. Instead, in the AdSense code generation interface, make sure you choose the same color as your page background for the ad frame and the ad background.
When choosing the ad heading colors, match them to the *exact* color of your page headings. Use the exact same ad background shade as your page background. Use the exact same ad text font and color as the text on your pages. You can see an example of this color-matching on my Search Engine Advice Blog at - http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm - notice the 4 link ad unit at the top and the skyscraper text ad unit on the left hand side under the heading Ads by Google as you scroll down the page? The link and text colors are identical to the color palette used throughout the rest of the page.
Near enough is NOT good enough. If you can't quite get the color matching right, use Google's built in color palette together with the RGB to HEX or vice versa color converter on this page - http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Style. That handy little tool was a life saver for me.
This is probably the one single tweak that made the most difference to my commission levels.
2) Try not to use the traditional horizontal banner style or leaderboard image ads because people are blind to them.
3) Use Google's own AdSense optimization tips at https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html and visual heat map to assist you in deciding where on your page to place your AdSense ad code.
4) Research competitive keywords using a keyword research tool such as Keyword Discovery at http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/?id=22487 or grab a list of the most popular keywords from various sources and use them in your web site pages where relevant. This article - http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/2156041 - is a good source of frequently searched keywords. Targeting popular keywords should trigger AdSense ads on your pages that utilize those keywords. The more popular the keyword or phrase, the higher AdWords advertisers are generally willing to pay per click for it so the higher your commission on those clicks.
5) Incorporate the AdSense code into your page so that the ads look like a regular part of your site. You can see an example on this Internet Dating Stories site - http://www.lovestory.com.au/ - where link ads are incorporated within the regular left hand navigation of the site under the heading "Feature Links".
6) Use Google's new 4 and 5 link ad units wherever possible. They seem to have a much higher Click Through Rate (CTR) than regular ad styles. You can view all the AdSense ad formats at https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats.
7) Place arrows or images next to your ads to draw attention to them. You can see two different versions of on this search engine article library page - http://www.searchenginecollege.com/articles/article-library.htm - at the top (where a pointing hand directs your eye to the ad) and the bottom where 3 images draw your attention to each of the three AdSense ads.
8) Use the full allowance of multiple AdSense ads on each of your pages - 3 regular AdSense ads, plus 1 link unit. Use careful placement of these ads so they blend into your site and don't distract from your content. Clever use of this allowance can be seen on this page about bad Internet dating stories - http://www.lovestory.com.au/bad-stories.htm - where you see:
Extending VoIP to Remote Locations: Challenges and Solutions
Quintum's survivable...
PacketSaver: More Efficient, More Reliable VoIP
Learn How VoIP is Dramatically Cutting Telecom Costs for Small Businesses
FierceIPTV
State of Minnesota Interconnects Court System Using Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery
Hundreds more titles...
- 1 horizontal 4 link ad unit towards the top of the page under the first paragraph.
- 1 vertical skyscraper text ad unit about halfway down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links".
- 1 vertical skyscraper image ad unit down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links".
- 1 horizontal text banner unit at the bottom of the page with images above each ad to draw attention to them.
You can also include 1 AdSense referral button in addition to the 3 other units.
9) Tailor your page content to a particular niche or focus. Page content that is tailored towards a specific theme is more likely to trigger AdWords ads that closely match the content and are therefore more likely to interest your visitors and inspire them to click.
Don't create pages merely for the sake of placing AdSense ads. Visitors (and search engines) can see through this ruse in an instant.
10) Use custom Ad Channels for each of your ad placements, for example, "Top 5 Link Unit Blue Palette" or "Left Side Navigation Image Skyscraper" etc. Tweak, track and measure the success of each of these custom channels so you know what gives you the highest CTR. Some ad formats and colors will work better than others, but you won't know which until you test, test and test some more!
ARTICLE RESOURCE BOX:
The above article may be re-published as long as the following paragraph is included at the end of the article and as long as you link to the URL mentioned below:
About the Author:
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena manages Search Engine College - http://www.searchenginecollege.com - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing subjects.
Top Dirty Linking Tricks
Part of achieving top search engine positions is through links from other Web pages. These links can come from people who like your site (natural links), reciprocal linking, directory submissions and a few other ways.
The goal of trading links is to get quality links for quality links. True quality links will carry benefits far beyond that of attaining a coveted position in the search engine results. The links will bring traffic from the Web page linking to your Web page. Therefore, you want to ensure you trade or barter links from quality partners.
