Adsense, Adsense Design and Human Behavior

It is human nature to find the easy way to complete a task, or I should say the lazy way. If you are new to the Google Adsense Game – it is wise to take the time to gain a little knowledge before placing ads throughout your site and then expecting people to click on them. If they are clicking on your ads, you still may find that could be a strong possibility that additional income could be coming your way.

Which was some of my failings, sad to say, when I was a newbie. As a matter of fact, I remember saying, "What the heck is Google Adsense?" But hey, that was just newbie ignorance speaking – be open to everything that is legit, and if your site is compatible with Google Adsense use it, it can help you make a little extra money on the side.

However, I would like to say that you should look at the samples given, to get an idea of how the ads should be placed on a site, and remember, each site is unique. Unique – is such a small word, with a lot of headaches. Maybe some of your webpages are not compatible with Google Adsense, or your ads cannot be placed in the same place as the samples given in the article below, or maybe the ad size just doesn’t fit the scheme of your site.

Well, what I am telling you is, get armed with information, know the rules, and (sigh) experiment. When I first started on the Internet, I would keep changing my website – my husband kept telling me not to change my website all the time, but you know, I was a newbie in training. Okay, maybe obsessed, but I’m getting where I need to be, I don’t have to change things as much now, but I’m always learning, because things ‘keep a changing’.

There is really a lot to absorb in this article and a lot to learn. So, you would be wise to bookmark some of the websites the author directs you to, to read later. They are informative and helpful. I found the Eyetrack III article rather interesting, since it gives you a quick rundown on human behavior and the printed webpage, as well as, gives you an idea how a human eye moves over a page -- in web design, and in ad placement it is very important.

Cracking the
Google Adsense Code
By Kim Roach (c) 2006

Google Adsense has empowered web publishers of all shapes and sizes to make monëy from their web sites. Whether you own a hobby site that gets 100 visitors per day or a popular finance portal that is flooded with millíons of visitors per month, you can benefit from the Google Adsense program.

Simply sign up for a free account, grab your Adsense code and paste it up on your website. Well, it sounds good anyway. In reality, that's not the whole story. Maximizing your adsense earnings requires a little more care.

Fortunately, you can quickly increase your earnings by reading every word of this article. I will cover the basic necessities and also reveal advanced tips that you won't find on every digital corner. So, if you're looking to put more monëy in your pocket with a few tweaks of code, I urge you to read on.

As you are reading, keep in mind that Google is actually one of the best resources for finding information on Adsense optimization. Think it's hard to believe that Google would give good advice? Well, it makes sense when you think about it. The more you make as a publisher, the more they will make. Google has a big incentive to help you perform well. Not to mention, they have tons of data to research what works best.

So, for much of my research, I took quite a few tips from Google. But don't worry, there are also some advanced tips here that Google will probably nevër reveal to you.

Most Effective Ad Formats
In general, wider ad formats tend to outperform the taller ads. This is because the wider ads are much easier on the eye.

According to Google, the following ad formats result in the highest number of clíck-throughs:

336×280
300×250
160×600

Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder.com increased his revenues by 20 percent after placing the large rectangle (336×280) in the upper left corner, positioned within his articles.

Text links are another ad format that often work well. Using text link ads, you can create Adsense ads that blend in seamlessly with your navigation.

For an example of this, go to http://www.dealofday.com.

Tim Carter saw an 18 percent increase in his revenues after placing link units in the upper left corner under his site search bar.

Number of Ads
Multiple ad units can sometimes help optimize your perförmance. This is especially true for pages with lots of text, forums, and message boards.

However, it could possibly lower your revenues as well. When you show more ads, the ads that are placed lower on the page often have lower bid prices than the ones on top. Therefore, you must test the number of ads on a page to see what works best for you.

When using multiple ad units, make sure that the ad unit with the highest clíck-through rate appears first within your HTML code. This will ensure that your prime real estate is occupied by the highest paying ads. You can use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads placed in the location with the highest CTR.

Colors
Ads that blend in with the colors of your site generate the highest clíck-through rates. In most cases, it is best to use the exact same color scheme for your ads that you use on your web site. To see some good examples of this, visit:
http://www.lockergnome.com
http://www.worldvillage.com

By using ads without background color or borders, your ads seamlessly integrate with your content.

