Invisible Fence Doesn't Get It
Regular readers will remember that the lawyers for Invisible Fence had objected to some aspects of my site describing my experiences as an Invisible Fence customer and why I found their product useful. I used the site as a simple AdSense case study. I made several changes to the site to accomodate their wishes, but I didn't acquiesce on everything. Although I'm traveling right now (which is why I haven't been posting very often lately… things will go back to normal after Labour Day), I do check my email occasionally, and I was surprised to receive yet another complaint from the Invisible Fence lawyers. Here's the text:
Eric,
Our client appreciates your continuing efforts to comply with our requests and the revisions you have made thus far to your website. As I had noted in my prior email, however, there are still two lingering issues concerning your Pet Fence Guide website, located at the URL, http://pet-fence.ericgiguere.com (the “Website”), that should be addressed.
First, in the top section of the Website's home page, there are links to phrases incorporating the term “invisible” and “fence” or “fencing” (such as “invisible fencing,” “invisible pet fence,” etc.). INVISIBLE FENCING is a registered trademark (U.S. Reg. No. 1371021) of our client, “Invisible Pet Fence” is a phrase that is confusingly similar to our client's registered trademark, INVISIBLE FENCE (U.S. Reg. No. 1600470), and INVISIBLE is also a registered trademark of our client's (U.S. Reg. No. 1765230).
As you detail in your blogs and books, these links are means by which you direct traffic and make money from the entities that appear as sponsored links when one of those links are selected by the visitor. This is problematic for our client because you are essentially using our client's trademarks as a means to direct traffic to websites belonging to our client's competitors, such as High Tech Pet Products. While I understand that the sponsored link results are produced by Google, you have complete control over what phrases are atop the home page of the Website. Accordingly, we ask that you take down any of the links atop the Website that use any phrase incorporating the term “invisible.”
You noted in your prior correspondence to me that you had had discussions with the Invisible Fence marketing department. I understand from my contact at the company that while you were permitted to attach a link to Invisible Fence's website, the company did not permit - as they were unaware of the situation - you to continue compromising the Invisible Fence trademarks by using them as search terms on the Website.
Second, while there may arguably be some fair uses of the marks in the source code, those marks that are included in the meta tags (specifically “invisible fence” and “invisible fencing”) serve no purpose other than to direct traffic to the Website, whereby you will profit from visitors who select the links atop the Website's home page. Accordingly, these two marks must be deleted from the meta data located in the source code of the Website.
Kindly contact me if you have any questions. Your assistance and continued cooperation is much appreciated.
This is starting to get annoying. As I've tried to explain to them before, those links they're objecting to are actually AdSense link units and appear automatically courtesy of Google, totally out of my control. They should go after Google for those.
However, there are two aspects to their letter that I find particularly objectionable:
- The idea that I'm “permitted” by Invisible Fence to link to their site. No one needs permission to link to a site, that's simply ludicrous.
- The request to remove Invisible Fence keywords from the meta tags because they're there to direct search engine traffic to my site. If those tags were completely unrelated to the site I'd have to agree, but in this case they're not: the site is about Invisible Fence products. And it's a positive site to boot. This is why their marketing department was happy to see the site.
I'm going to sit down and write a reply to these folks, but I wish they'd spend their time more productively than going after a happy (well, maybe not so happy anymore) paying customer of theirs. Maybe I'll just take down the site entirely. But that's what they want. Or is it?
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
Dale Carnegie Never Had So Many Friends
Editor's note: While Eric recovers from his vacation and tries to burn
through his backlog of unread emails, we thought we'd keep you entertained by
providing you with this extract from an unpublished manuscript we've come across,
Confessions of an Internet Marketer. In this chapter we hear an unknown
Internet marketer known only as The Farmer describe why the easiest way to
make a lot of friends is to own a large mailing list.
* * * * *
Confessions of an Internet Marketer —
Chapter 8: Dale Carnegie Never Had So Many Friends
I met the Farmer again and ordered him his favorite drink. As usual, he didn't
allow me to write or record anything he said, but here's my recollection of how
the session went.
The Farmer started by asking me a question. “Are you on anyone's mailing list?”
he asked me.
“Sure,” I said, “I've signed up for a few lists. Some because I bought
someone's product, some to get free e-books and software.”
“You need to sign up for way more,” he said. “In fact, I want you to sign up
for every list you can find in the next week. They're all over the place, it won't
be hard.”
“Why would I want to do that?” I asked. “My mailbox is full enough
already!”
“Two reasons,” said the Farmer. “As I told you before, the quickest way to get
going in this business is to see what others are doing and to copy it yourself.
The more lists you're on, the more patterns you'll see as to what works and what
doesn't. That's the first reason.” He took a swig of his drink.
“And the second?” I prompted him.
He smiled. “To make some new friends.” He took another drink. “That's how you
really make money, you know.”
“But I've already got friends,” I protested. “I'm certainly not desperate
enough to join mailing lists to make a few friends. Besides, they're kind of
one-way, aren't they? Wouldn't I be better off using a social networking
site?”
“Ah, but a 'friend' in Internet marketing lingo is not the same as a friend in
real life,” he explained. “If you join a mailing list, what's your relationship
with the owner of the list?”
“A customer,” I replied, “or maybe a client. Or a subscriber.”
“Nope,” said the Farmer. “That's your business school mentality getting in the
way. You're not a subscriber. Or a client. Or a customer. You're a
friend. You join my list and you're automatically my friend.”
“Um, I don't think it's that easy. Don't we need a relationship?”
The Farmer shook his head. “You are in a relationship. You've agreed to
let him or her send you mail. You've given your name. That's a big step in the
online world. It's not a deep friendship, but it's a relationship. And now you're
his or her friend.”
