Applying For A Google Adsense Account
Part -2-
Chapter 12
SEO For AdSense Sites
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, plays an important role in advertising a website. This is how you get a higher listing in the search results, when keywords that are relevant to your website are searched for. The more optimized your site is, the higher it will be in the search engine results.
This brings what is known as natural search traffic to your website. Natural search traffic means that someone found your site in the search engine results because it was naturally listed high enough for them to find it. You didn’t pay to get it listed higher.
There are two types of SEO: on site and offsite. Off site is the easiest to explain, and all it entails is getting inbound links to your site. This means that you get a
link to your site listed on other people’s websites.
However, they must be quality links for the search engines to pay any attention to them. You want to get your link on sites that are important. The search engine considers sites that have a high Google page rank, and a low Alexa rank important.
The more quality inbound links you get, the more important your own site becomes, as far as the search engines are concerned. Above all, do not use link
farms, and avoid reciprocal linking. You can get your link on sites by participating in the forums with a signature file, or by commenting on blogs and such.
When you are getting links on other sites, mix it up. Don’t just link to your main page all the time. Search engines become more interested when they see multiple sites linking to various pages on your site, instead of just the main one. Build inbound links slowly. Search engines become suspicious when you get too many inbound links too fast!
There are numerous elements of on site SEO. First, you want very clean HTML code. Search engines don’t like messy code that contains numerous errors. Use an HTML code validator to check your code.
Make sure that you use your keywords appropriately. First, you should have a keyword density of 2 to 3%. If there are 1200 words on the page, your keyword should appear 24 to 36 times in that content.
Use your keywords in all ‘alt’ tags. There are alt tags for tables, graphics, and links. Also use your keywords in the ‘title’ tag which is in the ‘head’ tag at the top of the code. Search engines love links. Remember this. Do some internal linking in your content, using text links.
When linking, avoid linking words like ‘here’ or ‘click here.’ This does nothing for SEO. Instead, for example if your keyword was weight loss, you might have a link that says ‘weight loss information for women over 40.’ Make sure that you put your keywords in bold letters, and use the H1 or H2 tags for your titles and subtitles, which should also contain your keywords.
Do not use any hidden text. Do not spam your keywords. Use them in natural ways. Write natural sentences. Search engines are very hard to fool, and if you use ‘black hat’ SEO techniques, the search engine spiders will simply stop
visiting, and your site won’t get listed!
Finally, do not use any content on your site that can be found elsewhere. All of your content must be original, or the search engine will view it as duplicate content, and ignore it.
Chapter 13
Social Networking for AdSense Revenue
Have you heard of Facebook.com? If not, it means that you’ve been living in a cave somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with no access to any news whatso-ever. Facebook is the most popular social networking site in existence, and it’s one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet today.
What does this mean for you? It means that you can use it to drive traffic to your AdSense site. You can take advantage of all of the traffic that Facebook gets. It’s sitting there waiting for you to come and get it!
Social Networking is an element of Web 2.0 that has really gained in popularity over the years. Everyone is doing it, and this is a great way to find and drive traffic.
Simply go to http://www.facebook.com and set up your profile. It’s free. Once your page is ready to go, start networking with other people.
Request to be added to their friends list. When you are on their friends list, they are on yours. Build your friends list.
In your Facebook posts, point to your website. You will also be building inbound links to your site for search engine optimization purposes.
Post comments on other people’s pages or posts. This is similar to visiting other people’s blogs and posting comments for the purpose of driving traffic to your own blog, but you will be driving traffic to your own profile page instead –and ultimately to your website.
Next, join groups related to your topic. Post messages to the group. This is much like forum marketing.
There are numerous such sites out there as well, targeted at different audiences. Ecademy.com and LinkedIn.com are two such examples.
The key is to be active. Each week, post to your social networking profile. Post a message to your groups, post comments on your friend’s pages, and find new friends as well.
You can find more information about social networking, and more social networking sites, by typing in ‘social networking’ in your favorite search
engine. Social networking is big. It’s where people are going when they log on to their personal computers (and often their computers at work).
Traffic comes from traffic. You get traffic from the search engines not only because you rank high, but because that search engine gets traffic. You get traffic from forum marketing because the forums that you participate in get traffic.
Since traffic essentially comes from traffic, you need to make social networking a part of your overall traffic generation strategy – because the social networking sites have tons of traffic.