Keep in mind that blue text links seem to perform best for Google Adsense. Blue is the assumed color of links on the Internet. Therefore, our pyschie expects links to be in blue.

However, you may want to rotate your colors every once in a while to spice things up. This way, your visitors don't get used to your ads, which can cause banner-blindness.

Ad Placement
Just like in real estate, location is the key to success with Adsense. Fortunately, Google provides us with a heat map, showing the best spots for ads.

One of the best places for your Adsense ads are at the top-left of the page. Because people are used to seeing navigation on the left side of the page, the eye naturally gravitates to this section of your web site.

Many studies have been performed to see how the eye travels across a web page. You can see a demonstration at EyeTrack III. Knowing how people view your web site will help immensely when optimizing the placement of your ads.

In addition, you should also place your Adsense ads next to rich content and navigation elements. These ads often do well because users are focused on those areas of a page. You can see examples of this at EzineArticles.com and Lockergnome.com.

As you can see, these sites have placed their adsense ads next to search boxes and navigation links.

Keep in mind that you shouldn't change the layout of your site to fit the ads, but rather use the ad formats that best fit with your site layout.

Images
Many publishers have started using images around their ads. As a result, many of them have doubled their revenues.


One of the most successful implementations of this techniques is to use the 728×90 leaderboard with 4 thumbnail-sized images above each ad. You can see some good examples at:

sg-GodDrawAPig

Of course, you can't use images of blinking arrows because this would be enticing visitors to clíck. However, it is perfectly acceptable to place related pictures beside your ads.


For example, if you have a page about laptops, you could place a leaderboard with 4 laptop images above each ad. In this way, you are using images to complete the story.


In fact, Google is currently testing an ad format that would blend images together with related text ads. It seems that even Google thinks that images are a good idea to bring attention to ads. To see an example of the Google ads in beta, go to SearchEngineJournal.com


Forums
If you have a forum, I hope you are monetizing it with Adsense. Many people include Adsense within their web site, but when it comes to their forum, they simply let the ball drop. Forums can definitely be an extra source of income when optimized properly.


To find out about the best placement for Adsense within forums, I went to Google for some advice. To my surprise, they also have a heat map for forums.


One of the best ways to monetize your forum is to place Adsense directly within the threads. To see an example of this, go to Digital Point Forums. Google advises that you place a skyscraper above the fold on the left side of your forum and they also suggest placing a leaderboard directly below the top navigation and below the first post.


If you are looking for additional ad space, you can place a horizontal link unit near the top of the forum, just below the header.

The next Adsense tactic is one that isn't talked about much. However, when used appropriately, it can be extremely powerful.


Newsletters
If you own a newsletter list, then you can easily leverage that list in order to earn more Adsense revenue. Whenever you send out your newsletter, simply link to an article on your site within the email. By doing this, you can draw people to your Adsense pages and easily increase your Adsense revenue.


This is one of the best things about building your own list. You are able to direct traffïc to any place at any time.


In the end, the key to increased revenues is testing. Not all sites are the same. You have to experiment to find out what works best for your particular site. What works for one site may not work for another. Only by testing can you find out which styles encourage your visitors to respond.


About The Author: Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews and SEO-News newsletters. You can contact Kim at: kim @ seo-news.com .

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What are the Google Bots and How Does it Affect Your Website?

I found this article on the different Google Bots to be very helpful. I like to know what the Google bots are doing and most importantly, how I can benefit from the Google Bots as a webmaster.

The Image Bots was of interest to me, I had decided to give images a try on my site. Well, the author was right, at least in my case, images did not produce the results I wanted. And last but not least, check out the code you should put in the robot texts to get quality ads from Google Adsense.

This is a great read -- "Today's Google Bots And What They Do" by Kim Roach.



Today's Google Bots and What They Do
By Kim Roach (c) 2006

Google currently indexes over 8 billion web pages. However, before these pages were placed in the index, they were each crawled by a special spider known as the GoogleBot. Unfortunately, many web masters do not know about the internal workings of this virtual robot.In fact, Google actually uses a number of spiders to crawl the Web. You can catch these spiders by examining your log files.

This article will attempt to reveal some of the most important Google spiders, their function, and how they affect you as a web master. We'll start with the well-known GoogleBot.