Sometimes it's hard to determine who is a quality linking partner, even for the expert. So, how can you tell if your link is on a Web page where its value will not be very good?
The short list below highlights ways of diminishing or nullifying the value of a link to your site from another Web page.
Meta Tag Masking - this old trick simply used CGI codes to hide the Meta tags from browsers while allowing search engines to actually see the Meta tags.
Robots Meta Instructions - using noindex and nofollow attributes let's the novice link partner see the visible page with their link while telling the search engines to ignore the page and the links found on the page. Nofollow can be used while allowing the page to be indexed which gives the impression that the search engines will eventually count the link.
Rel=nofollow Attributes - this is not a real attribute based upon HTML standards, but rather it is an attribute approved by the search engines to help identify which links should not be followed. This attribute is often used with blogs to prevent comment and link spam. The link will appear on the Web page and in the search engine's cache, but never be counted.
Dynamic Listing - dynamic listing is a result of having links appear randomly across a series of pages. Each time the link is found on a new page, the search engines count consider the freshness of the link. It is extremely possible that the link won't be on the same page upon the next search engine visitation. So, the link from a partner displaying rotating, dynamic link listings rarely helps.
Floating List - this can be easily missed when checking link partners. Essentially, your link could be number one today, but as new link partners are added your link is moved down the list. This is harmful because the values of the links near the bottom of the list are considered to be of lesser value than the links at the top. With the floating list, it is possible to have your link moved to a new page whose PR value is significantly less or not existent and the new page may not be visited and indexed for months.
Old Cache - the caching date provided by Google indicates the last time the page was cached. Pages with lower PR values tend to be visited and cached less often than pages that have medium to high PR values. If the cache is more than six months old, it can be surmised that Google has little or no desire to revisit the page.
Denver Pages - while Denver, CO is a nice place to visit, Denver Pages are not a place you want to find your link in a trade. Denver Pages typically have a large amount of links grouped into categories on the same page. Some people call this the mile high list. These types of pages do not have any true value in the search engines and are not topically matched to your site.
Muddy Water Pages - these are dangerous and easy to spot. Your link will be piled in with non-topically matched links with no sense of order. It's like someone took all the links and thrown them in the air to see where they land. These are worse than the Denver Pages.
Cloaking - cloaking is the process of providing a page to people while providing a different page to search engines. You could be seeing your link on the Web page, but the search engines could possibly never see the link because they are provided with a different copy. Checking Google's cache is the only way to catch this ploy.
Dancing Robots - this can be easily performed with server-side scripting like PHP and is rarely easy to catch. In this situation people that attempt to view the robots.txt file receive a copy of the robots.txt file that does not include exclusion instructions for the search engines. However, when the search engines request the robots.txt file they receive the exclusion instructions. With this situation the links pages will never be linked and you'll never know why without expert assistance.
Meta Tags and Robots.txt Confusion - which instructions have the most weight? Don't know the answer? Shame. Search engines do. If they conflict the page Meta tags are typically considered the rule to follow.
Link the Head - while these links do not count in the search engines and do not show up on the Web page, they do get counted by scripts or programs designed to verify the links exist. These programs only look for the URL within the source codes for the Web page.
Empty Anchors - this is a nasty trick, but can be an honest mistake. The links exist and are counted by the search engines, but unfortunately are neither visible nor clickable on the Web page. So, there are no traffic values from the link.
The goal of trading links is to trade them for equal value. Understanding the ways people will attempt to prevent passing a quality value from their Web page to your Web page can help you avoid these useless links. If your link partner pulls under-handed tricks the links they trade you are useless.
While you may never be an expert in knowing all the latest tricks, traps and tests, you can now become an expert in knowing the thirteen mentioned above. Ensuring your link partners are not following or using these tactics can help improve the quality of links you gain from other Web pages. By having quality links pointing to your Web page will you gain additional traffic through organic search engine results and visitors driven directly from your linking partners.
by
Lee Roberts
Traffic Building - Top Four Traffic Building Techniques for Success
Traffic building. What is it all about? We are told we have to traffic build. We must get traffic in order to build a list, in order to sell our products.
But why don’t we just buy a million visitors a month? That would certainly be the easiest way, wouldn’t it?
But you and I know better. For our traffic to be worthwhile, it must be personal. It must be targeted. And we must target out landing pages to our traffic sources.
So what are my top 4 traffic building techniques?
