Adsense & Blog Traffic Guide

What is title optimiztion

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:02:00 -0800

There are two type of titles 1) Blog title and 2) Post title

When we visit main url of the blog , what we see on top most line of browser is blog's title and when we click on individual post this line displays post title.

In my earlier posts , I have mentioned that your chosen keyword should be used in post title as well as blog title to get better search engine ranking.The earlier the keyword is found in title , more marks you get for ranking. Please do not edit your old titles for optimization.

But in case of blogspot blogs, the title of the post is displayed as Blog title + Post title.
In case of wordpress blogs the title of the post is displayed as Post title + Blog title.
In case of normal website individual title of the page is displayed without adding title of the main website. In case of blogs, posts are webpages ,but title is displayed differently (as mentioned above) and hence we loose marks during search engine ranking.

So for blogspot blogs we need some technique or widget by which we can display post title as Post title + Blog title i.e. reverse of normal way.

If you have a blogspot blog please click on one of the post to find out how title is displayed, then click on posts of this blog to find how title is displayed.

So I will add a widget here to do this title optimization , it also has a problem which i will discuss.

Please note that we are talking of post title and not title tag. It is a html tag which I will discuss in some other upcoming post.

to be continued ...........

Please leave your comments

Picture / Image optimization on blog

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:34:00 -0800

During my visit to many blogs , I found that many of them have not optimized the pictures on their blog. So I am writing this , it is very easy and helps to get higher search engine ranking.

This is for blogspot users.

When you create a new post or edit a existing post , above post body , you find a chain like symbol called 'Insert link' or Link. You have to select the picture with single mouse click and then click insert link icon , it will ask you to enter http:// .Here you have to enter your blog URL i.e. yourname.blogspot.com.

After this click on 'Edit html' above post body , located beside compose.

You will find alt " " .You need to enter your keyword in the quotes i.e. alt"keyword"

Now you can publish your post , check your picture by clicking on it and by pointing mouse on it.
Your picture optimization is done. You can also rename your jpg file to your-keyword.jpg.
Please do not optimize all old images on your blog at a time .

Please also check from where you are loading images (picture url) and file size of picture in kilobytes ,because some times due to this your blog gets loaded slowly.You can reduce file size using softwares like Photoshop.

I have also done keyword optimization by text link optimization , in this post .Find out those and leave a comment here.

thanks

How to add video to blog post

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:24:00 -0800

In my other post , I have discussed about adding and optimizing pictures on blog post . Today we will discuss adding video to blog post.This article is for blogger / blogspot blogs only. Adding video to blog post makes it more interesting and attractive.
You can add video from three main sources.
1) Video stored on your computer harddisk. You might have shoot it using your cell phone and then downloaded to your PC.
2) Video from youtube.com
3) Video from video.yahoo.com

Now we will discuss how to add video from this three sources

1) For adding video from your PC , please go to create new post then in the post toolbar you will find a 'Add video' button or icon , at second last position from right hand side as shown below.

Then you have to select file from your PC by clicking on Browse , then give title and click upload video. But please remember that your video file format should be AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media. And maximum file size of 100MB . If you have saved your video from cell phone , file format can be different , so please convert it to any of above format using proper video conversion utility software.

2) For adding video from youtube.com , after going on this site , you have to select the video you want to add. Then on the right hand side of the screen or browser window you will find Embed and html code written there as shown below.You have to select that code and paste into your post in edit html mode.

You can change size of window for video by changing width and height pixels.

3) For adding video from video.yahoo.com , after going to this website you have to select your video.Then below the video it is written Add to site and the html code will be there as shown below. You have to copy this code and paste it on you blog post in Edit html mode.

You can resize window size for video by changing width= and height= pixel no.s

I hope you like this post and is useful to you.

How To Make Money With Adsense

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:31:00 -0800

Adsense is one of the most effective ways of monetizing your traffic and the deeper you delve into it the more it will reward you. Understanding Adsense.com has been set up to help you do just that.

It covers everything from building your first website to building a virtual real estate empire. Things like how to target your keywords, how to find and target niches, how to optimize your ads...

We are researching and building Adsense monetized sites constantly and many of our methods and ideas find their way into these pages.

This site is one of a growing number which are part of the "Take Over The Web" Network - what will be the largest free webmaster resource network the internet has known. If you're new to our sites - welcome to the world of building successful sites that make money.
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Latest Articles:

How To Find A Profitable Adsense Niche

The profitability of an Adsense niche is primarily based on the amount that Adwords advertisers are spending to compete in that niche.