Be careful! Social Networking is fun, and you can find that you spend too much time doing it, and not pay attention to other promotional techniques.
Chapter 14
Using Google AdWords for AdSense Sites
Some AdSense publishers use Google AdWords to drive traffic to their sites. Now, in case you didn’t know, Google AdWords is the program that supplies the ads that you are showing on your site with Google AdSense. Does it make sense to use AdWords to promote an AdSense site? In some cases, it does.
It is tricky, however. Remember that you are targeting high paying keywords. This means that if you target those same keywords with your own AdWords campaign, you would be paying a large amount of money. You also run the risk of not having the money that you earn from AdSense cover the cost of your AdWords ads.
Here is the secret. First, set a budget for your AdWords campaign that you can afford to pay, regardless of your AdSense income. Next, don’t choose the same keywords for your AdWords ads as you do for your AdSense site. Now you are probably wondering how that would work out.
Let’s say that your website is focused on the topic of weight loss for diabetic women. You could target a lower paying keyword for your AdWords campaign, such as diabetes or diabetic supplies. Again, it is tricky, and it does take some thought.
It is vital that you keep a close eye on your ad campaigns and your clicks. You can easily see how much you’ve spent, and how much you’ve earned in relation to what you have spent. If you are spending more than you are earning, you need to rethink using Google AdWords, or tweak and tune until you are earning more than you spend.
Aside from that, setting up a Google AdWords campaign is very easy. You simply sign up for the program, write your ad, choose your keywords, set your budget, set how much you are willing to pay for each click, and activate the ad to run.
While you are targeting different keywords, those keywords may be relevant enough to your site for the ad to appear on your own site! You don’t want this to happen. Go into your AdSense account, and using the filter, exclude your site from appearing in ads on your site.
You can target your own keywords with your AdWords ads also, but again, this is tricky, and you need to make sure that you are bidding low for those keywords. That, in turn, gets you less traffic, but with a budget set, Google will work to get your ad clicked on each day until the daily budget has been met.
Ideally, you should not use Google AdWords to promote a Google AdSense site until you have a thorough understanding of how each program works, and you are sure that you can generate more income than you are spending on the AdWords ads. Again, use caution, and remember that you will be paying for each click that you receive.
Also, take advantage of free credits for AdWords. Google offers free credits for signing up, and you can elect to take surveys and such for which you will be
It is important to note that if you are going to pay for traffic, you should not waste that traffic. Start building an opt-in list, so that you can recycle that traffic! To build an opt-in list, you need an Autoresponder, such as www.aweber.com and you need to put code on every single page for people to sign up for your list. Once someone signs up, you can bring them back to your site over and over again through email marketing.
Chapter 15
AdSense Profits Success Factors
There are numerous factors that will determine your success in the Google AdSense program. There is no luck to it. You can be the most unlucky person in the world, and still succeed with Google AdSense. It’s all about understanding exactly how to run your Google AdSense Empire.
Note the word ‘empire.’ That’s where a great deal of your success will come from. If you just have one site that you run Google AdSense on, your chances for success are very limited.
You will have to drive a huge amount of traffic to that site in order to make Google AdSense worth your time and effort. Ideally, you will have numerous sites, on a variety of topics.
Choosing the right topics – the highest paying topics – is also another factor for AdSense success. If you have ten sites, all with keywords that only pay five cents a click, you will need to keep your traditional job, or look for another source of income.
You will make a little money, but not enough to live on. Choose topics based on the highest paying keywords for success.
Choosing topics that have a high amount of searches is also a factor, but there is a trick to it. For instance, weight loss is a highly searched for topic, but it’s too varied, and too competitive.
Instead, narrow your focus on weight loss, and choose a niche within a niche, such as Hoodia weight loss, or weight loss for diabetic women. While you may earn a little less per click, you will be able to focus more greatly on getting traffic to the site.
Your ad units, ad links, and search boxes should match your site for best results. If the ads stand out too much, they will get fewer clicks. AdSense publishers have been testing ad placement and palettes since the inception of the AdSense program, and you would do well to follow what that research has found.
Traffic is the next factor for determining Google AdSense success. Without traffic, there is no success.
You need to use all of the proven traffic driving techniques at your disposal to drive as much traffic to your site as possible, on a continual basis. Content may be king, but if that is so, Traffic is the Pope, and even the king answers to the Pope.
Another factor for Google AdSense success is continuing to build. You need to continually add new content to your site, and create new sites. Keep an eye on the most frequently searched keywords.
