Top Ad 200x90

Custom Search

Thursday, January 9, 2014

SEO for Adsense

If you've been using Google's AdSense on your pages you obviously feel the need to somehow generate even more traffic for your website, which in turn would translate to more AdSense click and a higher income.

But who do you do this? Well, the major way you'll get visitors to see your website (other then using AdWords, which is encouraged as well) is to use some techniques to have search engines send more and more users towards your page, by ranking high in search results for your topics of interest.

Believe it or not this is a technique, better known as search-engine optimization or simply SEO. So here are a bunch of tips that come handy under every amateur or professional optimizer's belt.

The first thing you need to take care of is the actual source code and layout of your page. This has to be kept as simple as possible. The problem comes when AdSense and the search engines themselves begin to have troubles in extracting the most relevant keywords on your site because of a too complex layout.

Secondly, try to have each one of your pages target only one specific topic. This way it is a lot easier for them to get indexed properly and for the AdSense ads to be consistent with the content of the site itself.

Also, try not to include too many hyperlinks in your page as well. This also means you should try not to use too many AdSense ads on your page either.

If there are certain keywords you wish to target, make sure the word you wish to target is present in the title, in the first paragraphs as well as in the name of the file. While you're at it you might want to ensure the word springs up in the page's last paragraphs.

And of course, it's very important for your content to have original and compelling content. How do you do this? Well the easiest way to do it is to find something you're really passionate about. That way, providing you give it a lot of effort you're bound to have a great page quite fast.

If the content you use in your site is in the public domain (which is highly discouraged) make sure that you at least give it an original title, and add an opening and a closing paragraph of your own.

This takes a little while, but if, after waiting, you still can't find your page near the top, you should try rewriting your title and your first and last paragraphs. It doesn't take much, often just changing a few words will give you the right results.

And of, course there's the use of keyword tools that may aid you in finding some good keywords to include on your page that will drive visitors to your site more and more.

So those are about the basic techniques in search engine optimization. You can find a lot of computer tools to aid you in doing this, and of course, Google is a great place to search for this.

In the end, you'll find that SEO is a complex topic, and entire books have been written on the topic as well. You might find that you have a lot of optimization you need to do in order to get more and more visitors to your site and clicking those precious AdSense banners.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Friday, December 27, 2013

Ways to Identify and Tackle Click Fraud

Identifying and tracking examples of click fraud is the first step to eradicating the problem. Click fraud is an enormous drain on the resources of advertisers operating on a national and international scale, estimated to occupy around 30% of all pay per click advertising spend. With so much at stake, its no wonder the search engines are investing so much time and effort into devising solutions.

One way in which Search Engines and other pay per click programme providers have attempted to curb the growing click fraud problem is through introducing IP address repetition algorithms. These formulae are designed to pick up on suspicious click patterns emanating from a singular IP address, which can help to uncover the existence of click farms and competitor-led sabotage, as well as identifying potential fraudsters at source.

However, there is an array of problems with this method of attempting to identify the fraudsters. Firstly, fraudsters logging on through a dial-up modem, DSL line or cable modem can almost completely bypass this check, as with every new online session, a new IP address is generated. Furthermore, there is an extensive range of software available to alter IP addresses, which again can be used for 'cheating' the algorithm. Cookie and session tracking are other methods by which search engines can attempt to uncover potential fraudulent activity, but again there are ways around these for the fraudsters.

More comprehensive software is being developed which profiles and reports on the browsing habits of each click-through to enable companies to track and monitor suspicious behavior, although this could be seen by many as intrusive and ineffective as anything on a small scale is still likely to go unnoticed, based on the vast coverage of ads across the internet.

The problem of click fraud recently hit the headlines with a class action raised against Google, prompting Google to offer $90million as a potential settlement. Perhaps an acceptance of their responsibilities, Google's offer goes some way to suggest the extent of click fraud, and its vast costs to the internet economy.