Remember that an Adsense ad is only an Adwords ad that is appearing on your site and not Google. The amount that an ad generates per click is therefore directly related to the amount that Adwords advertisers are paying per click. Bottom line - if they are paying more we earn more.

So how can you find out which niches (and which keywords inside those niches) advertisers are spending more money on?

I use two different methods:

1. Keyword Research With Keyword Country

As you will have probably have started to gather I cannot lay enough praise on this tool. In fact I struggle to understand how I researched, chose and targeted niche sites before I got hold of it...it's that good. Aswell as being able to search by category or keyword you can also search by price range. For example, you can decide to find keywords that have an average cpc of say between $18 and $20. If you enter this price range it will return a list of keywords which fall inside that parameter - in this case - 3957 different keyword phrases.

The top 5 rated keywords in this cpc range were: "credit card", "free credit report", "mortgage rates", "consolidate debt" and "website hosting". All you need to do is go down the list work out which ones would be suitable for an Adsense monetized information site, extend your keyword research by taking your chosen phrase and entering it into the search box, build the content, integrate the Adsense and promote your new website.

Read More

Adsense Alternatives

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:24:00 -0800

Adsense is not the only way to monetize your traffic. Some of the other programs which are worth looking into depending on your project include:

Chitika Malls
Kanoodle
AdBrite
Yahoo Publisher Network
Revenue Pilot
Clicksor
Context Web
Searchfeed

Affiliate Networks

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:21:00 -0800

Although this site is about making money with Adsense the worst thing you can do as a Website Publisher is turn away from appropriate affiliate programs.

The purpose of building websites is to bring traffic to them and then monetize this traffic...Affiliate Programs can help you do this.

They make a great supplement to your page content and your ads. They can pay extremely well and they can open up new means of generating Adsense clicks, for example by adding a product store to an existing content site or by reviewing those products and utilizing Adsense as a way to monetize the browsers.

Below is a list of the major affiliate networks. Personally I tend to focus around Clickbank (digital downloads and big commissions) and CJ, but I do use the others depending on my project.

There's a lot of money to be made in Affiliate Marketing and if you're interested in learning the skills neccessary to compete as an affiliate I'd recommend you read High Performance Affiliate Marketing. It's one of the few ebooks that are worth the money and that I still refer to.

Affiliate Networks
Click Bank
Commission Junction (CJ)
Linkshare
WebSponsors
Performics
Shareasale
ClickxChange
ClixGalore
AffiliateFuel
FineClicks
Dark Blue
FastClick

Article Directories

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:16:00 -0800

he internets many Article Directories serve two purposes for us as Adsense Publishers.

1. You can "mine" them for free content to include on your website(s). This obviously saves you having to write your own content whilst still allowing you to prosper from the Adsense clicks that content may produce.

2. You can submit your own articles to these directories and allow other website publishers to download them. They will then place your article on their sites or in their ezines. The latter will spread your name to a wider audience and the former will give you non-reciprocal inbound links (good for your search engine rankings) and another direct traffic source. Just make sure you include a link to your site in the "About the Author" section of your article.

There are many more than this but these receive the highest traffic.

www.ezinearticles.com
www.goarticles.com
www.webpronews.com
www.articlecity.com
www.searchwarp.com
www.ideamarketers.com
www.submityourarticle.com
www.isnare.com
www.articlesfactory.com
www.storebuilder.co.uk
www.constant-content.com
www.allthewebsites.org
www.valuablecontent.com
www.womans-net.com
www.jogena.com
www.family-content.com/articles/submit.shtml
www.family-content.com
www.articlesubmissions.com
www.certificate.net
www.theezine.net/archive/add.html
www.zinos.com
www.ebooksnbytes.com/articles/submit.shtml
www.freezinesite.com
www.linksnoop.com
www.articlefinders.com
www.authorconnection.com
www.businesstoolchest.com
www.connectionteam.com
www.e-zinez.com
www.uniterra.com/submit-article.htm
www.article-directory.net

SEO Friendly General Directories

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:14:00 -0800

Directories can serve as a great source of direct and indirect (through assisting your search engine rankings) traffic.

You can find General, Niche and Local directories to submit your website to at Which Directories.

