Driving up placement targeting earnings

Carsurvey.org is a car review website published by CSDO Media Limited. Initially inspired by some of the earliest experiments in user-generated reviews, the site now hosts almost 100,000 English-language car reviews submitted by visitors from across the globe.

From 1997 to 2000, founder Steven Jackson ran the site as a hobby. However, the growing hosting costs became significant, so Steven opted to run ads to cover them. He joined the AdSense program and was impressed with the initial results, which were further improved by carefully optimising the location, colour and size of the ads. By 2005, the time demands of running a popular website while holding down a day job were no longer sustainable. The steady revenue from AdSense was a major factor in Steven's decision to leave his old career and devote himself full-time to running Carsurvey.org.


AdSense offered Steven many advantages. Its global reach matched Carsurvey.org's diverse user base, and the fact that it separated the selling of ad space from the management of the site was very important to maintaining the sites' independence and credibility. Steven says, "AdSense allows me to focus on running Carsurvey.org for visitors. As long as Carsurvey.org provides a useful service, AdSense helps pay the bills."

Ad placements

As a regular reader of Inside AdSense, Steven was quick to pick up on improvements to the custom channel feature, which allows advertisers to target specific site areas using ad placements. He updated his AdSense HTML code to highlight his site via ad placements and focused on the most important pages and locations within Carsurvey.org. This made the site more appealing to advertisers, as they could begin to target specific page locations and sections. In addition, it gave more prominence to Carsurvey.org in the AdWords site tool, as you can see in the image below.


Medium rectangles

In addition to implementing the ad placements, Steven also tried another AdSense optimisation tip and added more image-enabled 300x250 medium rectangle units to his site. Though initially skeptical, as using those units would mean both changing the page layout for all of Carsurvey.org and displaying fewer ads per page, Steven decided to give the change a try.

Accelerating revenue

The improvements were gradual at first, but soon Steven's revenue climbed as advertisers began targeting specific ad placements on Carsurvey.org, namely the new 300x250 units in prime locations. Within a few months, Steven saw his placement targeting revenue grow up to six times its previous level; it now represents 60-80% of his overall earnings.

"I can definitely recommend experimenting with the ad placements and image enabled ads, especially in the 300x250 and skyscraper formats recommended by Google. I thought Carsurvey.org was pretty well optimised, but this just shows that experimenting with AdSense ad placements and testing out new features can really pay off," says Steven.

Lucky number ten

Two weeks ago, we let you know that the PIN and phone verification processes would be automatically triggered at $10, rather than $50. Along those same lines, we've also updated how it works to choose a form of payment and enter tax information in your account. Because we don't pay out earnings of less than $10, you'll only be able to choose a form of payment and enter your tax info once your earnings reach $10. When you first sign up for AdSense and log in to your account, these options won't be available yet.

So when it comes to payments, consider 10 your new lucky number. Once you receive your PIN or a notice to verify your phone number, you'll know it's also time to head to your account and enter your tax information and select your form of payment. Then you'll be on your way to receiving your first payment -- lucky you!

Perfecting your context with secondary keyphrases

Help is on the way if you, like me, have had difficulties in getting Google AdSense ads to be truly targeted to the content of some of your pages.

I'm pretty sure, that AdSense will evolve to be even better now that this former Oingo and Applied Semantics product have access to the vast amount of information in the Google database.

But until this happens why not try to help AdSense to deliver better targeted ads?

The thing about AdSense is that it is a meaning-based solution - a semantic-oriented tool.

Meaning can't be derived from just single keywords - you have to take surrounding text into account - hence the term "contextual advertising".

Determining the context in which a keyword resides is the same as finding out its theme.

You look at the information-carrying tokens - the words that add to the meaning of a page and from this you derive the theme of the page.

You are of course already targeting one keyphrase per page and made sure that you have optimized the page for this keyword in the traditional way by taking filenames, Title Tags, inbound link text, body copy and HTML Heading Tags into account.

But it's no good (from a theme perspective) to only target one keyphrase per page and not pay attention to the surrounding words.

It's the surrounding words - the secondary keywords that qualify the theme of a page.

Of course you can always use keyword-brainstorming tools such as the SBI Keyword Manager or WordTracker alone, but what if you throw away valuable secondary keywords just because you think they are not relevant or targeted enough?

What if you purged a keyword from your initial list because of a poor KEI and never used it in your copy and this specific keyword could be the one keyword that helped AdSense determine the theme of your page and serve contextually better ads?

Well, this morning while I was researching AdSense some more I came across a tool called Theme Master From what I read on the site, from the online demo that I tried and from the testimonials by Robin Nobles, John Alexander and Michael Campbell this tool seems to do a very good job at pointing out those very important secondary keywords.

It's priced much the same way as WordTracker - ranging from $7.00 for one day to $240.00 for one year.