4) Google Adwords. I have a love-hate relationship with Google Adwords. I hate the fact that my conversion rate on Adwords visitors is less than 25% of my conversion rate everywhere else, on average. I love the fact that I can get as many as 1000 visitors per day from Adwords, so I can test opt in script and sales pages quickly and easily. Advice: Never spend more on Adwords than you can afford to lose, at least until you get good at it and have consistent results. Buy a good book on Adwords and learn everything you can and test everything you do.
3) Ezine advertising. I like ezine advertising. Why? If someone opts into your list from an ezine ad, what do you know about them? You know they read their emails. You know they click through links in their emails. You know they do not unsubscribe. In short, they are everything you want in a subscriber.
2) Other people’s lists. And no, I don’t mean stealing or buying or anything like that. I mean an endorsed mailing. That is where you have someone else who has a list, mail an offer to their list that offers some incentive for their subscribers to opt in to your list. It may be a free report or a free product. It may be useful information that you can offer them. You can either pay the list owner or swap mailings with them. For example, you mail an offer for them, and they mail an offer for you.
1) Article writing. This may well be one of the hardest forms of traffic generation because of the time involved. You cannot just write a check or use paypal to write your articles. You literally have to sit down for a hour a day and write articles. And for some of you, it may not be easy to write. But let me ask you this. If you were to write for one hour a day for a month, do you think it will be harder or easier at the end of one month to write articles? Of course it will be easier. Just do it. Write for one hour every day.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_Mize
Google Adsense Tips For Blogger (part 5)
The forth element of our Adsense Equation is that of having well designed and optimally placed Adsense Ads. I’ve found that ad positioning is incredibly important. I remember shifting the ads on one of my blogs a while back and being over the moon to discover the next morning that the move had doubled the click through rates that I’d had over night! Its worth doing some tweaking.
Adsense Ad placement and design is an issue that is often hotly debated in Adsense discussion forums. It seems that each Adsense user has their own strategy - some like ads that blend in, others like ads that stand out from the rest of the page. Some like ads in banner positions, others in skyscrapers, others like to put them right in the middle of content. In my experience, different strategies work on different blogs at different times. The key tip I’ll give you is to experiment. Try new positions and design and track your results. One of the best ways you can do this is by using Adsense Tracker which is an amazing tracking package for adsense which gives you much more control over what and how you track your adsense performance. It does cost to purchase the tracker but in my experience you’ll make your money back pretty quickly by using it to adapt your Adsense strategies.
Let me also share a few other tips that you might like to experiment with.
Blend - Most successful Adsense users seem to be taking the approach of blending their ads into the overall theme of their page. This often means making the ad’s background (and often border) the same (or similar) colour to the background of the page and making the title and URL the same as links of the rest of the page. In this way the ad does not stand out as being ‘ad-like’. Having said this I know of a few bloggers who take the opposite approach and make their ads as bright and ugly as possible in the hope of attracting the attention of their readers. I don’t subscribe to this because I think it cheapens the overall feel and look of a page.
In Content - More and more bloggers (and webmasters) are putting their ads inside the main body of their posts. In this way the ads are prominent and more likely to be seen by readers as they read your content. If your text wraps around the ads this can be quite effective. On the flipside of this argument is that you may run the risk of frustrating your readers with dominant ads. People reading content online are a fickle bunch and get easily turned off by blatant advertising.
Above the Fold - it is generally accepted that your Adsense ads should be placed towards the top of your page and be visable without your reader having to scroll down. Studies show that blog visitors stay on average for only 60 or so seconds, many without scrolling down. If you ads are hidden towards the bottom of your page you decrease the likelihood of them ever being seen let alone clicked.
Placement-4Left is Best - Google has put together a ‘heat map’ which is probably the best thing that you can look at when thinking about the positioning of your ads. You’ll see from it that they have found that ads on the left hand side of the page do much better than those on the right hand side.
Too Dominent? - The position and design of your Adsense ads needs to be balanced with the overall purposes and design of your blog. What is the priority of your blog - is it to make money or is it something else. I have a number of blogs - and place ads differently on each depending upon their purposes. For example this blog is not a commercial blog - I’m more interested in building relationships, sharing and hearing others ideas and updating those interested in what I’m doing with my life. As a result my Adsense Ads are in a less prominent banner position and are designed to fit with the overall theme of the blog. However on my Digital Photography Blog there is obviously a more commercial intent (as well as it being something of a passion and hobby). As a result I experiment with more prominent Adsense ads (usually skyscraper and within content).