When I've built a new website I submit my site to a proportion of the directories listed on that site depending on:

1. The money I'm willing to spend on the particular project as some of these charge a submission fee, and;

2. The value of the links page inside these directories for the topic that particular project is about. For example, when I submitted Understanding Adsense I checked the page that my link would appear on for things like;

The number of steps from the homepage my link page would be,
The title of the page my link would appear on - does it match my keywords?
The flexibility of the actual link - can I use my target keywords and not my website name?
The Page Rank of the page my link would appear on,
The number of links on the page my link would appear on - there should be below 20.

Apply these type of factors to directories which charge a submission fee in particular. It can be a lucrative business charging website owners for what are in effect valueless links - don't pay for things that don't align with your SEO strategy.

Adsense Monitoring Tools

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:14:00 -0800

Adsense Gold
I’ve been using this software for over a year now and it's worth its weight in "Gold" (excuse the pun). Monitoring and analysis is so important for improving your Adsense ads performance and Google's facilities are in this respect very limited. Among other things this tells you where your visitor came from, what ad they clicked on and which page that ad was on. Worth checking out once you've outgrown the Google channels and reports.

Search Engine Optimization Tools

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:12:00 -0800

SEO Elite
In my opinion this is the best search engine optimization software on the market. Successful SEO revolves around choosing your target keywords, seeing whose at the top of the search engines for those keyword phrases and then replicating and bettering their optimization strategy. Brad Callen, the guy behind the software has built this powerful tool to do just that. I recommend it to all website owners.

The Cool Seo Tool
This is a new addition to the toolbox and it's free. It's just a neat little tool that allows you to enter a url and a keyword phrase to see where that url ranks in Google, MSN and Yahoo for that keyword phrase. Useful for monitoring the success of your search engine optimization strategies.

Keyword Research Tools

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:10:00 -0800

Keyword Country
This is my favorite which I use for every project I'm involved in. I've only been subscribed for two months but I won't be unsubscribing. If you're unsure you can subscribe for just a week or even a day to see how powerful it is first hand.

Overture Keyword Tool
A long time favorite of most webmasters, this tool allows you to enter any keyword or keyword phrase and in return it will give you a long list of variations of that phrase and the amount of times each was searched for across the Overture network for the previous month. This obviously does not include the searches on Google but you can normally times this number by anything between 2 and 8 depending on the market.

Wordtracker
The principle behind this tool is to help you find the keywords that will help you drive traffic to your website. But there's a further twist - what it really does is help you find the keywords that have a lot of searches but that your competitors aren't targetting, hence they will be much easier to optimize for. You can subscribe for a day, week, month or year. I often join up for a day, week or month depending on the project I'm doing. It's a useful in and out tool, as in I allocate some time to do this kind of research and subscribe for that period only.

Overture Bid Tool
Another popular tool from Overture that allows you to enter a keyword phrase and see how many advertisers are bidding on that phrase inside the Overture network and their max bid per click. It can help you choose which keywords you target (ie the more profitable ones) but It has it's limitations as it's the Overture and not Google network. The amount Adwords advertisers are bidding will inevitably differ although you would expect the market trends to be similar. I'd say this is more for fun - for real research I'd try Keyword Country.

Adsense Keywords: Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:01:00 -0800

Different keywords pay different amounts. Other things being equal a website based around debt consolidation will generate more revenue per Adsense click than a website based around football cards. This is why an industry built around selling high paying keyword lists to Adsense publishers has become so profitable.

But it’s more complicated than this as different keywords in different niche markets also pay different amounts. If your website is not targeting the “right” (as in profitable) keywords you will probably be earning less money per Adsense click than you should be.

For example – if you increase your average CPC (cost per click) from $0.20 to $0.30 you will increase your revenue by 33%. There are two ways of doing this on your already existing website and the best tool for doing the research is Keyword Country.

1. Better target your existing webpages:

Which words are you using in your Title Tag, Meta Tags, H1 - H3 Header Tags and inside the body of your content? Google's content matching technology generates ads related to the meaning of the words on your page. If the high paying keywords for that page topic aren't in those 4 hotspots I just listed the quality (relevancy) and CPC of your ads will be lower than if they were. Google wants to match their advertiser ads to the pages which are going to offer the greatest return otherwise their whole system collapses.