Publish sites for at least the top ten, and then continue to build that empire. Even if you just added one page a month to each site, you could still keep it under control and have time to do other things.
Writing fresh content is time consuming, and buying fresh content can get expensive. If you find yourself in this dilemma, purchase private label rights articles, and pay a writer to rewrite them.
You will find that the content is produced much faster, and much cheaper. You could also opt to rewrite the content yourself.
The most important success factor for AdSense, however, is how much time and effort you are willing to put into it. The less time you put into it, the less success you will have. The more you put into it, the more success you will have, as long as you are taking the other factors into consideration.
Chapter 16
Critical AdSense Mistakes You MUST Avoid
“Help! Google banned me from the AdSense program!” This is a common cry that you will hear on AdSense related forums. Yet another person who failed to read and adhere to the Google AdSense program policies. It happens every single day. Will it happen to you?
The worst mistake you can possibly make in the Google AdSense program is not reading the rules, or not adhering to those rules. So, if you have not already done so, stop what you are doing, and go read the Google AdSense Program Policy, as well as the Webmasters Guidelines that Google has provided. These are found within your Google AdSense account.
Other than breaking the rules and getting banned, there are also numerous mistakes that people make that cause them to fail with Google AdSense. The biggest mistake is failing to do research before choosing a topic for your site.
If you’ve chosen a topic that few people are interested in, you will fail. It won’t matter how nice or informative your site is. If people aren’t interested, they aren’t going to search for it, and they aren’t going to visit.
Failing to blend the Google AdSense ads in with your site is another common mistake. Learn to use the tools that Google gives you. Use the palette to make your ads look like content on your pages.
You cannot remove the ‘ads by Google’ part, but that really won’t matter in the grand scheme of things, as long as the ads look like content on your page.
For example, use the ad link ads above or below – or even in the middle of –your navigational links on your page. This will get them more clicks.
Also, use the limits that Google has set: three ad units, one ad link unit, two search units, and two referral units on each and every page of your site. The more you have on there, the more clicks you will receive.
Another common mistake that people make is assuming that they can hurry up and get rich from Google AdSense sites and throwing together sites in two minutes. While you do want an empire of sites, those sites must be valuable to the visitors.
They must be worth visiting. In fact, even if your purpose is to earn income from Google AdSense, AdSense rules specifically state that you are not to build sites with the specific purpose of running AdSense ads.
Tweaking and tuning is vital to your success. Let’s say that you’ve done the research, chosen a well searched for, high paying niche, and built a fabulous site.
You’ve placed AdSense code on the site, and you are getting a good amount of traffic to that site, but your ads aren’t being clicked on. Something is wrong somewhere and it is your job as an AdSense publisher to find the problem and fix it.
So, you become a member of the UPS club, and you quit your day job.
That’s a huge mistake. First, Google could change their rules at the drop of a hat, and your AdSense revenue could fall dramatically. Many things can go wrong.
That doesn’t mean that AdSense can’t replace your income, it can if you do it right, but because things can change so fast, it is wise to have a years worth of salary equal to what you earn from your traditional job, in the bank, before you quit that job and depend on AdSense.
If you do this, and Google makes changes that have a negative impact on your income, you will still be okay financially until you can make changes to your sites that will get the AdSense income flowing again.
Chapter 17
AdSense Optimization For More Profits
There is a great deal more to earning AdSense revenue than just putting up a site and putting Google AdSense ad code on those pages. In fact, successful AdSense publishers spend several hours per week – after the site is built and the ads are running – ensuring that they are getting the absolute most possible revenue from those AdSense sites, by using a variety of optimization techniques.
First, use the channels feature in your AdSense account. This allows you to assign different sites to different channels, so that you are able to see which topics/sites are the most profitable for you.
With this information, you can easily focus more time and energy on those sites that are making the money, and less time and energy on those that are not.
Successful publishers also like to experiment. They can create customized reports in their AdSense account, and then try different colors, different ad formats, and different placement to see what is getting the best results for their sites.
You should do this, and continue doing this, until you feel that you are getting the best possible results for each of your websites.
What works on one website may not work well on another. However, according to Google and many successful AdSense publishers, placing a rectangular ad unit just below your headline, but above the main content of your page, will yield higher clicks. Also, placing link ads in, above, or below your navigational links will also increase clicks.
