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Below, you'll find extensive information on leading
adwords information google adsense marketing articles and products to help you on your way
to success.
[ Top Hints And Tips To Improve Your Adsense Monetisation ]
By Paul Ackerley, Mon Jan 2nd
b>[ Simple ways to improve your returns ] *** Limited offer: *** Now, for the bargain price of (much less than) $97, I will giveyou the hidden secrets to fiscal glory:
" " I`m sorry, was that too brief? Hmmm, nothing there you say? Ah,well there you go...
Sorry to disappoint, but that`s your lot, there are no `hiddensecrets`. Don`t get me wrong, some of these grossly overpricedeBooks do have good, solid information. And yes, if you want totake the lazy route to optimisation they will save you manyhours of treading the forums, but secrets? And the promise of earning hundreds, even thousands of dollars aday ? See, now we are on stickier ground. In truth, yes, it`sperfectly possible. Indeed I fully intend to prove it can bedone via my main site ( www.ackadia.com ) and my Adsense`secrets` site ( www.dadsense.com ). BUT, and here`s the rub,unless you are doing dirty black hat tricks which WILL cost youAdsense account, there is a finite limit to how much you canimprove your revenue. It will vary will one site to the next,but I believe the absolute maximum you can increase it by istenfold. Certainly a 500% increase is easily achievable if youfollow the rules. But the books promise... : Read the small print, eh! Generallythere`s a wee caveat to those 100% money back guarantees, like,if you follow everything in the manual. I will be doing a followon article looking at building traffic.
*** Here`s how it goes, in reality: *** You are earning 20¢ a day. You follow every rule in the book,try every trick in all these oh so promising tomes, et voila,you might be earning $1.00 a day. At that rate, if you manageit, you should cover the cost of the eBook in about 3 months. Afar, far cry from the screen shots proving they are earning over$1,000 a day. Come on, we`ve all seen them, the cheques for like $25,000, themonth`s listing pulling anywhere between $600 and $1,600 a day,every day, pictures with the central portion edited out. Thereis a good reason for this - one besides violating Googles` termsand conditions - it conveniently, legitimately, hides the clicksand page impressions. Clicks are an aside, the impressions arethe real meat here, the measure of hits, of traffic. That`s hit the nail on the head, eh. If you want to turn that$0.20 a day into a $1 a day, fine, but to turn it up again tointo $500 a day, you need 500 times more visitors, every singleday. Not only that, but genuine people who have come for yourexpert opinions and advice, that most certainly have not beentricked by false information. As you can see, most of the books will touch on improvingtraffic, but the fact hides the lie. Unless you have severalpopular sites, or one amazing busy niche site, you will neversee these sort of monthly cheques yourself!
*** Monetisation 101: Who`s your daddy! *** You want lots of money for publishing the content and displayingthe Adsense, anything else is incidental. Google want lots of money from the advertisers for supplyingthe service and only really care that your content and leads arerelevant and honest. The advertisers meanwhile want lots of money from sales anddon`t really care about either you nor Google - they are payinghard cash per click for their AdWords and want clicks thatconvert to a real Return On Investment. So, who is your Daddy? The advertisers, naturally! No-oneoutside of Google and very few inside know the rules, but youcan bet the shirt off your back that there`s a correlationbetween your site and the advertisers marketing feedback. Here`sa perfect example. I am looking for a new host, so I do a searchand find a carefully written article dedicated to resellerhosting. As it`s target it generates appropriate adverts, one ofwhich I follow and end up ordering from. A win-win-win situation.
*** Here`s what works: *** Play around and test continually until you find what works bestfor you. I recently changed my logo on one site and the clickthru rate dropped from around 2% to almost zero overnight! Youcan bet I put it back how it was. Similarly, altering thebackground colour elsewhere increased the rate 300%. Pages with single theme topics are highly effective, the betterthey are written, the more likely you will get targetedvisitors. Remember though that Google`s terms strictlyforbid you designing web sites purely with the intention ofearning income. If they catch you, it is an automaticlifetime ban. Create web sites where you have a real interest inproviding content for your readers. Where possible using keywords, you ideally want appropriatedomain names, along with highly descriptive paths and filenamesusing dashes between the words work extremely well, greatlyincreases the probability of instantly targeted ads. Naturallythis applies to search engine optimisation too. Apparently,targeting effectiveness increases over time. I can`t say if thisis true, but according to some sources it seems likely thatexternal factors such as the number, range, popularity andrelevancy of external sites and articles linking to you, and tothe page in question play a factor.