This means that you want to make sure the high paying keywords are included in your hot spots. If I use UnderstandingAdsense.com as an example I logged into Keyword Country with the intention of finding the highest paying keywords for the Adsense market. I typed in Adsense and was presented with a list. "Making Money With Adsense" has the highest average CPC of $0.73 so when I've finished building the site I will optimize the home page and several other pages for that keyword so as to generate the most relevant and high paying ads possible. I will do this by including that keyword phrase (and related ones like "make money with Adsense") into the four places listed above.

2. Add additional content to your website which targets related high paying keywords:

The most important word here is related. Don’t add content pages about Viagra to your website which is themed around motorcycles just because the average CPC for Viagra is very high. Instead do one of these two things:

1. Type your primary keyword, in this example, "motorcycle" into Keyword Country, wait for the results to appear and then click on CPC. This will arrange all the related keywords by their CPC value bringing the most profitable to the top. I did this and found that -

“Motorcycle Insurance In Michigan” has an average CPC of $10.25
“Motorcycle Insurance” has an average CPC of $4.28
“Motorcycle Loan” has an average CPC of $3.34

These are very high average CPCs for which you could develop new content. These content pages would generate higher cost per click Adsense ads from your visitors.

2. Your second option is to type in keywords which are related to your principal topic. Continuing with the motorcycle theme you could type in Harley-Davidson a popular manufacturer of motorcycles. The results show that “Harley Davidson Boots” has an average CPC of $0.84. You could build a page today pre-selling Harley Davidson Boots and generate a nice Adsense stream from that page. Another extension would be the keyword “chopper”, a popular type of motorcycle enhanced by the big shows of the last few years. On Keyword Country a search for chopper brings up related keywords like West Coast Choppers, a famous chopper builder which has an average CPC of $0.95 – again a page or several pages around this topic would be a nice addition to a motorcycle based website.

Whatever your topic, virtually every website can incorporate new high paying content. So before you try and build a website in a new niche check that the website(s) that you’ve already put the groundwork into (link building and seo) can’t be better optimized for higher paying keywords and / or have additional high adsense paying content added to it. There will be at least five new pages of content that you could add to your existing website today that would create higher paying average clicks than what you are already generating.

The large majority of Adsense Publishers are still not taking advantage of these tools and are still working in the dark so to speak - unsystematically adding content, optimizing their pages and building new niche websites with no fore-knowledge of the value of a particular topic nor its potential profitability. I guarantee that if you test Keyword County for just a day you won’t want to unsubscribe - it makes our job of making money with Adsense that much easier.

They also have a free “sneak peak” tool whereby you enter your target keywords and it will give you the most high paying keywords related to that phrase. If you follow this link and click on the “try now” button in the top right you can test the three different parts of the application yourself.

Monitoring Adsense: Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:00:00 -0800

Monitoring is an important part of increasing your Adsense revenue. It's the only way that you can tell whether a change in format, placement or color has had an effect on your click through rate.

The best way to monitor your ads performance is to set up several channels inside your Adsense account. By setting up a channel for a particular set or type of ad you can monitor their performance and compare them to other ads.

For example, on this website I have four channels operating:

1. One channel for the whole website - UnderstandingAdsense.com,

2. One channel for the 336 x 280 rectangle inside the page content,

3. One channel for the 160 x 600 skyscraper in the right navigation,

4. One channel for the Adlinks in the left navigation.

When I make changes to these ads I'll be able to see what effect this has on my click through rate and it is through these methods that we work out many of our best practices.

The standard channels I always set up on any Adsense monetized website include:

1. One for the whole website,

2. One for each type of ad used,

3. I may also set up channels on different groups of pages or even individual pages to compare performance across different topics.

For how to set up channels on your own Adsense campaigns I recommend reading Googles guide.

Adsense Ad Relevancy: Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:00:00 -0800

There must be an ad pool for your market and on the assumption that there is, there are certain things that you can do to stress that your page is about X and not about Y: Stressing it in this way will improve the relevancy of the ads generated on your webpages and improved relevancy will result in an improved click through rate.

1. Include your target keywords in:

- Page title

- Meta tags

- Description tag

- H1 heading tags (plus include related keywords in H2)

- Body of the text several times (top and bottom)

- Bold and / or Italic tags a couple of times

- A link to the home page with the keyword anchor text

2. Use Google's Section Targeting facility.

Adlinks: Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:57:00 -0800

The common prejudices against using an Adlink instead of or as well as the traditional Ad unit are faltering as Publishers are finding more and more ways to turn these little units into high converting Ads.