There are a number of self-help remedies that can be implemented to keep an organization out of trouble. The first of these remedies is the reliance on search engine optimization and organic listings. If a site is well and fully optimized, it could eventually realize a ranking that another site is willing to pay $2.50 a click for. Similarly, with organically high rankings there are no click through rates, therefore the costs associated with PPC are not applicable. Although the process is significantly more laborious and takes significantly longer to see results, the SEO process is much cheaper in the long run, and with an estimated 25-30% of all clicks being performed fraudulently, an organically high listing can save money which would otherwise be drained by click fraud for more beneficial reinvestment.

Year on year, as the pay per click advertising market continues to grow and expand, surely click fraud will follow suit. Unless an effective means of preventing click fraud is developed and successfully implemented, buyers will steadily lose confidence in the advertising medium and turn to more effective, less wasteful marketing methods, which would seriously hit the search engines and could potentially threaten the online economy as a whole.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Where Adsense Should Appear

When deciding whether to incorporate Adsense into your website there are several factors to consider. Many feel that it diminishes their brand, whilst others see it as a useful tool for visitors which creates revenues and makes their content profitable.

The choice can largely come down to the commercial goals and the purpose of your website. Many businesses who sell products decide to place Adsense adverts within their website. This would appear to be a strange choice, opening up opportunities for rivals to promote their service or product to your potential customer base.

Many publishers claim that they are only doing this to allow companies who provide ancillary services to advertise. These claims have some merit, as those who for example sell pillows could provide those who sell bedding with an opportunity to advertise.

Although this would make sense, there are still those online retailers who allow rivals to penetrate their audience. Many claim that there are still benefits in allowing your direct competitors to advertise within your website. One of these is that ultimately if visitors wish to see your competitors they would be able to see them through a Google search regardless. This may be true however the thought of an established brand like coco-cola having a Pepsi advert in their website is not even a possibility.

Another factor which is considered in this situation is that publishers do not feel that Adsense is effective in making conversions. They feel that visitors who would click on adverts are not highly qualified customers, as they would quickly navigate to the materials or products that interest them if they were.

Despite Adsense being a questionable choice for online retailers, it is surely a good supplementary service for other varieties of online publishers. For example, a website which provides a free service like dictionary.com gets high levels of traffic, and is able to make their service profitable through adsense. This has been the case for Bloggers who originally provided content free of charge, being unable to reach the scale that is necessary to contract with advertisers directly.

This could also apply to other previously free services, including wider forms of information broadcast, and news for example. In 2006 a man who later published a selection of Videos claims to make $19,000 a month through adsense, claiming that he was also contacted through Google to help him increase the CTR (Click Through Rate) that he achieved. The thought of success like this has been a major factor in stimulating online publishers to opt for Adsense.

Many publishers also claim that adsense makes their website look more professional. Those who are able to contract with advertisers are generally seen to provide a service with large appeal, and therefore those unfamiliar with the program may feel that the Adsense advertiser is in this position.

Adsense however, is also aligned with those publishers who use the service purely to provide links to adverts. Everyone has done a Google search, clicked on an Adwords advert and came into a website which reads top ten resources onĂ– This is a major problem, as is generally something that surfers find frustrating. If people see that it says adverts by Google, and they then see adverts by Google on another site, they may align that site with consumer unfriendly practices. This is therefore an issue which Google has to address, to maintain Adsense as a reputable service.

Regardless of the disadvantages and the websites for which the service may be inappropriate it is still a useful tool for website visitors. Those who visit a website, and click on a link provide revenues for the publisher, whilst those who provide free services are able to generate revenue.

The only fear that Google has, is that rival PPC programs offer better deals to publishers and they decide to go elsewhere, therefore taking advertisers with them. However, ultimately it is best for advertisers and publishers if they largely remain in same PPC circuit.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Click Fraud

If you're using AdWords or AdSense you must have heard about an emerging practice in the underworld of computing called "click fraud". But what exactly is click fraud and how is it accomplished?