GoogleBot
Googlebot, as you probably know, is the search bot used by Google to scour the web for new pages. Googlebot has two versions, deepbot and freshbot. Deepbot is a deep crawler that tries to folow every link on the web and download as many pages as it can for the Google index. It also examines the internal structure of a site, giving a complete picture for the index.

Freshbot, on the other hand, is a newer bot that crawls the web looking for fresh content. The Google freshbot was implemented to take some of the pressure off of the GoogleBot. The freshbot recalls pages already in the index and then crawls them for new, modified, or updated pages. In this way, Google is better equipped to keep up with the ever-changing Web.

This means that the more you update your web site with new, quality content, the more the Googlebot will come by to chëck you out.

If you'd like to see the Googlebot crawling around your web property more often, you need to obtain quality inbound links. However, there is also one more step that you should take. If you haven't already done so, you should create a Google Sitemap for your site.

Creating a Google sitemap allows you to communicate with Google, telling them about your most important pages, new pages, and updated pages. In return, Google will provide you with some valuable information as well. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. This allows you to pinpoint problems and fix them so that you can gain increased exposure in the search results.

The next Google bot in our lineup is known as the MediaBot.

MediaBot - used to analyze Adsense pages useragent: Mediapartners-Google

MediaBot is the Google crawler for Adsense Publishers. Mediabot is used to determine which ads Google should display on Adsense pages.

Google recommends that webmasters specifically add a command in their robots.txt file that grants Mediabot access to their entire site. To do this, simply enter the following code into your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

This will ensure that the MediaBot is able to place relevant Adsense ads on your site.

Keep in mind that ads can still be shown on a page if the MediaBot has not yet visited. If that is the case, the ads chosen will be based on the overall theme of the other pages on the site. If no ads can be chosen, the dreaded public service announcements are displayed instead.

There is a strong debate over whether or not the MediaBot is giving websites with Adsense an advantage in the search engines.

Even Matt Cutts has confirmed that the Adsense Mediabot has indexed webpages for Google's main index.

He states, "Pages with AdSense will not be indexed more frequently. It's literally just a crawl cache, so if e.g. our news crawl fetched a page and then Googlebot wanted the same page, we'd retrieve the page from the crawl cache. But there's no boost at all in rankings if you're in AdSense or Google News. You don't get any more pages crawled either."

Matt Cutts claims that your website does not get any advantage by using Adsense. However, in my mind, simply getting your site updated in and of itself is an advantage.

This is very similar to Google Analytics, which also promotes a slightly higher degree of spider activity.

Those who run Google Analytics on their site can expect additional spider activity.

However, you certainly shouldn't depend on any of these tools for getting your site indexed. The key to frequent spidering is having quality inbound links, quality content, and frequent updates.

Have images on your site? If so, you have likely been visited by our next Google spider, the ImageBot.

ImageBot - used to crawl for the Image Searchuseragent: GoogleBot-Image

The Imagebot prowls the Web for images to place in Google's image search. Images are ranked based upon their filename, surrounding text, alt text, and page title.

If you have a website that is primarily image based, then you would definitely want to optimize your images to receive some extra Google traffïc.

On the other hand, some web sites may not benefit from Google image search. In most cases, the traffïc from the Image search engine is very low quality and rarely converts into buyers.

Many people are often just looking for images that they can swipe. So, if you want to save some bandwidth, use your robots.txt file to block ImageBot from accessing your image directory.

One of the few exceptions I would make is if you have a site dedicated to downloadable images.

Our final bot is completely dedicated to the Google Adwords program.

AdsBot - Checks Adwords landing pages for qualityuseragent: AdsBot-Google

AdsBot is one of Google's newest spiders. This new crawler is being used to analyze the content of advertising landing pages, which helps determine the Quality score that Google assigns to your ads.

Google uses this Quality score in combination with the amount you are willing to bid to determine the position of your ads. Therefore, ads with a high quality score can rank higher even if other advertisers are paying more than you.

This is one of Google's many efforts to ensure that they are delivering the best results to their users.

Can you still block being spidered? Of course, but it will lower your overall Adwords quality score, which could end up lowering the positioning of your ads. If possible, it is best to give AdsBot complete access to your site.

Today's Google bots are becoming more advanced all the time. However, nothing beats relevant, quality, updated content. Deliver that and the search engines will eat it up.

About The AuthorKim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews and SEO-News newsletters. You can contact Kim at: kim @ seo-news.com
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Is SEO A Long Term Traffic Solution?

