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Success in the AdSense program depends on several factors, most of which
are under your control. To get clickthroughs, you need
* Traffic
* Relevant ads
If nobody is visiting your site, you obviously won’t get clicks. If you have traffic
but your ads aren’t relevant, your visitors won’t feel motivated to click
them. You might think that it’s Google’s responsibility to send you relevant
ads (especially since I stated exactly that in the introduction to this chapter),
but successful AdSense publishers take responsibility for relevancy by giving
Google a clearly optimized site to work with. Optimization works both ends
of the equation, helping you attract more traffic while helping Google provide
relevant ads.
Briefly put, site optimization for search engines (usually called search engine
optimization, or SEO) is a bundle of writing, designing, and HTML-coding
techniques with two goals:
_ Creating a more coherent experience for visitors
_ Improving the site’s visibility in search engines
The two goals are tied together by Google’s primary mission to provide good
content to its users. Google strives to reward visitor-friendly sites with high
placement on its search results pages — taking into consideration other factors
as well. If you haven’t read Chapter 4, this is a good time to soak up its
elaborate tutorial in site optimization. That chapter is geared to improving
your site’s stature in Google, building PageRank, and climbing up the search
results page — all to the purpose of attracting traffic.
Promoting your site on other related sites is a tangential aspect of optimization
but a pertinent part of traffic building. Building a network of incoming links is
the most potent way to improve your PageRank in Google (see Chapter 3 for
much more about this). Building links is important also to your success with
AdSense. AdSense revenue benefits from all the normal ways that enterprising
Webmasters promote their online businesses.
Now, on to relevancy. Relevancy converts visitors to clickthroughs. Ironically, a
successful conversion sends the visitor away from your site, which might seem
counterproductive. Never mind that for now; if your site provides good information
value, your visitors will come back. Later in this chapter I describe how
to keep them anchored on your page even when they click an ad.
It’s no surprise that the AdSense program is much beloved by Webmasters running
information sites, as opposed to service, subscription, or transaction sites
that generate nonadvertising revenue. Information sites are often labors of
love, having been constructed from the ground up out of passion for the subject.
When AdSense burst on the scene, these hard-working, under-rewarded
folks began experiencing Internet-derived revenue for the first time. In those
cases, AdSense is the only source of site income. More established media sites
that build AdSense into the revenue mix are sometimes surprised to find it contributing
a larger-than-expected portion of income. No matter what your site’s
focus or scope, cleanly optimized content delivers more pertinent ads and
higher clickthrough rates.
The following is an AdSense-specific checklist of optimization points:
* Have only one subject per page. Get your site fiercely organized, and
eliminate extraneous content from any page. Don’t be afraid to add pages
to accommodate short subjects that don’t fit on other pages. Let there be
no question as to what a page is about.
* Determine key concepts, words, and phrases. For each page, that is.
Then, make sure those words and phrases are represented on the page.
Pay particular attention to getting those words into headlines. Your concentration
of keywords should be skewed toward the top of the page.
Don’t go overboard; your text must read naturally or your visitors (and
Google) will know that you’re spamming them.
* Put keywords in your tags. Take those keywords and phrases from
the preceding item and put them into your meta tags (the keyword,
description, and title tags). See Chapter 4 for details. Don’t use any
word more than three times in any single tag.
* Use text instead of images. Google doesn’t understand words that are
embedded in images, such as what you often seen in navigation buttons.
(Navigation buttons and other images are important in defining the subject
of the page and the site.) Replace the buttons with text navigation
links.
Try to fulfill these points before opening an AdSense account. Ideally, your
site is in its optimized state when Google first crawls it. You don’t know how
often your site will be crawled in the future, so getting properly indexed the
first time is key.
These optimization points apply more to home-grown information sites than
to database-driven media sites, such as online editions of newspapers, where
content deployment is determined by offsite editorial determinants. An online
newspaper follows the news, not the other way around, so the topicality of a
page might be torn apart by diverse stories. But even sites that drop in their
content from offline sources (such as reporters in the field) can optimize
their subject categories by organizing site structure along topical lines whenever
possible. Keeping to shorter pages of focused content encourages
AdSense success.
So far, I’ve discussed optimization as it applies to sites already built and operating.
Such optimization is largely about defining your subject by keywords,
and putting those keywords into the page’s content and tags. Taking the
reverse approach is also possible: developing a site around keywords that
lead to a high-revenue AdSense account. That approach, which I cover later
in the next section, is trickier. The middle ground between optimizing a built
site and building an optimized site is adding pages to an existing site without
betraying the overall topicality, primarily to enhance AdSense revenue. Keep
reading to explore both these possibilities.
Jumat, 04 April 2008
Optimizing Your Site for AdSense Success
Keyword Verification and Link Popularity Tools
This section spotlights a few interactive tools. These pages don’t provide optimization
tools per se, such as meta tag generators. Rather, these gadgets check
on the results of your optimization efforts in two areas:
_ Keyword verification, which checks a URL’s presence on the results
pages of several search engines, when searching for certain keywords
_ Link popularity, which checks the number of incoming links to a URL, as
viewed through multiple search engines
Marketleap Keyword Verification tool
www.marketleap.com/verify
Marketleap.com provides an integrated set of optimization checks. The two
tools described here are beautifully designed and create elegant displays of
results. These gadgets are free to use.