*** KISS Google! *** For your page design, `Keep It Simple, Stupid,` if you want toget the best out of Adsense, and indeed other related systems.Not so much the visual aspect that we see, but the code that thebots `see`. A lot of this relates to accessibility regulationsand validated code. Essentially, the indexing bots are blind. Ifthey have to navigate a badly marked up mess of nested tablesand Flash animations, well... Needless to say such optimisation should include thedescriptive use of headline elements (H1, H2 etc) and extend tometa information such as the title, description and keywords.You
should also create a robots.txt, which needs to include thisline: ( User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* ) I have a page on meta tags here: ( www.ackadia.com/web-design/meta-tags/meta-tag-keywords.php ). For extensive information on robots, read this FAQ : ( www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html ) Don`t format your sitemap. Google have a beta programspecifically running for this, Webmasters can register here: (www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login )
*** Which ad size to use *** Please bear in mind these are generalisations and may not be thebest for your particular blog or web site. The only way to knowfor sure is try them and monitor them through channels,experimenting over time with slightly different sizes andshapes. Generally when you find the one that works best you knowalmost overnight! Whichever you use, take the text only optionover the text and/or image and keep from `above the fold`,display them at the top of the page in the hot spots. Googleeven have a chart of what works best, where. Find it here: ( www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html ) Anyway, for the side bars, the consistent agreement is for a160x600 Skyscraper, over the narrower 120x600 or other options. If you use the banners at the top, go with the full sized728x90. I don`t see the results myself, but I believe the 728x15horizontal link units work well with niche sites. For body content, there tends to be mixed consensus between themedium 300x250 and the large 336x280 rectangles as which isbest. I`m inclined towards the latter, but it does depend on theactual layout of your pages and specifically the width of yourcontent column. Again, test the various formats to see whichworks best for you.
*** Which ad colours to use *** Now this is one of the `secret tips`. So secret that Google giveit coverage on there tips page. Ahem! Anyway, sarcasmaside, it is also THE one. This, more than any other supposedsnake oil, is what can massively improve the success ofcontextual adverts on your site. Not just Google, but Chitikaand anything else you might want to try! Here`s what Google have to say on the matter: "What colour palettes are the most successful? You may find thatcolours that stand out without overshadowing your content arebetter for your site than colours that blend in so well, the adsare practically invisible. However, you may find that coloursthat blend in completely perform better. However you choose yourcolour palettes, make sure that it complements the colour schemeof the page. Also, rotating colour palettes is a simple way toadd variety and freshness to your ads. All you need to do ishold down the Control key and select up to four colour paletteswhen generating your ad code in the Ad layout code page of youraccount." cite: [ www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html#17957 ] Personally, I find the best result come when you blend yoursites colours and fonts as closely as possible, making theadverts look more of your content. Indeed it is this relevancythat endeared me to Google in the first place. That said,sometime the reverse it true. This, I believe, relates as muchto the nature of the topic as anything else. It`s a mind setthing! Basically, it`s down to not making the advert look likean ad. THus you match it so closely that it`s part and parcel,or make it stand out, hiding in plain sight. For the most part, depending on site style, I prefer mutedcolours though others tests have showed that the default blue(#0000ff) for links can improve the effectiveness by 25%. Eitherway, make the colours of the ads and your own links pair up. Asan interesting alternative is Google`s random colours. I`ve nottested it extensively yet, but some people have reported goodresults use the option to dynamically rotate up to four colourlayouts. *** Keyword targeting *** There`s two ways of looking at this, only one of which Ipersonally subscribe too. The first and in my opinion true andhonest is genre targeting. This is essentially search engineoptimisation and frankly if you want a decent ranking in Google,Yahoo and MSN this is the only guaranteed way to do it - puttingthe right words in your meta information, headlines and entirecontent. The other method is highly lucrative and an entire market initself. It involves trying to work out who has naively paid themost for a particularly word combination and rewriting yourpages to get that ad on your page. Here`s a fictitious example: For `rust removal` the costs to advertisers is $1.11 a click For`rust removal widget` the bid rises to $11.11 a click For `rustremoval gadget` someone has incredulously bid at $111.11 perimpression Technically there is nothing wrong with this and I don`t thinkthe rules specifically forbid it
*** Last minute advice: *** Don`t forgot to try the Site Search box. If you have alarge site it`s a great way of letting visitors quickly find therelevant information. If they don`t find it, it`s a reasonablebet they will reach for Google and search elsewhere. Why not letthem launch search from your site, that way if it leads them toan advert you get credited. Sure, it`s not a big earner, but thepennies do an up over time.
About the author:Tall, grey, grumpy, genius! Been there, done that, got the scars to prove it. My main web site, www.Ackadia.com, is a familyfriendly site offering help and articles on web design,computers, general interest, education, RPGs PC games.
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