Here is an Article by Andy MacDonald called "Top Ten SEo Myths". I found this article to be informative and true. For instance:

1. SEO is a long term solution for your website-- with a PPC as a short term solution to getting money in your pocket (which isn't a bad thing).

2. SEO is not that expensive. If you do it yourself and learn by trial and error (it free, just your labor and time, that it will cost you), or you get a firm to help you in the beginning.

3. Try for the competitive words, but also the less competitive to get your website listed by the search engines.

SEO may be time consuming to learn -- but it can benefit your website and web-based business. With that being said, take a look at the article below.

Top Ten SEO Myths

By Andy MacDonald

Ever wonder what the biggest SEO myths are? I have taken the most prevalent myths that seem to be constantly resurfacing and examined them for you. This is a must read for anyone looking to hire an SEO firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves.

Myth # 1: All Meta Tags Are Of Equal Importance

Some Meta tags are useful while others are not. I have stated this many times. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. Keyword tags are used more by spammers and people using software to find you as a link partner than the search engines. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the robot tag and the description tags.

Myth # 2: You Should Submit Your Site to Search Engines Weekly or Monthly

Honestly, I nevër submit any site more than 1 time and sometimes I don't even do that. If you submit your site once, you're good. The engines will come back on their own. You can sometimes speed up the process of getting your site indexed by linking it to a high traffïc or high PR site. The search engines will find the URL to your site and index it automatically.

Myth # 3: SEO is Too Expensive

Actually, SEO is probably the most cost effective förm of online marketing. Organic SEO is cheaper to set up and maintain than a PPC campaign or banner advertising. With PPC and banner advertising, you pay for clicks or impressions. With SEO, all clicks are Frëe. You simply pay for the set up and monitoring of your site's pages.

Myth # 4: PPC Is More Effective Than Natural SEO

In the short term...true. In the long term...false. Why, you ask? Organic SEO is preferred by searchers over 5 to 1 to PPC. People trust organic searches to return relevant results. People also know that the ads to the right of the page are sponsored ads. They have long ago figured out that anyone can bid on any term they want, as many often do, without even a hint of relevance. So, long term SEO structuring can indeed be more effective than PPC, especially when considering the preferences of search traffïc. A top 5 ranking may take some time to get, but once you are there (and provided you can maintain it), you will get better results than from a PPC ad.

Myth # 5: Hiring an SEO Specialist "In House" is Cheaper

The problem with hiring someone in house is that they are paid hourly or by salary. Most SEO firms charge per item or project. It doesn't matter how long it takes us, you pay a one tíme charge. When you hire a firm, it's like having a team of SEO experts on your payroll. Paying a flat rate saves you monëy and speeds up the time it takes to complete a job. Additionally, most SEO firms have specialists who write, submit, redesign sites, post pages, etc... Hiring one person who can do all these things competently is highly unlikely.

Myth # 6: I Can Only Optimize My Homepage for Key Terms

You can and should optimize every page on your site. Each page should have its own key terms, with no more than three phrases per page (preferably one).

Myth # 7: All I Need to do is Write Content with the correct Keyword Density and My Site Will Rank Well

Wrong...especially if you want to rank on Google. You will need off-site SEO as well as on-site SEO. Keyword density may work on MSN (for now), but it will take more than that to rank well for all search engines.

Myth # 8: I Shouldn't Aim for the Most Competitive Keywords and Phrases

If the keywords you are competing for are very competitive, should you optimize your site for them? Of Course! I would optimize for some high, medium and low competitive key terms. Cover all your bases. The worst case is that you won't rank well for the high competitive key terms and that's ok. You can always work to improve them. Don't shy away from top key terms just because they are competitive. You may nevër know how close you could rank for them unless you try.

Myth # 9: Only Work With Companies That Give You A Guarantee

Guarantees would be nice if they were worth the paper they are printed on. In fact, most guarantees from SEO firms have the same stipulation in them. This stipulation usually states that as long as they get one of your key phrases to the top of any major search engines, they have fulfilled their end of the agreement. This is irrelevant to the competition of the term. In other words...it's easy to be number one for terms no one is competing for. Don't be deceived by high rankings listed on SEO sites as they can be misleading.