Well AdSense uses a payment mechanism that awards a certain amount of money to a publisher (someone who holds an AdSense banner on their page) every time a person clicks on the said banner. So click fraud is the attempt to have people clicking the ads just so that they can earn a greater income.

There are people setting up sites for the sole purpose of fraudulently generating revenue through Google's AdSense program. These users achieve an incredible number of clicks through many methods, some complex and sophisticated and some rudimentary and simple.

One of the most complex is through the use of so called "hitbots". These are automated programs who emulate clicking the links in AdSense banners (there are some that actually click the banners as well).

Google's AdSense protection scheme is by no means perfect and nearly anyone can find the details of surmounting the protection mechanism, ironically just by doing a Google search.

Another, more rudimentary method is to hire a lot of people in a poor country to click the links on your site. This means these people will actually sit all day and just click links so you can earn a fortune. They come from very poor countries like India, and they're prepared to do so for just $0.50 an hour.

Of course, there's a problem with this mechanism. Once Google receives a large number of clicks from a single address, the address and the site that had the AdSense banner will be banned, and the illicit behavior might even get the fraudster sued.

To prevent this from happening, many people use a large number of proxy servers for the purpose of clicking. These are basically trojans, located on computers throughout the world (though mostly in the US). What's even more daunting is that these clicks will appear to originate from an actual computer so such scams are really hard to detect.

And don't think this happens only in isolated instances. There is a great deal of illegal activity in this domain.

In fact there's so much that if search engine companies don't increase their security with such programs as AdSense, such criminal behavior could become more become even more damaging.

Google has a very strict policy regarding click fraud, and it has sued those employing such techniques in the past. But while the search engine giant tries its best to minimize the risk of click fraud there's certainly room for a lot of improvement.

It is estimated that more then 20% of the clicks that follow an AdSense link are just done in order to get money from the person paying for the ad. Some people believe the number of fraudulent clicks to be even twice as large.

There are a great deal more schemes involving click fraud, such as groups of AdSense publishers clicking each other's links (which is referred to as "clicking rings", or spamming people so that they click such links.

Despite Google still holding click fraud on a leash, the phenomenon is certainly raising concerns for the advertisers on AdWords, but despite this advertising with Google's AdSense still remains more profitable for the advertiser, as opposed to traditional untargeted advertising schemes.

There are some means of protection against such schemes and all advertisers should be savvy enough to employ them. Many advertisers choose to avoid the content network all together for fear of click fraud.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Adsense Alternatives 2

Bidvertiser (http://www.bidvertiser.com/)
Like AdSense, Bidvertiser displays text ads in your page. But the difference lies in the fact that advertisers bid over your advertising space, ensuring you earn as much revenue as you possibly can. This also means that bids will increase over time, earning you even more cash. You also get a great way to customize your ads with a very easy to use tool and detailed reports on your site's status.

Quigo AdSonar (http://www.quigo.com/adsonarpublishers.htm)
Quigo AdSonar achieves relevancy by placing a filter according to your site's categories. It also offers you on-line reports of your site's status and the possibility to add your own custom ads replacing ads that don't gain you any revenue. The setup is very simple, in a similar fashion to AdSense's and quite customizable as well.

Vibrant Media IntelliTXT (http://www.intellitxt.com/site/web_01a.html)
Vibrant Media IntelliTXT offers user-activated ads, highlighting certain words within the content of the page and presenting relevant ads when a user hovers his mouse over them. It uses a pay-for-performance pricing scheme and can easily be used along with other advertising methods, because it is unobtrusive. It places you in full control, allowing you to easily integrate it within your site with some simple JavaScript.

Nixie (http://www.nixxie.com/display.php?section=Partners)
Nixie claims to hold a technology that can read and understand your site, enabling it to display the most relevant content to your site. Besides text ads, Nixie also features price comparison listings as well as live auction advertising. It's very easy to implement and has a good payment policy as well.

