Archives for January 2006

It’s nice to see the Adsense blog giving out specific optimization advice for bloggers today, but it’s simplistic in the extreme. Darren adds meat to the bones but even so, there is still a little something lacking from the rather generic heat-map-esque pictures Google provided.

If you really want to optimize your Adsense, then using those images as a starting point is an excellent idea, but it should not be the end in my opinion. You need to be using the tools Adsense provide you, and quite likely some third party tools also to really optimize for your own blog, your own audience and your own CTR.

As you can see from the images, those palcements are pretty sensible, and if your at a stage where those kind of recommendations are new to you, then they’re an excellent starting point. From there though, you’ll want to look at a number of slightly more advanced ways of evaluating your ad placements.

Using Google’s Own Tools

For starters, you can start by creating custom channels for each and every type of ad you are giong to use. You’ll find this all on your Adsense control panel, and it’s pretty simple to use. Set up a channel for:

• Each size of ad
• Each type of ad
• Each ad placement
• Each color combination

The idea is that by comparing CTR (click through rate) of various position/size/color combinations, using the heatmaps as a starting point, you should be able to fine tune the way you show your ads to get maximum CTR and thus earnings.

For the record, these days im not a big Adsense user, but the principles havn’t changed much since the last time i took a deep look at this. When I last optimized my Adsense, i managed to take my CTR to 33% higher than previously just based on some neat little tricks I’d read, some intelligent display logic and paying close attention to channels.

Using Third Party Tools

There are also a number of excellent third party tools you can use to delve even deeper into your Adsense optimization. One popular one is this script for use in conjunction with Google Analytics.

My personal favorite would be Adsense Tracker, which, despite the nauseating snake oil seller homepage, is a damn good tool for really discovering what works and what doesn’t with Adsense.

Adsense?

Dont forget though, Adsense is not the only fruit! Your best optimization strategy may be to drop Adsense alltogether and use an entirely different program. Andy Hagans would be the best person to pay attention to in that area, though to get you started, i compiled a big list of blog ad programs a while back that you might find useful.

Do let me know what your experiences are with optimizing adsense, if there are any good tools, or tips you can share that i’ve not covered, or any other points you can ad. The power of the performancing community is the community, so lets hear what you have to say!

Until recently I had not noticed so much but now I realise there is a disease spreading through blogs and I see it getting worse. Most affected are product blogs, particularly in my beloved digital photography niche. What is this disease I am so fearful of?

I am sure this problem affects all types of content, I have no doubt newspapers and trade magazines are the worst offenders. In fact I used to work with people who relied on it.

The problem is using press releases as filler.

As bloggers one of the things we need on a daily (or more) basis is content. Content is the fuel of our endeavour. Press releases seem like ideal content, I can see the temptation.

• Timely
• Informative
• Well written (seemingly)
• Authoritative
• Factual

.. most of all it’s news.

So what is the problem? What’s wrong with that?

For a start, every other blogger has the same press releases so your reader will have seen the self same post for the Nth time today. You are not going to get the reputation as a “go-to blog” just repeating verbatim what everyone else has already regurgitated.

Secondly by just repeating what someone else has said you are just buying into their marketing spin. Is it really a revolution? Or is it more likely the CEO and board are hoping it will revolutionise their creaking bottom line?

Thirdly, if search engine traffic is something you care about, you are not going to show up for this content. PR syndication services are regularly indexed by search engines for their own news services, they will get there first.

Fourth and most important, it’s boring. A press release, no matter how well written, is not a good blog post.

I am not saying you should ignore the press releases, they are often the main source of news in your industry or niche.

Solution?

The answer? Add value!.

People visit your blog to hear from you. They can go to Canons own site or PRWeb to find press releases. Add commentary. Counter the spin. Say why this piece of news is important, or why it’s not important. Start bursting some PR bubbles or hype up the good stuff that you are really excited about.

If you are only going to copy and paste then your blog is spam. Do what you set out to do – write. You have your opinions, share them!

I find it interesting that as bloggers we try to create the best content, the most welcoming and usable designs and more reasons for visitors to return but the majority of us get the best adsense rewards by efficiently driving visitors away.

Nick has touched on the strange relationship bloggers have with adsense but it has started to really concern me.

In the past I created affiliate marketing sites and drove traffic to them with every SEO trick in the book (most of the “tricks” not worth the bits and bytes they were written with). While I made the sites initially to push affiliate products I soon started earning “easy” money from adsense. My whole goal changed to getting traffic in to the site and out through my adsense ads. I quickly learned that I was most successful when people saw my snippet in Google and thought my content would provide what they were looking for but really didn’t. Visitors arriving at the sites would make me most money if they quickly left. My efforts switched from good content to good advertising placement. From quality traffic to maximum traffic. At the point where I peaked in earnings was when I felt the worst about what I was doing.

