Google AdSense Discussion

If web surfers behaved all alike, if there were strict patterns in users’ behaviour, wouldn’t all publishers be on a sunny beach right now, with a fancy-colored cocktail, worring not about AdSense optimization matters?

Web user’s behaviour depends on two main groups of variables: the user-related one and the website-related one.

User-related Behavior Variables

Though people react very differently at various stimuli, we can identify some peculiarities specific to web surfers. The behaviour is much like yours. Have you considered watching your own actions while surfing on the web? This might help if you want to improve your site’s appeal to readers, especially if you sell something or if you want your visitors to click on your ads.

Several groups of variables that influence users’ behaviour can be identified:

Components of the mental processes involved while searching and browsing on the Internet: attention, awareness, language, mental imagery etc.
The behavior of websurfers is influenced also by their subjective approach to matters, determined by temperamental characteristics, such as mood, patience and their purpose and degree of interest.
Also, users act differently varying with how used they are to web surfing.

Let’s see how we can tweak our websites to turn these to our advantage (and turn visitors into “clickers”):

Mental processes

Attention

The web designer keeps the tools to direct readers’ attention. A simple design, without unnecessary loading will prevent the reader from being distracted by unimportant elements. The ads placement must be done strategically, in a place impossible to overlook (recommended in the first paragraph, usually in the upper-left area). Pictures and graphics are considered attention-grabbers and will also be considered when choosing your ads’ placement.

Awareness

This is a very debated topic. Opinions differ on readers’ ads awareness. Some sustain that the more blended into content, the better, others say that this formatting will induce the readers the feeling of being “tricked” into clicking on ads, which they resent. I incline to say that blend-in ads work only for very well targeted ads, coming naturally as if belonging to the content. Positioning ads outside the content area would be effective mostly with advertising that builds brand awareness, based on image impressions.

Mental Imagery

Again, a pleasant, uncluttered design, a balanced look of the page contribute to a positive perception of the page from the part of the reader and to a more open state of mind. A professional layout is important. It inspires confidence, people don’t want to purchase from a just any backyard business.

Subjectiveness

Patience

A golden rule: don’t abuse your readers’ patience (for they usually don’t have one)! Web pages must load quickly, ads must not be placed in readers’ way and should be kept to a reasonable number.

Purpose and Mood

Are more related to the topic of your site and the type of content you publish. The idea is that users’ purpose anad mood can be influenced by copy.

Degree of Interest

Besides relevant, good content, that answers questions, the reader’s interest is influenced by involvement and interaction. Keep your reader involved, integrate your ads into an interaction environment: these will work wonders on your CTR.

User’s Degree of Acquaintace with Web Surfing

Net savvy users have developed certain immunities, such as ad-blindness. These are less likely to click on any ads. Customizing ads for this type of readers means harder work; the result must be ads of high relevance (and remarkable ad texts!), with an aspect as close to the rest of the page as possible, as if they were a natural continuation of your ideas.Important! avoid default formats.

Site-related Variables

The type of the site and the topic attract visitors with different interests with different behavioral patterns.

Site Type Readers vs Browsers

Whether the visitor is a “reader” or a “scanner/browser” depends also on the site type content and topic. Generally, readers are regular visitors while “scanners” are the ones who look for information and will not spend too much time on the same site. Site topic and content are most times factors in bringing more “uniques” or more regular visitors. Though not as a rule, these apply to many sites:

Sites Attracting Unique Visitors

These are mostly commercial sites, content sites. Statistics say that unique visitors are more likely to be your clickers, for regular readers are more used to your pages’ look and your ads. Contextual advertising works well with these sites. If you’re headed for unique visitors, make your site “SE-friendly”. They come mostly from search engines and are said to be “pre-qualified” clickers. So, your efforts should be directed towards keywords and keyword phrases optimization. The ideal would be to go beyond the technicalities, that is finding out what are the most searched for keywords in your area of preoccupations and try to find out why these are popular, try to find a behavioral pattern. This can be achieved by statistics and analysis.

Find out some niches in your area and the users’ behaviour within them � that is, lists of searches and then see what is it customers want. This will solve your puzzle and give you exact hints towards what works best for your site. Keep in mind: unique visitors are mostly “browsers”. Use ad placement and ad customization techniques that apply best for this type of users.