The basic assumption goes something like this: as the Adlink unit requires a visitor to click first on one of the four or five topics and then on one of the ads they will be clicked on less as it requires them to do two things. In a sense this is true but the best way to see Adlinks is not to compare them to the traditional ad unit because basically they are not the same.

Whereas the regular ad is best utilized as additional content for your website, the Adlink is best utilized as additional navigation. Most navigation links are solely the number of words which prescribe the meaning of that navigation and this is what Adlinks replicate.

They come in two main formats - horizontal and square (each of which has several variations). Therefore, they can be used effectively in a variety of places:

1. The favored hot spot for Adlinks is the top left of your navigation where on this site it says "Make Money With Adsense". If you include them there and match the link, border and background color to the colors you are already using you will generate a high ctr.

2. A 728 x 15 in the traditional leaderboard position can work very well (just underneath your banner and above your actual webpage). This golf store has done it well.

3. A 468 x 15 above or just below your actual page title can also work well. On this page it would go either above or below "Adsense Adlinks - Best Practices". Bear in mind that the 468 sometimes isn't long enough to cater for the amount of words that it generates and will result in it being squashed together. You'll have to test it for your content.

4. You can also use one of the square units at the bottom of your articles. WiseGeek uses this method and have done so for as long as I remember their site being online suggesting that the conversion is pretty good.

Number Of Adsense Units: Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:56:00 -0800

The Adsense rules stipulate that you are allowed to include 3 regular ad units and 1 link unit per page. The number you should use per page will completely depend on the structure and design of your website.

What you don't want is a webpage that appears like a collection of Adsense Ads. Such a site is valueless and will struggle to get any traffic unless you enter the world of spamming or decide to pay for traffic - both offer only diminishing returns. For a visitor to click on your ad means that they must want to go forward from your website to another website. If your page repulses them straight away they will hit the back button (read about Breaking the Back Habit in The Perfect Page) and return to the search engine that they came from to find another site that will answer their query more effectively.

Entice your visitors into your site and then cleverly place ads at points where they will be focusing as discussed in Ad Placements.

So how many is not too many? This website can easily absorb two ad units and an adlink as it does. It could also include another ad unit at the bottom of the articles which I may introduce over time.

As a general rule I'd start with more ad units than less, set up channels so you can monitor how each performs and then make changes accordingly. If you're building your website from scratch try and build it with enough flexibility to allow you to test different variations.

One Unit - A large rectangle (or at least the 250 x 250 square) inside the body of the page with the article text wrapped around it.

Two Units - Either

1. A more aggressive tactic is to include two large rectangles together either side by side or on top of each other. If you're getting a fair amount of traffic this will really improve your ctr and is worth tyring. Just keep an eye on your web stats to check it doesn't undermine your visitors experience which will be highlighted to you through a decreasing traffic rate.

2. The large rectangle inside the content and a skyscraper (preferrably the 160 x 600) in your left navigation. The right navigation converts much lower.

3. A large rectangle towards the top of your content and another at the bottom. This gives your traffic two ways out from inside the same page.

Three Units - If you can fit three in you can now mix and match, for example:

1. Two rectangles inside the content and one skyscraper in the navigation.

2. One rectangle inside the content and if you have a right and left navigation, one skyscraper in each of these (I know of websites this has worked well on)

3. One rectangle inside the content, one skyscraper in your navigation and one leaderboard at the header of your page.

4. Three rectangles inside the content - this can work very well if you have a lot going on inside the page and it is long enough to absorb the three ads allowing them to be placed far enough away from each other.

Including an Adlink Unit

Your one prescripted Adlink can virtually always be included as they can slot in to the smallest of places. Many publishers still neglect Adlinks as they have wrongly convinced themselves that the requirment to click on a keyword phrase before they can click on an ad is requiring too much from a visitor. To learn more about how best to use Adlinks go here.

Adsense Ad Colors: Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:55:00 -0800

In line with my basic philosophy that integration is the key to Adsense success, I've always found that blending the ads by using the same colors that exist on your website works best.

This is often referred to as the three way match whereby:

1. The background color and the border of the ad matches the background color of the webpage.

2. The color of the link matches the color of the links on your webpage.

3. The color of the ad description (the ad text) and advertiser url matches your text color.

I generally only make three exceptions to this:

1. I make the actual ad link darker than the other links on the page but keep it in a similar color palette. For example, on this page I may use this color or this color. When a visitor is finished with the page they are on and are looking for someone else to go they tend to see darker colors before lighter ones. I believe Google makes the links bold for the same reason - intensity draws the eye.