MIVA AdRevenue Xpress (http://www.miva.com/us/content/partners/arx.asp)
MIVA AdRevenue Xpress is targeted towards small and mid-sized publishers. It implements Search Box functionality and also features things like a Category Directory as well as the handling of 404 error pages. It can be integrated with your page using a simple on-line wizard.

Fastclick (http://www.fastclick.com/publish.html)
Fastclick offers you an impressive 65 percent of what it makes from a click on your website. Payments are done monthly, via PayPal or through checks. The ads can be formatted as you wish, and Fastclick even offers a free support serice for its members and no fees are required to register with the service.

contextWeb ContextAd (http://www.contextweb.com/Corporate/publisher/publisher.shtml)
ContextAd offers the possibility of contextual ads for dynamic pages, meaning ads will change as soon as your page does. It's very easy to use and free to sing up for and offers a transparent payment policy. The ads are fully customizable and real-time reports are available 24/7.

AdBrite (http://www.adbrite.com/)
AdBrite offers publishers the possibility of integrating text ads in their pages. These are done on your own rates, with the websites you approve by hand so it bares some similarities with a classic advertising scheme. You also have the option of adding a "Your Add Here" button that buyers can immediately click to ad space on your page. It can also be used in conjunction with Google AdSense, maximizing your CTR and offering advertisers the possibility of showing their links in your Google AdSense space. You have full control over the look and feel of your adds and finally, you get an incredible 75% of what the advertiser pays for on every click.

So, as you can see there are many offers for this kind of advertising, and many hybrids based on AdSense like advertising. Also, a lot of services can work together with AdSense to earn you an even greater amount of revenue for your ad space.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Adsense Alternatives

Many people have started using Google's AdSense program, but there are some who find it a bit too uncertain or simply not suiting their own requirements from an ad program.

But thankfully for such people, there are many alternatives to AdSense which attempt to alleviate some of its shortcomings. Here is a list of the most noteworthy ones from the lot with a description concerning each one.

AllFeeds (http://www.allfeeds.com/?action=publishers)
AllFeeds has a great pool of online advertisers to choose from. It also features many display formats that you can choose from. These include banners, buttons, XML feeds, DHTML pop-ups and so on. It also features real time reporting of your ad status. The site will mail a check every month, provided that you earn more then $25.00, while rolling over earnings for the next month if you don't. Another interesting thing about AllFeeds is that it integrates with Google AdSense, maximizing your earnings with AdSense.

Market Banker (http://www.marketbanker.com/mb/sell.php)
Market Banker allows you the unique possibility to set the pricing for your site. It also allows you to allow or reject any link that appears on your site (although AdSense itself does a very good job of this as well, with URL filters) There's also a statistics section which will allow you to see how well your site is doing. The ads are small just like AdSense's and they're just as easy to set up. Also, registration for Market Banker is free.

BidClix ( http://www.bidclix.com/PubTop.html)
BidClix is different because it has advertisers compete for clicks on your site, which in turn is meant to generate the highest possible profits for your page. It also has a very large pool of advertisers which ensure there are plenty of people to choose your site. However, it does require more polish on site contents then AdSense. As most sites, real time statistics are available and its very easy to get started with this service, but it's also very flexible.

Chitika (http://www.realcontext.com/index.php?option=RealContext:+Contextual+Targeting+Engine)
RealContext uses Artificial intelligence to retrieve the most relevant ads for your page. And there's an extra feature which makes RealContext unique as well. Keywords are selected based upon which previous selections payed off and which didn't. That means there's a constant feedback process that ensures you gain better revenue from your ads. It also supports blocking certain adds and child-safe filtering and many more options.

AdHearus (http://adhearus.com/webmaster.php)
AdHearus is a very feature-packed contextual ad provider. As with AdSense, advertisements are targeted but it doesn't stop here at all. The ads are very flexible, you can select from text-ads, banners, rectangles, pop-ups, pop-unders or skyscrapers. You can also display your own ads, through rotation, both on your site and on other affiliate sites, which makes AdHearus a hybrid with conventional advertising technologies. There's a very comprehensive on-line real time reporting feature and, as usual with such services, starting out is free and it's a breeze.