I cannot stress enough how useful it is to experiment. What works on one blog doesn’t always work on another. I’ve also noticed that if you have a blog with regular and loyal readers that it is good to keep things changing as your readers tend to get used to the way your blog is and become blind to things like Adsense Ads. I notice that when I move my ads around that it often creates higher click throughs for a few days - until the blindness kicks in again. Joel Comm’s What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense is an excellent E-book written with lots of good tips on positioning your adsense ads if you’re wanting to get another person’s opinion on this topic.
By Darren Rowse
Google Adsense Tips For Blogger (part 4)
The third element of our Adsense equation is that of relevant Adsense ads. It is all very well to rank high in search engines to generate high levels of traffic, but without relevant ads that relate to the content of your blog you are not likely to generate much in the way of click throughs.
Let me give you an example. Recently I was asked to help a fellow blogger who has struggling with his Adsense ads because whilst his content largely focused upon the topic of ‘health care’ - most of the ads being served to his blog were focused upon ‘blogging’. He was getting quite reasonable traffic levels and had a reasonably high paying topic (there are some good health care ads out there) but as you’d expect, people coming to a blog about health care did not click on ads for blogging software and services at a very high rate. The challenge was to get his ads reflecting the content of his blog.
Another fellow blogger had the problem of not getting ANY ads being served to his site. Instead of paying ads all he was getting was the public service ads that Adsense serves when they couldn’t find any relevant paying ads (these pay nothing).
How do you get relevant ads? Here are a few things to try.
Make sure there are ads available - My friend who didn’t get any paying ads served was focusing on a key word for which there was no or very few ads. A simple way of checking this is to do a search on Google for the key word you are targeting. If they don’t serve ads on their own search results page its an indication that such ads are scarce - if not non existent. They way we got ads on my friends blog was to experiment with other related keywords. He didn’t have to change the focus of his blog - just the way he described his topics. For example if there are no ads for ‘bed linen’ try ‘blankets’, ’sheets’, ‘quilts’ etc. Experiment with different combinations until you find something that works.
Increase your Keyword density - The more you use your keywords the more likely you are to get ads on those topics. Its not common knowledge exactly how the Adsense bot decides what ads suit your content best (if someone knows feel free to post it in comments below) but it’s a pretty safe bet that if you put you keyword in your title, at least once in your first paragraph and then scatter it throughout the rest of your page that you’ll convince the Adsense bot of what your topic is. It MAY also be helpful to include your keywords in the URL of your page (Moveable type can let you do this - ie look at the URL of this page - it incorporates my title and therefore some keywords). It MAY also be worth putting your keywords in outward links, bold, italics etc. All of these strategies also help optimise yor blog for search engines which won’t hurt either.
Examine your Sidebars, menus, header and footer - It is not just your main content that the Adsense bot searches to find the topic of your page, but also your other areas. When I looked at the healthcare blog that was getting ‘blogging’ ads I noticed that he had the word ‘blog’ in his title, three times on his sidebar and once in his footer. It was also in his URL and he also used the word quite often in his content. My recommendation was to remove the word from as many of those places as possible and to increase his health care keywords. The ads improved their relevancy almost immediately.
Stick to one topic per page - Obviously this may not be feasible on your front page - but attempt to keep each individual blog entry/post as highly targeted as possible. I’ve noticed that some people often include two or three topics in one entry - this will confuse Adsense’s bot so split them up into two entries.
Block irrelevant Ads - Sometimes despite your best intentions Google just gets it wrong and serves your ads that have nothing to do with what you write. If you’re getting some repeating irrelevant ads block them. Adsense lets you do this to quite a few sites and its easy to do. I have a number of ads blocked, some because they are philosophically not consistent with what I write about, but mainly because they just are not relevant to the topic of my blogs.
Ask Adsense - If all else fails notify Google Adsense of your issue. Of course they are busy people - but Google prides itself on being responsive to its users. I’ve emailed with queries a number of times, once on an issue of irrelevant ads, and every time I’ve had positive results from my query. You’ve got nothing to loose - shoot them an email!
If you do all of the above you SHOULD find Adsense serves you with relevant ads. In conjunction with the other elements in our equation this will contribute to increased click throughs and hopefully higher Adsense revenue. Next in this series on maximizing Adsense revenue is a post on Well Placed and Designed Adsense Ads.
By Darren Rowse