Writing was what I had got into producing my own websites for. I enjoyed the creativity of it and the feedback I got from people enjoying what I wrote. It wasn’t all bad, I still wrote articles for magazines and online publications, but it still nagged at me that my websites were dangerously approaching spam.

We don’t want spammy blogs do we?

If you follow our advice on metrics you will have installed an adsense tracking script so you can see which pages get the most adsense clicks and where the traffic comes from that converts best. Look at your stats and you will probably see what I do. The majority of your adsense-clicking traffic will be from search engines. You are earning most from turning your site into a revolving door. I don’t know about you but I want to produce valuable blogs. I’m starting to think adsense might be bad for bloggers.

So what’s the answer?

I don’t want to be a profit of doom, it’s more in my nature to be positive so presumably I have an answer?

Actually I do but it’s not easy.

I think we as bloggers who care about quality need to wean ourselves off the GoogleCrack. OK, I don’t mean cold-turkey, and no need to remove it entirely. Just as we don’t agree with building your blog with search engines in mind I think building your blog with adsense in mind might be just as detrimental. Again though, I don’t advocate removing search engine traffic, I don’t advocate removing adsense completely.

The solution seems to me for you to find an income stream that goes against the turnstyle philosophy and fits more with the ideals of a content creator. What revenue can you produce from long term, loyal, motivated fans, rather than transient here today gone tomorrow search visitors?

Going back to my affiliate sites has the answer. The times I made most from affiliate schemes was when I posted good, useful content that customers used to make purchasing decisions. People would buy from newsletters and reviews. Often they would have to see these product mentions several times, they must have been repeat visitors.

I know I have mentioned it before but I think ebooks and other content products are a natural fit, and probably the best bet for writers. It’s a natural progression for a visitor to enjoy your content and then upsell to buying your premium content.

What do you think?

I might feel differently tomorrow, although I doubt it. You might have had similar thoughts already or you might disagree with me. I would be really interested in your thoughts on this, is adsense bad for blogs?

I was shocked and disappointed this morning when I saw the news reported by JenSense that Google are going to try “Rich Media” advertising formats through their network

Google AdSense is moving beyond the traditional text and graphical advertising to rich media, including interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. AdSense began contacting publishers last week to be involved in the rich media limited beta test.

OK, apparently they are more likely to be site targeted rather than contextual (bloody good job!) but there is very little information out there apart from rumours because of the people taking part being under NDA.

Do Google not get it? The reason we liked Google Adwords in the first place is because they were text.  Let me spell it out Larry and Sergey,  they were not annoying. Now they are going to throw the most annoying and intrusive forms of online media into the mix. Including the evil evil evil intersitials.  You know the ones, the ad that stops you getting to the content you wanted and forces you to wait for a full page ad to load so you can click it off and get to the page you expected to see in the first place. Nice.

Advertising agencies will absolutely love this, I know I used to work for one. They will love it not because these ads work but because they can charge higher production fees for planning, building and deploying them. So they will be a success in terms of ad budget, just not in any way that matters (ie. customer opinion and ROI).

Would you allow these ads on your blog?
 

We have discussed Link baiting a fair amount here at Performancing. Right now you have an opportunity to see a link bait campaign at work and unfold.

Andy has created a Link Baiting Competition. The clever part of course is the competition itself is link bait!

And it is working, his blog on that thread has received 31 comments at last count and traffic (looking at the public stats) has increased massively.  Before even a decent idea has been posted the links are coming in. They do not even need to choose a winner and they have achieved the link goal already. How about that for link bait? Heh, genius or dumb luck? Bit of both?

So what lessons can we learn from this piece of blog marketing?

Number one is for people to want to talk about something, pro or anti, there needs to be something to talk about. Milliondollarhomepage was worth talking about. Yet another pixel advertising homepage is not newsworthy. Your idea needs to be remarkable. That does not mean unique! Competitions are done all the time, what Andy has done is used it in a new way.

Second, hook into something people are interested in. Many bloggers want to find ways to market their blogs. Link baiting itself is interesting and good to talk about. Heck I managed to find enough to post about more than once, heh.

Third, feed the human self-interest. WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). Cash is an obvious prize, your niche might have a need/want for something other than cash that you can give away with as high a perceived value. You might be able to give away software or free content, telephone consultancy or training, design, etc.

Have a good think how you can use this technique without it being a me-too idea and you might have a big success. As you can see, it works, it is already working for Andy.