AdSense keyword research

Google AdSense ads are contextual text-based ads that depend very much on the content of the page they are displayed on.

Obviously AdSense looks at several different thing to place the page at its correct location in the taxonomy so relevant ads can be selected and shown.

And consequently there isn't just one thing that can be changed to get AdSense to pick different ads.

One could argue that because it's such a complex algorithm that determines the theme of the page it doesn't really make sense to talk about keyword research and optimization in the usual sense.

There are basically two different reasons why you would want to do keyword research and change your pages.

1. To get rid of irrelevant ads, so you don't waste ad space on ads that almost certainly get 0 clicks because they are far away from what the visitor search for and expect to find.
2. To show higher paid ads, so you earn more per click.

So is Google AdSense keyword research something that should be treated differently from regular keyword optimization work?

Yes it should.

A page serving AdSense ads must serve a dual purpose.

1. It must attract enough search engine visitors by focusing on keywords with high demand but little competition. This is the way keywords are normally selected when you want the pages to generate traffic without having to put all your resources into tweaking and tuning the page.
2. It must attract high paying AdSense ads to maximize the revenue generated.

Let's say you have a page about "keyword optimization".

Through regular keyword research you have decided that "keyword optimization" should be your primary key-phrase.

Google show a favorably low number (4,760) of competing pages for "keyword optimization"

But a quick look at http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/ reveals that the maximum bid for "keyword optimization" is only $0.76

I know that there isn't a 100% correlation between bids for Overture keywords and for Google AdWords, but it's good enough to demonstrate why you can't rely on ordinary or traditional keyword research when it comes to maximizing Google AdSense income.

So what we are after now are additional keywords that are related so they can we woven into the content of the page - and help force AdSense to pick higher paying ads to show on your page.

"search engine ranking" would be such a phrase.

Google knows of 193,000 pages competing for the phrase "search engine ranking", so it's highly unlikely that you should be able to rank high for that phrase.

So traditional keyword research wisdom would say that it shouldn't be targeted, but when it comes to AdSense you have to think differently about this second keyword.

A quick look into the Overture View Bids tool show us that the maximum bid is $4.21

So the price an advertiser is willing to pay for clicks to the "search engine ranking" keyphrase is five and a half times more than the maximum bids for "keyword optimization".

So besides targeting "keyword optimization" to get targeted traffic to your page, you should also target "search engine ranking" to increase the likelihood that Google's AdSense will pick a higher paying advertizer.

An obvious tool to use would be the Site BuildIt Keyword Manager! if you have already decided to go with the benefits you will get from owning an SBI-based site.

WordTracker (of course) would also be an invaluable aid and you can purchase this service for as short as a one-day period.

Ken Evoy also did a rather lengthy additional Google AdSense review which should come in handy.

For an invaluable tool for generating supporting keywords you must take a look at Theme Master ,which does a great job of picking supporting keywords that helps define the theme of your page.

Help AdSense resolve ambiguity

Being a part of the Google AdSense program makes it easy to integrate contextually sensitive ads into your website - ads that are relevant to the content of the specific page they appear on.

For most parts the AdSense theme analysis generate a well-targeted ad to appear on your page. This is because of extensive semantic analysis of the content of the page, but sometimes the Artificial Intelligence (AI) behind AdSense will fail to grasp the meaning or intention of your site and serve an off-topic ad.

Just relying on keyword matching to determine which ads are relevant to serve on your page isn't good enough.

It's not the keywords or keyphrase that you optimized the page to rank high for in the search engines that Google AdSense use to select the most relevant ads.

AdSense have no knowledge of what you intended the page to rank high for so it has no simple way to determine which ads would be most relevant to what you intended the page to be about.

And in a large number of cases, the pages were written with humans in mind, not to target a specific keyword. So there will be many pages that are about something, but they are not specifically targeting any keywords.

So AdSense goes far beyond simple keyword matching when it classifies or themes your page and looks at all the words on your page, how close they are to each other and tries to deduce meaning from this through semantic analysis.

The AdSense ads are generally well on target and very relevant to the content of the page, but sometimes ads will be shown that are not that relevant or even totally off topic.

The latter happens when you are using ambiguous keywords and you don't have any important supporting keywords.

"Turkey" for instance is a classic example of ambiguity.

Is the page about the country or the animal?

No way for AdSense to detect this without what I call supporting or secondarily targeted keywords.

Supporting keywords are those that help AdSense to determine the theme of your page.

It's the content of your page that forms the context in which the words live. And it's your important and targeted keywords PLUS the context that makes up the theme of your page.

So to conquer ambiguity and the (most likely) off-topic ads you need to work on your context.

You need to put the most topic-relevant word into your text so your primary keywords get such a context-rich environment to "live in" that your theme just pops out and reveals itself to Googles AdSense.