Myth # 10: SEO Requires a 1 Year Commitment on My Part

It certainly shouldn't. Don't lock yourself into a year contract with any company unless you already have an established, favourable business relationship. SEO, in most cases, should be performed on a month to month basis with a mutual understanding of the objectives and relative timetable. Often, both the long and short term maintenance contracts that many firms insist on including with each job are unnecessary. As an example...If you have a new site optimized, especially right after an update, you may not see results for three months. Why pay for maintenance in the interim time?

Additionally, you may not be happy with the results of an SEO firm or even the level of service. A long term contract may only ensure that you receive a full year of bad service. So, don't lock yourself in with a year contract, at least until you are comfortable with whom you are dealing with.

Hopefully, I put a few common SEO myths to rest. Feel frëe to contact me with questíons you may have regarding these or other SEO myths you want more information on.

About The Author: Andy MacDonald owns and runs his own custom website design company called Swift Media UK which also incorporates ecommerce development, affordable web hostíng , and logo design.
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Computer Maintenance Important to Your Online Business and Computer

Securing and Maintaining Your Computer is important to those that surf the net and for the online business. For those new to Internet Marketing, or for those that just do online transactions, protecting your data is a necessity and a major priority. There are very skilled hackers that can create havoc for you and your business if you don't cover all your basis. Thus my article on Securing and Maintaining Your Computer and Online Business. This is by no means, an exhaustive list -- but just a beginning for you.



Securing and Maintaining Your Computer
and Online Business

By Vickie J. Scanlon

Keeping your computer in top shape is an important aspect to an online business. Why? Without it, you are not in business, or your business will come to a complete halt. There are simple things that you can do to keep your computer safe and running at top-notch speed.

Your Computer

You can keep your computer in top shape if you maintain it properly. Clean the inside of the unit and make sure that your have enough fans in your unit to keep the components cool. Fans can help extend the life of your computer.


Operating System

If you are going to be doing business on-line, I would recommend XP Professional, this operating system is more robust than the home version.


Utility Software

AntiVirus software is a necessity if you work online. You can go with the free AntiVirus software, although there is no guarantee that they will always be diligent in keeping the antivirus definitions current. Or you can go with the paid AntiVirus, such as Norton antivirus, Trend Micro Antivirus. Whatever you choose, no protection is definitely online suicide whether you have an online business or you surf the net.

Without any security, I would not do any personal transactions online. Why? You would be a sitting duck for keyloggers -- which are hackers that attach a program to catch your log-in info.

I would also run an Adware Program along with your anti-virus software, such as Ad-Aware SE Personal, which is free. This will hold you for awhile, but later you may want to move up to the paid version.



Daily Computer Maintenance

You can manually keep your computer clean and running by doing the following:

Open up your Internet Explorer, hit Tools, hit Internet Options, and go to the Temporary Internet Files. Here you can delete cookies and files online and offline. In addition, go into History, right under the Temporary Internet Files, and clean that as well.

Or you can get a neat program that does a lot of window washing for you. It's called "Free Internet Window Washer", and as the name implies it is free. However, they do accept donations to keep their expenses down. This little program washes system files, MS Office programs, Internet Temporary Files for Mozilla FireFox, Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera, and more. You can grab a free copy by going to my tools section and hitting the "Internet Tools Section".


Hard-Drive

You know your hard-drive will not last forever (in most cases, it can last about 5 years if you are lucky), so it is always wise to have a back-up hard-drive piggy-backed to the main if the main drive fails. Or, you can have all the information on another computer and run Norton Ghost to upload the info from one computer to the new hard-drive.


Back-up Data

It is always wise to backup your data and software programs, in the event your computer crashes and you have to reload everything from start to finish again. Your back-up data will save you time.

Important data, such as transactions should not sit on your desktop. You should keep them offline to protect yourself from hackers, should one get through to your computer.

It can happen. It's scary to see a search box pop up in front of you, and it ask's "what do you want to look at next"! If you see something on that order, shut down your computer to get them off-line, and increase your security -- or find out where the hole is in your security system. Such as, turning off a portion of your security and forgetting to turn it back on? Trust me, it may happen once, but after that, it will not happen again.

These tips, though simple, should give you a beginning to protecting your computer and keeping you aware and secure whether you are online or offline.


Vickie J Scanlon -- Visit her site at: My Affiliate Place for tools, articles, ebooks, affiliate information, software, web host providers, computers for the Affiliate/Internet Marketing person online.
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