2. I use the standard internet blue link. Although this isn't as widespread as it once was, internet users still often associate this color with being a link. On certain sites I've more than trebled my ctr by changing it from the link color of my actual site to the standard 0000CC.

3. I make the advertiser url a very pale shade of grey. It's still visible as it must be to conform to Google's policies but the link and the text draw the visitors attention and the ads appear more like internal links than Adsense ads. The success of this modification will often depend on the market your site is targetting. For example, webmasters know what Adsense ads are and so this change will have little impact. If your site targets people who are less familiar with the internet making the ads appear more like an internal link (ie simply a link and a description of what you'll find when you click on it) can increase your ctr.

The reason blending works better than colors that draw attention to the ads is that it's not a color that is going to make someone click on an ad - even if it's their favorite color!

Humans respond to words or better put still the meaning of words - and it will be the word or combination or words which your visitor connects to in the ad. This is why they will click on one rather than another.

Attention grabbing colors will only serve to put a barrier between your visitor and the words in the ad. More people may see them but less will click on them and Adsense is pay per click, not pay per view!

Adsense Ad Placement: Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:53:00 -0800

Placement is the fundamental factor that will effect an Ads performance - its click through rate. The first reason for this is simple - a visitor cannot click on an ad that they cannot see.

The second reason (which I talked about in Adsense Psychology) is that your traffic will interact with webpage and consequently your ads in the way that you want them to interact with them. This is obviously a generalization as not everyone will interpret your layout in the same way but the principle is sound.

For example, I generally don't like ads at the head of the page above your content and navigation nor at the very bottom below both of these. These postions are too reminiscent of the traditional banner advertisement and for me don't come close to taking advantage of what Adsense ads actually offer.

The bottom line is that Adsense works best when the ads are integrated into your website as additional content. Adsense generates ads that are related to the actual words in the content of your page. To perform at it's best they have to be placed next to these words.

If you think it through this is just common sense.

This leads us to two places where content is contained on each and every website.

1. The actual body of that particular page - If you've built your website correctly then each page will be about a distinct topic. As each page differs in what it provides the Adsense ads will vary to match these differences. For example, a motorcycle insurance page will generate different ads to a motorcycle parts page. This means that the hottest spot for Adsense on every page is roughly where I've included the large rectangle on this page. Inside the page topic and above the fold.

2. The website navigation - Your navigation includes further pages which may be of interest to your visitor. Relevant Adsense Ads will also be of further interest to your visitor and therefore, a good supplement to a large rectangle ad inside the content of your webpage is a 160 x 600 skyscraper in your navigation (this often works best in the left navigation although I have several sites where the conversion is good on the right). Adlinks work well here too.

Google has produced a heat map to assist Adsense Ad positioning which pictorially confirms what I have been saying here. You can see it and read Google's own answer to the question of Ad placement here.

Adsense Ad Format: Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:51:00 -0800

The trick with choosing the Ad Format that you are going to use is to actually choose it and not let your current website structure which you built before you decided to monetize your website with Adsense choose it for you.

This is what the average Adsense Publisher says to him or herself - "This is how my site is built - I can make that space available there and so I'll have to place Adsense there which means I'll have to use that ad format". This is not a choice and needless to say it will generally not convert aswell as rejigging your page layout so as to accommodate the ads that will perform best into it. What this also means is that placement is more important than format.

The basic Ad Format rule is that wider is better and Google gives a neat explanation of why this is so here. Note, wider doesn't mean width of the whole ad (otherwise we'd all be using leaderboards) but the width of an individual advertisement inside the ad block.

This means that the large rectangle - 336 x 280, the medium rectangle - 300 x 250 and the wide skyscraper 160 x 600, other things being equal all perform better.

In content sites I always try to use at least one large rectangle but remember that a webpage can often accommodate more than one ad unit.

Optimizing Adsense - A Guide

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:51:00 -0800

The aim with Optimizing your Adsense ads is to find your websites magic forumula.

This "magic formula" will do two things:

1. It will generate the greatest responsiveness from your traffic - meaning your highest click through rate.

2. You will earn the maximum amount of revenue possible per click.

To increase your click through rate you will need to focus on your choice of ad format, color, and placement. You will also need to make sure that your ads are as relevant as they can be, as related ads inevitably generate more clicks than unrelated ads. The number of units per page and your use of adlinks will also effect your click through rate.