So for AdSense its important to work on both keywords (for the sake of good search engine rankings) AND your theme so the ads that are shown are relevant and on topic.

And with the advent of more and more search engine implementing themes, clustering and categorization into their services it becomes more and more important to not only think content, but also context and keep your pages on topic.

Strengthen your theme with Google synonyms

Very recently Google added another search operator or search modifier.

The character ~ before a word in a query will have Google search for both actual occurrences of the word plus synonyms.

For the end user - the search engine visitor - this should bring back more relevant results - or at least results from more context conscious pages.

But for the internet marketer, webmaster or online business owner it has a far more profitable usage, and I'll get to that so hang in there.

A quick, very unscientific and not statistically significant test tells me that Google is using 'OR' operators to rank the 'synonymized' results.

A search for 'software' brings back 123,000,000 results.

A search for '~software' brings back 4,820,000 results.

In the latter you will find 'software', 'freeware', 'shareware' and 'driver' highlighted in the SERP.

Freeware = 6,190,000 results

shareware = 6,490,000 results

driver = 17,900,000 results

A search for 'software OR freeware OR shareware OR driver' brings back 7,480,000 results.

Now there's obviously a big difference between the initially estimated 4,820,000 results and the 7,480,000 results, but even results ranked between 400 and 500 show a nice correlation between the two search result sets.

Now, it's one thing that Google use the 'OR' operator when presenting the search results, but the really interesting thing is HOW it came up with the synonyms in the first place.

Nowhere on the advanced search page or in the FAQ does it say HOW Google decides which words are synonymous with your original keyword.

Google obviously can't use a normal thesaurus because it would be permanently out of date, but with the acquisition of Applied Semantics they got a hold of the massive ASO (Applied Semantics Ontology) which they most probably use for this new feature.

In the ASO, 'tokens' (words) are grouped together in 'terms' which are 'meaningful units' and each term is associated with one or more meanings or concepts.

In the same system, meanings are also related to one or more terms, which is what can be considered synonyms.

So since both the synonym operator and Google AdSense ads are using the ASO it makes sense to use the synonym operator to come up with additional keywords - keywords that can strengthen the theme of your page and make sure that AdSense selects the most appropriate ads for each page.

You can of course use Theme Master to do more extensive theme-research to get your primary targeted keywords the most appropriate context to 'live in', but if you just need a single secondary keyword to strengthen the theme of your page then Google synonyms should do the trick.

How To Get Banned From Google Adsense In Just 2 Clicks

The darkest nightmare a hardworking affiliate webmaster fears is receiving a dreaded Google Adsense Warning, or even worse, a notice that Google Adsense has been disabled for the entire account.

The notice starts out like this:

"It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google Adsense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers."

Some webmasters use Google Adsense to generate 100% of their website income and the account may hold many different websites. In that case, every website is disabled at one time. An automatic disqualification can be devastating, especially when Google has no obligation to explain its decision in detail.

Not only does the account become disabled, but also existing click-through earnings are refunded back to the advertisers.

Life gets tough, but is it that easy to get an account banned? Yes it is.

The terms of service every Google Adsense Webmaster accepts, describes the easy do's and don'ts.

Do use the Adsense approved formats only

Do keep your click-through data and income private.

Don't display Adsense on registration or thank you pages.

Don't use Adsense code and a competitor's content-targeted advertisement on the same page.

Don't encourage anyone else to click on ads.

For a complete list, read the Adsense policies and terms

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

https://www.google.com/adsense/terms

The easiest method an account can be banned is by a Webmaster clicking on the site's own ads.

Just how many click-throughs are needed to get a site banned isn't exposed, but Google Adsense watches for multiple clicks from the same domain. One person was banned who clicked twice from the same domain within a 24-hour period. That doesn't mean that is Adsense policy, because Adsense appears to place suspect sites on watch status until the action is duplicated.

Spikes in click-through percentages are hefty red flags. Those are the changes worth becoming proactive over by emailing Google Adsense. A site that rises from a consistent 1% click-through rate to a 10% click-through rate on one day could become suspect. The actual percentage that creates the flag isn't made public for obvious reasons.

What's the safest way to protect an account?

Don't click on the site's own ads ever.

Deceptive practices work for a short time, but they always come back to hurt the originator.

About The Author

Mike Oliver is a programmer/analyst who survived injuries from a serious multiple car accident. After speaking with attorneys who looked to create a case and then take up to 50% of any settlement, Mike Oliver knew there must be another way to get the legal help he needed, conquer the insurance nightmares, and keep 100% of his settlement without fear of a do-it-yourself-kit. He found it and saved thousands of $$$. You can, too. Get the lessons Mike paid to learn Free at www.car-accident-advice.com

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/PPC-Advertising/