Sites with Regular Visitors

These are mostly forums, blogs and news sections (though news are somewhere in between). If you own sites with many bookmarks, that attract especially repeat visitors, then either you will be very imaginative in customizing your ads and finding new ways to interest your readers into clicking or if not the case, better use CPM based advertising. Brand bulding/reinforcement advertising works better in this case.

Site Theme Relates to Visitor’s Mood and Purpose

Commercial Sites

Sites selling and promoting products are more suitable for CPC advertising.By their specific, this type of site will attract visitors looking for a specific product/service/business opportunity. Thus, users are more in a buying mood, are looking for a way to spend their money profitably. These are clickers.
Content Sites, Blogs, Forums
Unless you market specific products, your readers will land on your page without the express purpose of buying something. However, you can influence your reader’s mood and needs thru witty, sales-directed copywriting. You just need to know some basic things that sell. One is that people are more likely to buy from persons they know, like and trust.

So, what will help you build these? Good content and structure. Especially with content sites, these are fundamental issues to focus on (unlike commercial sites that focus more on products). Good content, profesionally written and formatted for the web, containing information that is of high interest and relevance for the reader, within an easily manageable structure and good targeting on a specific theme are imperatives. On one hand these mean bulding confidence, the first step in selling. On the other hand they will attract well-targeted ads, more likely to interest your reader.

Great content will give you credit to your reader. Once you’ve gained trust, it’s easy to direct your readers: you just give recommendations and the results will appear. (Avoid being too explicit in recommendations, though � for example, directing readers towards clicking on ads is against AdSense� Program Policies.)

With blogs and forums, it is a different story. Not all forums and blogs are accepted for AdSense (or even if accepted, they must be also profitable). Only genuine, specifically-themed blogs and forums, with highly interesting content are suitable.

These conditions being fulfilled, forums and blogs are perfect as a source of advertising money they have what is very difficult for others to achieve: reader’s trust, liking and involvement.

Richard Warren is a veteran user of Google Adsense and is skilled in the art of boosting CTR and Adsense revenue. For a complete Adsense how to guide visit http://www.adsensehowtos.com.

Google Adwords, the final frontier, the novice internet marketer’s best friend! But is it really?

Google can make you or break you and according to their own data, 7 out of 10 are broken. This isn’t because Google doesn’t work - it does. You’d better believe it, but like anything else, you have to know how the game is played FIRST, not last. There are 5 things Google really doesn’t want you to know. By reading on you’ll be among the elite 30% who play Google all the way to the bank.

First let me share some background which may be the biggest myth of all…consider it a bonus.

Ads are NOT ranked in accordance with the amount bid. Its kind of like the airline industry. You paid a certain price for your seat. The person next to paid less, yet their seat is the same as yours.

Google ranks using two major criteria…

1) Language in the ad and landing page which determines relevancy (quality)
2) How many times the ad is clicked and impressions shown

So for example, if your ad is shown from a search (quality) 1000 times and is clicked through only 5 times (CTR) which is .5% then you’re in trouble. However, if your ad is clicked on 10-20 times which is 1-2%, then you’re in business. Google will then start raising your position and lowering your cost. Sound crazy? Read on…

Here are the 5 things Google really doesn’t want you to know:

1. All accounts are defaulted to the content network

Google ships ads out to other search engines and content networks. Content network is the default setting for Google Adwords. Being in the Content network of Google is like the kiss of death for any marketer and their wallet. Ads shown here get killed in the click through rate (CTR) because the user isn’t looking to click ads, they are interested in the website’s content- not your ad. Besides this, on the rare occasion they do click your ad, conversions are miniscule. This is also where fraud occurs. Adsense based sites get their ads from the Content network. Ever heard of click robots?

2. Keywords are too general

Let’s say someone is in the mortgage industry… they shouldn’t use the general word ‘mortgage’ if they are selling reverse mortgages or second mortgages. Some people figure the word ‘mortgage’ will cover their bases, but it only drains their bank account.