Ensuring that you are receiving the most that you possibly can per click is a little tricker and involves targeting higher paying adsense keywords through onpage search engine optimization tactics and the creation of supplemental content.

When you've achieved this optimum real revenue from Adsense comes from turning away from optimization and focusing on bringing more and more targeted traffic to your website to what will then be your optimized machine for converting visitors into Adsense money. The article - how to make real money with Adsense explores this in more depth.

Adsense Reporting Features

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:50:00 -0800

Your continuously updated Adsense reports give you a birds eye view of your account and all the active websites / channels inside it.

Using Adsense Channels

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:49:00 -0800

So that we can understand which of our websites are generating what amount of revenue or even the amount of revenue particular pages or sections within one website are generating, inside your account you can set up channels which will enable you to see where your Adsense clicks are coming from.

There are two principal types of channel:

1. URL Channels
Unlike custom channels, with url channels you don't need to include a channel id in the actual Adsense code. Instead, simply set up a new url channel inside your account for a particular domain, subdomain, directory or page and Google's technology will automatically report the Adsense performance of the pages inside that channel.

The examples Google gives are:

example.com track all pages across all subdomains
sports.example.com track only pages across the 'sports' subdomain
sports.example.com/widgets track all pages below a specific directory
sports.example.com/index.html track a specific page

2. Custom Channels to track the performance of a particular ad that you have generated
With these channels the id for the particular channel you create is included in the actual Adsense ad code that you generate. Every ad that you include this code in will report its performance under that particular channel even if they are different format sizes or appear on different pages or different websites.

The amount of channels you are allowed to create is currently 200. Related reading includes the best practices for channels and how to analyze your Adsense reports.

Different Adsense Ad Colors

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:47:00 -0800

Google's aim is to allow Adsense publishers to have as much control over the appearance of the ads as possible which is why they are highly customizable.

Along with the different format choices you also have control over the color of the different parts of the ad. Consequently you can adapt them to the color of your website making them appear less like ads and more like actual content.

The five parts of the ad which you can change the color on are:

1. The border color of the ad

2. The background color of the ad

3. The link color of the ad

4. The url color of the ad

5. The text color of the ad

To improve your click through rate read about Adsense Ad Color Optimization.

Different Adsense Ad Formats

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:45:00 -0800

The variety of Adsense Ad formats means that you can integrate Adsense into almost any spot on your website. There are currently 10 standard Ad formats and 6 Adlink formats.

The Standard Adsense Ad Formats

Horizontal Ad Formats
1. 728 x 90: Leaderboard
2. 468 x 60: Banner
3. 234 x 60: Half Banner

Vertical Ad Formats
4. 120 x 600: Skyscraper
5. 120 x 140: Vertical Banner

Square Ad Formats
6. 125 x 125: Button
7. 300 x 250: Medium Rectangle
8. 250 x 250: Square
9. 336 x 280: Large Rectangle
10. 180 x 150: Small Rectangle

Read about Adsense Ad Format Optimization.

The Adsense Adlinks Formats

Horizontal Adlink Formats
1. 728 x 15
2. 468 x 15

Square Adlink Formats
3. 200 x 90
4. 180 x 90
5. 160 x 90
6. 120 x 90

Read about Adsense Adlink Optimization.

Different Adsense Products

noreply@blogger.com (MIB013) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:44:00 -0800

There are three different Adsense "products" that you can promote in exchange for revenue. These include Adsense For Content, Adsense For Search and Referrals.

Adsense For Content

This is the most common used and exists in the form of different shaped ads which you will have no doubt seen scattered over the web. These ads are relevant to the content of your website and you earn revenue every time one of your users clicks on them. For more read different ad formats.

Adsense For Search

This product allows you to place a Google search box on your website, allowing your visitors to search either your website (if your pages are indexed) or Google's search engine database. Each search by your users will generate ads related to that search term and you earn revenue for every ad click by your users.

Referrals

The Referrals product is a little different as you are not earning revnue through contextually matching ads on a per click basis but are recommending useful products and / or services to your users. When one of you visitors subscribes to the product or service you receive a commission. Referrals are much more like affiliate programs and they currently include Google Adsense Subscription, Google Adwords Subscription, Firefox Download and the Picasa Software Application.