Figure 16-2 shows the Keyword Verification tool. It tells you whether your site
(or specific page) is returned in the search results of 11 major search engines
and, if so, on what search results page it appears. (The definition of a results
page is not provided; my experiments indicate that a page probably equals 10
results.)
Follow these steps:
1. Enter a URL.
If you’re checking an inner page of your site, you don’t need to enter the
full address of that page, although it doesn’t hurt to do so. Marketleap
finds inner-page matches to your keywords to whatever extent the tested
search engines can find them.
2. Enter a keyword or phrase.
Type whatever you’ve optimized for, as if a Google user were searching for
that phrase. You’re likely to get more encouraging results if you enter a
phrase, not a single word. Placing quotes around the phrase, for an exact
match to word order, creates more hits, but doesn’t necessarily create a
realistic report of your site’s visibility to the average Google user.
3. Enter the displayed access code.
Simply type the code that appears in colored letters. Forcing users to
replicate the code prevents this tool from being overused by automated
scripts.
4. Click the Generate Report button.
A moment after the results first appear, they’re redrawn in a table, as
shown in Figure 16-3.
Note in Figure 16-3 that some engines match your keywords with a targeted
inner page (in this example, the page that’s best optimized for the keyword
phrase), and other engines can’t see that deeply. Google has crawled the site
carefully, but AltaVista has not.
Marketleap doesn’t check any engines beyond the third page. If your page
doesn’t appear in the results table, the omission is not necessarily an indicator
that your page has not been crawled by that engine. However, it does indicate
that the page is not optimized powerfully for that engine. In the context
of this book, Google is the top priority, so all is well with the results.
Marketleap Link Popularity Check
www.marketleap.com/publinkpop
Marketleap’s second optimization tool measures your incoming link network
(see Chapter 3). In an attractive twist, this little engine also lets you compare
your main link with three comparison URLs, as shown in Figure 16-4.
Finally — and this goes above the call of duty — the results page fills in gaps
by supplying total incoming links for many other URLs, providing a broad
context in which to evaluate your site. The result can be discouraging, but
here goes:
1. Enter your site’s URL, and then enter three comparison URLs.
In both cases, enter the exact page you want to compare, with the
understanding that in most cases it should be the home, or index, page.
Most incoming links aim straight for the front door. However, if you have
been optimizing and networking an inner page, this is the place to check
out the results.
2. Select an industry from the drop-down list.
This selection determines the nature of the fill-in sites that Marketleap
provides on the results page. The more accurately you choose the industry,
the more meaningful the context of your results.
3. Enter the access code.
Again, this step blocks automated scripts.
4. Click the Generate Report button.
Wait a few seconds for the results to appear on your screen. This tool is
usually slower than the Keyword Verification device.
Figure 16-5 illustrates a results table. You see only part of the table; the
comparison results continue down the page, ending with media juggernaut
CNN.com and its impressive 6.6 million backlinks.
Note that Google often shows fewer incoming links than the other four search
engines in the table. It can be a shock to think that your site’s hard-won backlinks
are incompletely represented in Google. Actually, Google doesn’t necessarily
divulge all incoming links in its index for a given page.
Google excludes similar results, which, in many cases, means inner pages of
sites. Those inner pages might be in your own site, if you generate a lot of your
own incoming links (most sites do). Furthermore, Google (at its discretion)
excludes the display of incoming links with low PageRanks. The result of these
omissions can make it seem that other engines do a better job of assessing a
site’s backlink network. That might or might not be true in any given crawl
cycle. The more common truth is that Google withholds some results of some
searches using the link: operator. Google explicitly warns Webmasters not to
trust the link: operator (used here for Google’s column in the results table)
for a full backlink picture. The value of this table lies in the comparisons it
affords.
From the search results table, use the drop-down menu to run the search
again against a different industry.
HighRankings.com
www.highrankings.com
Operated by Jill Whelan, an optimization consultant, the HighRankings site
is distinguished by a friendly atmosphere, a generous allotment of free articles,
a free, almost-weekly newsletter, and a discussion forum dedicated to
optimization.
The High Rankings Advisor newsletter, contains articles by Whalen and
guest writers. Many of these pieces are archived in the Advisor Articles
section; new and mid-level optimizers would do well to read through
the whole lot of them. The articles tend to be detail-oriented, with, for
example, entire tutorials devoted to a single meta tag. You can also find
great information about getting framed sites indexed in Google, submitting
to directories, and other basic tasks sometimes ignored by high-pressure
optimization shops. HighRankings.com maintains a vigorous do-it-yourself
sensibility, even as it offers site evaluations, writing services, and content
editing.
The discussion forum is possibly the most thorough and SEO-dedicated set of
message boards anywhere. This forum hosts well over 1000 topics and about
15,000 messages covering every possible aspect of site optimization. (See
Figure 16-1.)