According to Google, if you elect to display image ads, you will have more advertisers bidding to have their ads show specifically on your pages.
This usually results in more money per click, and this is definitely worth looking into for your site. Make sure you use Google Channels and reports to find out if it is working out well for you or not!
Make sure that you implement on-site advertiser sign up. This is how advertisers can elect to advertise specifically on your site. They will bid against other advertisers who have elected to advertise specifically on your site, driving the price per click upwards.
More experienced AdSense publishers have learned to use section targeting. This allows them to enclose specific parts of their content within tags that causes Google to pay special attention to that section, and serve ads accordingly. This will help to keep the ads that are being served very specific.
If you publish a blog, as opposed to static web pages, you will need to do things a bit differently. You can tweak your template to have the ad code appear in the basic layout of your pages, but you also need to add the code at the bottom of each post that you make.
It is always a good idea to find out what works for others. Again, each site is different, but this will save you a great deal of time in researching. Become a regular visitor to AdSense related forums.
There are many out there to choose from, and you can find a lot of useful information from other publishers who have already done the testing and research for you in many cases.
Believe it or not, Google wants you to succeed. When you succeed, they succeed. Read all of the information inside of your Google AdSense account. There you will find optimization tips and other advice that will help you get the highest possible profit from your Google AdSense ads.
Chapter 18
Social Bookmarking Your AdSense Pages
So you want traffic for your AdSense site? You need social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is an element of Web 2.0, and it is a great way to get a great deal of traffic, in a very short amount of time. It is very easy and fast to do, and it’s also free.
Social bookmarking sites are essentially places where people who are registered can list – or bookmark – their favorite sites. Those bookmarks are shared with all other users of the social bookmarking site as well. Millions of people use these sites on a daily basis.
Here is what you do. You go to http://www.onlywire.com and register. Again,
it’s free. Once you’ve registered and logged in, you will be presented with what looks like a form. This is actually a list of social bookmarking sites, and you need to open up each of those sites (in a new page or tab) and register with them.
Go back to the page at onlywire.com and put in the username and password you used for each of those sites, and click the save button. Now, follow the directions on the site, and move the onlywire.com icon up into your toolbar. You are ready to start social bookmarking!
Go to each page on your website. Click the icon in your toolbar, and you will be brought to a page at onlywire.com. Fill in the information, tagging that page with the keywords that are relevant to it. Hit the submit button. Onlywire.com instantly sends that bookmark, along with its tags, to all of those social bookmarking sites.
Do that for each page on your site, and each time you add a new page to your site. Now, when other members of those social bookmarking sites are looking for information, they go to their favorite social bookmarking site, type in their keyword, and if it is a keyword that you used, your site pops up in the results. Again, you get traffic fairly fast from social bookmarking.
It takes approximately one hour to get fully set up for social bookmarking, but bookmarking one page takes less than one minute. So, even if you have a twenty page website, it will only take you an hour and twenty minutes to get fully set up, and get each of those pages bookmarked.
You can also ask others to add your page to their favorite social bookmarking site. Unlike search engines, where there are a variety of factors in play that determine how high you rank, with the social bookmarking sites, when more people add your site to their bookmarks at the social networking sites, the higher your page appears in the search results at those sites.
You can’t pay them for a higher listing. So, ask friends and relatives to bookmark your site, and also post an invitation to do this on your website directly as well. You will also be building inbound links to your site, which will aid in search engine optimization. Remember that these sites are considered ‘important’ by the search engines, which makes those inbound links very valuable.
Remember that when you set up an AdWords ad campaign through Google, you are able to select your own keywords. People are finding that the links left behind at the social bookmarking sites allow them to find their information more quickly, while avoiding all of the paid advertisements.
Chapter 19
Increasing Your AdSense Profits
There are numerous tricks of the trade that AdSense publishers use to increase their AdSense income. Here are nine things that you can do to improve your AdSense revenue:
Build An Empire: There are two ways to succeed with AdSense. You either have to have a very high traffic site, or you have to have a multitude of low to mid traffic sites. Most publishers have the latter.
When you build your sites, your first order of business should be to get them listed in the major search engines. However, you should also get listed in more specialized directories as well, and use promotional techniques such as article marketing, forum marketing, social networking, and social bookmarking.
Learn To Use Google Analytics: Google Analytics will give you a ton of information about the traffic that comes to your site. You can use that information to make adjustments and additions to your site, which will increase your AdSense revenue.