3. Use quotes and brackets around your keywords

If a marketer is using the keywords making money on the internet and doesn’t use quotes or brackets, then ANY search that has ANY of those 5 words in it will trigger an impression and drive your CTR down dramatically.

If a searcher uses the words ‘making chocolate brownies’ your ad pops up. The quotes and brackets specify the keyword phrase you want to focus on. With quotes, your search phrase stays intact but may have other words before or after it. With brackets, the seracher only used those 5 words in the exact order YOU put them in.

4. Put the keyword in the title or body of your ad

About 80% of marketers don’t use the keyword in their ads at all. I put in the words ‘training my dog’ and only one ad was an exact match. It’s true that people search based on what they want to achieve. Training my dog was my goal. Another example would be ‘buy tires’. If ‘buy tires’ were in the title or body of the ad this would add to the quality score.

5. There’s a way to cut a deal with other search engines and bypass the content network

There are 3 places Google shows ads:
a. Home page
b. Content network
c. Other search engines

It’s not uncommon to have 40% of your ads shipped out to other search engines. Once you track this activity you can cut a deal with them and pay half the price per click.

People who have a bad CTR and poor quality score end up paying more per click for minimal results. Google makes a fortune on desperate advertisers who are often novices in the business opportunity industry.

The average click through price for an inexperienced marketer in this arena is $2.00-$4.00/click. Experienced marketers only pay $.75-$1.00/click.

Google will alternate quality ads and poor ads on the home page in order to satisfy both revenue and users search queries. However, the poor expensive ads are usually getting low conversion therefore draining your account. Is it any wonder the stock price was north of $500 a share earlier this year?

For a sneak peak at the kind of invaluable, money saving information you’ll be able to learn utilizing this information and groundbreaking internet marketing software check out the Promoters Black Box - Internet Marketing Tools on Steroids article on my blog.

There are many things to think about when maintaining an online home business, If you have a website or blog no doubt at some point you will be involved with keyword research and search engine optimization. These things are important for good search engine rankings. But there is something else you should consider when optimizing your website or blog, and that is its Stickiness.

Imagine you have spent days researching your keywords, you’ve optimized your site to please the search engines, you’ve got a good marketing campaign going and your visitors are increasing in numbers daily. You have good tracking software and you diligently analyze your stats. Everything is going to plan except for one thing. No sales, sign-ups or what ever it is you require your visitors to do, they are not doing. What’s the problem?

It could be the ‘hardly ever spoken about’ matter of Stickiness. Many marketers often overlook this when giving advice to newbies. You could have a million visitors a day but if your site is not sticky your visitors will not perform the required actions.

So what is Stickiness? It is the ability to get your visitors to STICK around your site. Thrill them, dazzle them, beguile them, but do not bore them. Your site must contain something that your visitors want, something that will keep them their long enough to consider taking action i.e. signing-up, purchasing, clicking on your adsense ads, something.

Content Is King. It always has been and it always will be. If your site does not offer good quality content, your visitors will leave just as quickly as they arrived. Your site must teach, help or enlighten your visitor. If perchance your content is already good, but your visit lengths are still short consider some of these options.

1. Surveys. Place a survey on your site for your visitors to complete.
2. Competitions. Hold a simple competition and offer a worthwhile prize.
3. Games. Put a game of some sort on your site.
4. Discussions. People love to have their say.
5. Photos. These could be personal or scenic.
6. Newsletter. Offer your readers information they cannot refuse.
7. Articles. High quality content will not be overlooked.

Another idea worth considering is conducting a treasure hunt. The ideas is to search through the site to find an icon hidden some where within the pages, this is an excellent way to get people to search your entire site.

Websites like LabPixies offer a range of cool gadgets that you can put on your site such as the LabPixies clock, video poker game, radio, to-do list and many more. Do some surfing it is easy to find many interesting little things that can help to keep your visitors around a little longer.

Also keep in mind your audience. Be sure that your marketing efforts are geared towards the correct market and that you do not put an entertainment feature on your site that may offend.

Carol King-The Home Biz Lady is a part time Internet marketer, who is dedicated to helping others and providing the best information on Internet marketing. Take a look at Carol King’s Home Business Know How Blog at www.HomeBiz-KnowHow.Blogspot.com