AffiliateSensor (http://www.affiliatesensor.com/)
AffiliateSensor has highly customizable ad blocks, which you can make for yourself with an easy to use on-line interface. You also get realtime reporting with clicks-by-domain, page and refferer. There's integration with Google AdSense as well, through the Google_alternate_ad_URL so AffiliateSensor can be used as a substitute for Google PSA's (Public Service Ads).

Kanoodle Bright Ads (http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads.cool)
Kanoodle's offering allows publishers to get ads related to topics or segments, and not the traditional keyword oriented ads. The site also groups publisher sites with advertisers by hand to ensure high-revenue generating ads. And speaking of revenue, the amount of money you receive is a clear 50% share of the amount of money Kanoodle recieves for an advertiser.

TargetPoint (http://publisher.targetpoint.com)
TargetPoint is oriented more towards content publishers. It offers full control over the look the ads, statistics over your site's overall performance and better revenue. It's free to register and you earn a guaranteed 60% of the total revenue. You can get payed with Paypal of Bank checks and (most times) wire transfers as well.

Clicksor (http://www.clicksor.com)
Clicksor will earn you as much as 60% from the amount of money your website produces. What you get is about the same as AdSense, there are targeted text ads, you can view the revenues from your website in real time. You can receive money via PayPal or through a check every two weeks, provided that you have earned more then $50. If you haven't made that much, your earning roll over to the next period

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Tools for Adsense

If you're just boarding on the AdSense train, and looking to find a quick way to make the profits you've seen all being pulled of all over the Internet, you might be interested in a couple of tools.

These software tools are designed to aid AdSense publishers in getting a better understanding on how traffic flows through their site. Some will help you in understanding which keywords gain you more money and which locations give you the best AdSense payment.

One of the best such tools available is AdSense Gold (http://www.profitbooks.com/go/astracker) which allows you to have a better understanding of which ads and formats actually get more clicks and which are useful or nearly useless.

This program works by tracking views and clicks on all the publisher's pages. It even goes as far as offering you the possibility to see which referrer each visitor came in through.

There's a free tool called SynSense (http://www.singerscreations.com/RSS/Posts/235.asp) which is more of an AdSense monitoring tool. This sits in the tray and offers actualized AdSense stats as you hover your mouse over its icon. It's a very nice tool for those which like to be informed on how their AdSense is doing at all times of the day.

Google provides you with stats in a csv format on their site. So someone made a tool that can automatically download such files and extract a lot of information from them. The name of this tool is CSV AdStats and it is available from http://www.nix.fr/en/csvadstats.aspx?q=download

It has a large number of features, including the possibility to highly customize reported stats, exporting data and charts to other formats. It's in French but the language can very easily be changed to English.

Of course any tool can only access these stats as often as 15 minutes but the authors are well aware of that fact and none of these tools will get you in trouble with Google because of that.

If, however, you're browsing content most of the time, and your tool of choice is the Firefox Internet browser, there's an extension for this program that allows you to view the stats in your status bar.

Again, this software is aware of Google's 15 minute rule and enforces its usage, 15 minutes being the minimum time between updates. The Google AdSense notifier for Firefox can be obtained from http://code.mincus.com/?p=3

There is also a program called Golden Keywords out there that helps you in getting the best keywords for your site. It's really efficient and very easy to use. It does come with a price tag though, it costs $49.95 and it can be obtained from http://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8616-2

So as you can see, software developers are making more and more programs meant to help you in your quest to maximize your AdSense profits. But before you go out looking for them remember that Google has a few features of its own as well.

It does offer some reports (albeit a bit more limited) and using the 'channels' feature is a good way of finding out which ads on your site are really bringing in most of the revenue.

Be on the look out as new tools appear daily and make sure to invest time in your site, as that is the real key in success with AdSense.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.