If you don’t make changes to your site, as analytics indicates are needed, you won’t make as much revenue as you would if you do make changes. Find out how people travel through your website to get better results.
Choose The Right Keywords: Choose topics based on keywords that get a high number of searches each month, and then check the amount that advertisers are paying per click for those keywords. Choose the popular ones that pay the highest, and then focus in on more defined niches within that niche.
Add Fresh Content: Adding fresh content on a regular basis keeps people coming back to your site, and also gives you the opportunity to have more defined ads appear on those pages.
For example, if you have a site that was built for weight loss for those who are wheelchair bound, you might have a page on there for exercises for these people. This page will have the ability to target ads that are of interest to wheelchair bound people that need exercises that they can do.
Choose the Right AdSense Ad Unit Format: There are three ad units that seem to work well, regardless of the topic or layout of the site overall. Those three are the 336 x 280 rectangle, the 160 x 600 skyscraper, and the 300 x 250 rectangle.
Put Enough Ads On The Page: Google allows you to have three ad units, one link ad, two search boxes, and two referral units on each and every page of your site. Use them! The more ads you have, the more revenue you will earn.
Put The Ads In The Right Place: Start by adding link ads to your navigation menu. These will get a large number of clicks. Place ad units under headlines, a skyscraper on the right side of the page, and another rectangle ad at the bottom of each page, just under the text.
Set up Your Palette: Your ads need to blend in. Set up your palette so that the border color matches the background of your web page. The background color
of your ad units should also match the background of your web page. The link color should match the color of links on your page. Finally, the text color should match the color of text that you use on your page.
Use the Google AdSense Preview Tool: You can find this tool inside your Google AdSense account. Use it to see what ads will appear on your page, before they actually appear. This will help you to tweak and tune your pages until it is displaying the ads that you want.
Making Massive Google AdSense Revenue
Here we are at the end of the Google AdSense Profits series. You’ve learned a great deal, and you are definitely ready to start cashing in with your own
Google AdSense sites. Let’s go over five vital points.
You need more than one site, in most cases. One low traffic site is not going to yield you more than twenty bucks a month or so. If you choose high paying topics, you may net about a hundred bucks a month from one site. Ideally, you should have at least ten sites – but preferably, you will have a great deal more than that!
Work out a schedule for yourself. Publish a certain number of new sites each month, and add a certain number of pages to existing sites each month. Keep adding until you’ve filled up the amount of time that you are willing to spend on your Google AdSense Empire. Develop processes that you can follow over and over again for success.
You must follow Google’s Rules. This is a huge pitfall for many. First, Google has regulations for your site, as to how functional it should be. Second, Google has rules pertaining to what your site may not include. Third, Google has rules about incentives for getting people to click on your ads, and they definitely have rules against clicking on your own ads.
All of these rules are in place to protect the integrity of the program – not to prevent you from making money. Before you publish your first AdSense
website, go and read the AdSense Program Policy, the Google Terms of Service, and the Webmaster Guidelines.
You need traffic. You should be working on bringing traffic to your site each and every day. Write and submit articles, participate in the forums, get into social networking and social bookmarking. See if Google AdWords will work out for you. Do everything that you possibly can to bring traffic to your site.
If you have no traffic, you have no Google AdSense revenue. It is as simple as that. Most AdSense publishers divide their time, spending about twenty percent of their time adding to existing sites, or building new ones, and spending the other 80% of their time promoting their existing sites.
You must keep track of results, and compare results. You need to not only make changes to your pages, and track those results, but you must also track your advertising efforts as well.
By testing and tracking results for your pages, you will find out what ad formats, ad placement, and ad colors work best for your site. By testing and tracking promotional efforts, you will be able to see what techniques are working best in driving traffic to your site.
When you know what works, you can focus your time and energy on those activities, and leave the techniques that don’t work behind. This not only saves time, it increases AdSense revenue.
You can make a fulltime living from Google AdSense, but it takes time and effort. You apply for Google AdSense, get approved, and get the AdSense code on your site. The first day, you make ten bucks. You quickly add that up, and
see that if you made ten bucks each day, you would make 300 per month from one site. You quickly add again, and see that if you had ten sites, all making 300 a month, you could quit your traditional job.
Unfortunately, that may or may not be true. Before you quit your job, make sure that you have a years worth of salary saved in the bank. This will prevent financial ruin in the event that Google makes program changes that affect your AdSense income.