Jill Whalen is an active participant and friendly moderator of the voluminous
Webmaster chatter. Conversations, like the articles, tend toward technical
details. Participants use the space to work out fine points of site coding, CSS
style sheets, supplementary programs that bundle code in spider-friendly
ways, strategies for organizing page elements at the code level, and so forth.
I recommend the HighRankings forum most highly to serious optimizers and
Webmasters at all levels who have questions.
Search Innovation
www.searchinnovation.com
Search Innovation is a search engine marketing company with a strong optimization
streak. Two sections of this site generously provide information: the
Articles and Resources sections.
The site’s articles, mostly written by founders Daria and Dale Goetsch, are
detailed, serious, and informative. These pieces cover such topics as effective
keywords, “organic” SEO (the practice of optimizing toward high placement
in search listings, as opposed to purchasing placement on search pages),
optimizing dynamic pages (a tricky subject many optimizers don’t go near),
link building, SEO myths, crawler methods, building site maps, writing effective
link text, and content writing.
The articles at this site are enough to get this site mentioned in this chapter,
but the Resources page shines just as brightly. Here you find a directory of
forums, newsletters, blogs, interactive tools, seminars, and Web sites that are
resourceful in other ways.
AdSense for Search
There was one more AdSense feature I needed to discuss. "Everything we've discussed so far about AdSense has been about placing ads on third-party Web pages," I said. "Google refers to this as AdSense for content, because it's all about Web-page content. This is the main AdSense program, the one that everyone uses." The three of them nodded their understanding.
AdSense for Search
Learn more about AdSense for Search at www.google.com/adsense/ws-overview.
"There is a second AdSense program available," I continued, "called AdSense for search that appeals to a more limited audience."
"Is it for other search engines?" Anita asked.
"No," I answered. "In fact, one of the conditions of joining the AdSense programwe'll get to those shortlyis that you don't display ads on any search-result pages you might have on your site. In other words, you can't compete with Google's bread and butter, however minuscule that competition might be, and use Google to make money at it."
"I guess that makes sense," Anita said. "So what is AdSense for search, then?"
"AdSense for search is about getting your visitors to use Google for their searching," I explained. "If you direct your visitors to Google's search engine, Google is willing to share some of the advertising revenue with you. Joining AdSense for search gives you the right to display a Google search box on your site. Visitors who enter queries into that search box are sent to a custom Google search page. The search page displays your logo and displays search results generated using the Google search engine. Search-related advertisements are displayed prominently at the top of the page. Just as with AdSense for content, you make money if visitors click those ads."
Claude wasn't sure what the benefit of this program was: "Why wouldn't the visitors just go to www.google.com or use their browser's search box? I normally use the Google Toolbar for my searching."
"Because it's a simple way for visitors to search your site," I explained, "not just the Web. It's not a great money-maker for most sites, but if you want to add searching capabilities to your site without having to do any programming, it's an easy way to do it. We'll talk a bit about it later, but really most of our focus is on AdSense for content. I'm just mentioning it because it's an interesting and underused feature."
Blogging for Money
The Web was able to grow quickly because it was built on simple standards. A moderately technical person could download, install, and configure the necessary software in a matter of hours. Web browser software is now bundled with every new computer. Operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X even include built-in Web server software."
"One more thing, then," Claude continued. "Can you tell me the difference between a Web site and a blog? Stef's been telling me that I should 'get with it' and create a blog since I spend so much time on the computer anyhow." Stef is Claude's daughter, who attends a local college.
"When it comes right down to it," I continued, "a blog is just a set of frequently and easily updated pages on a Web site. The term blog is short for weblog, a type of online diary or journal. For some people, their blog is their entire Web site. For others, a blog is just one component of the Web site. Does Stef have a blog?" Claude indicated that she did. "Then I'd love to talk to her about it. The more advanced features of a blogletting readers post comments, tracking references by other blogsrequire the installation of special software on the Web server, so many bloggers let blogging services like LiveJournal or Bloggerwhich, incidentally, is owned by Googlehandle the technical details for them These services can host a blog for you on their own Web sites, but most can also publish the blog over to a Web site that you control. I'd be curious to know how she set up her blog."
The Web Address
Every public Web site has a Web address that distinguishes it from other sites. The address includes a host name and a domain name. The host name is the name of the computer on which the Web server software runs. The domain name is the public name for a group of computers.
For example, the Web address www.EricGiguere.com has the host name www (for World Wide Web) and the domain name EricGiguere.com. In some cases, the address includes additional information after the domain name, but usually the host name and domain name together are enough to locate a Web site. The host name is important when there are two or more Web servers in a domain, but can normally be dropped otherwise. By convention, the primary Web site in a domain uses the special host name www.
Your site will need a Web address, so you'll need to obtain a domain name. Finding the right name is harder than it seems. Ideally, the domain name will directly relate to your site's content, because AdSense uses the Web address as one of its inputs when it tries to figure out what your site is really aboutso choosing a good name is important.
History of the Web
An excellent and authoritative history of the Internet and the World Wide Web can be found on the Internet Society's site, www.isoc.org/internet/history/.