“But I don't think of them as friends!”
“No, you probably don't. But they do. Why else would they call you by your
first name and send you special offers.” He changed the tone of his voice.
“Dear John, I thought I'd let you know about this great offer that's come my
way.“
“OK,” I said, “now you're making fun of me!”
“Kind of,” he admitted, “but what I said about list owners being friends with
their subscribers is true. It's one way the list owners keep their subscribers. If
they can make their subscribers feel special — hey, this guys sends me
good stuff and seems to like me — then they're less likely to
unsubscribe. Which is good, because a list owner needs a lot of subscribers to
make money with his real friends.”
“Who are the real friends?” I asked.
“That's easy,” he answered. “Other online marketers.”
“And that's because…?”
“Because you have lots of friends,” he explained. “You build yourself a
good list where people trust you and other online marketers will come knocking at
your door, wanting to be your friend. Because a friend of a friend is also a
friend, if you know what I mean.” He winked at me.
“If you join a lot of lists,” he continued, “you'll see what I mean. Watch for
someone to announce a new product. Then on the day that the product launches,
check your inbox. You'll be deluged with emails. Each list owner will be talking
about the great product that 'my friend XXXXX' has just launched and how
you should really go and take a look at it now. Trust me, Dale Carnegie never had
so many friends.”
“If I get so many emails,” I asked, “isn't it obvious that the 'friendships'
are fake?”
“Well, most people don't join as many lists as you or I do,” the Farmer said,
“so it's not as blatant. Besides, the marketers have a way to handle that problem:
'You're probably getting mail about product X from others today, but if you buy
it from me I'll throw in these free bonuses'. The list owners are competing
with each other, so if they can get more sales by sweetening the deal with some
stuff they've already got on hand, they will.”
“So the list owners aren't friends with each other?”
“Oh, sure they are,” said the Farmer. “There's nothing wrong with some friendly
competition. Besides, one of those competitors might turn around and offer you a
product to sell to your list someday. Everyone's a friend, you see. They're all
one big happy family.”
“A greedy family,” I said.
“Oh, sure,” he replied, “but what's wrong with that?” He finished his drink and left the building, leaving me alone to contemplate what he'd said. And to pay the bill.
* * * * *
Sponsored Link: My friend Mike has free e-books, audios and software available for you at Mr. OverDeliver. Be sure to check out his great one-time offer, too!
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
New reader-built sites: TeamFR.fr, Qecis.com and Chakras.co.in
Some housekeeping to catch up with. Here are three new reader-built sites:
- TeamFR.fr is the site for “Team Frenchy” — Call of Duty 2 Frenchies Snipers and Servers.
- QECIS.com is a directory that needs work because it's only showing PSAs.
- Chakras.co.in is an introduction to chakras, nadis and kundalini yoga.
Thanks to all my readers, keep up the good work!
P.S.: I'll be posting lightly for the next three weeks while I do other things. Now would be a good time to catch up on the postings you missed before you started reading this blog…
Sponsored Link: Sign up for my free profitable niche discovery course today.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
Laptop Air Travel Tips
This is off-topic, but still of interest to some AdSense publishers, so I hope you'll excuse me for posting this here. I've been thinking about laptops and air travel. As you know, British authorities have banned all carry-on luggage as well as all electronic devices from airplanes leaving the UK. This includes notebook computers, of course. And who knows, these restrictions may spread to other countries. So if you're used to traveling with a laptop — and a lot of online business owners do this — these restrictions can make your life a lot harder. Here are the options as I see them:
- Use video or audio conferencing. Instead of going there in person, consider using a video/audio conferencing solution to hold a virtual meeting. The technology's come a long way in recent years.
- Use alternate transportation. Try driving or going by train instead of flying. Not always possible or practical, of course.
- Check the laptop in with your regular luggage. Given the rampant theft that occurs in airport baggage facilities, especially international ones, this is a risky move. Make sure to do these things before your flight:
- Backup your computer. Do a full backup of everything critical.
- Password-protect the computer. Your laptop will at a minimum have a boot-up password. The hard drive itself can often be protected with a password.
- Encrypt the data. Password protection doesn't protect the data on your hard drive, so use encryption programs to protect the critical stuff.
- Separate the laptop and the data. If you have two or more suitcases, remove the hard drive from the laptop and pack it in a different suitcase.
- Bury the laptop. Don't make it obvious that there's a laptop in the bag. For one thing, don't check a laptop bag, always check in normal suitcases. For another, don't place it on top of the other contents of the suitcase, bury it deep inside.
- Bring the data only. Store the data you need on some kind of portable memory device — an external hard drive, a memory key, whatever. You might be able to take a CF card or an SD card on board with you, otherwise bury the data device in your luggage. Password-protect and encrypt it, too.
- Remotely access the computer. There are many different ways to remotely access and control a computer, from free solutions like VNC to paid solutions like Timbuktu to GoToMyPC. Ideally you'll connect to your computer over a secure line or a VPN connection, so you might have to bring along a token card, which you'll have to stash in the luggage.
- Remotely access the data. Data storage solutions like JungleDisk (based on Amazon's S3 service) make it possible to access your data from anywhere.
- Leave it all behind. If you're traveling for pleasure, maybe you should just forget about bringing a computer along. If you're worried about click fraud and other issues, create a free email account somewhere and figure out how to forward your daily AdSense earnings reports to it, as well as any other mail that is potentially important (avoid forwarding everything, the point is to handle just the critical stuff). Occasionally check that email account from Internet cafes. Stop using the account when you get back home. Or if you have a BlackBerry or some other handheld wireless device, get your mail forwarded to it. (But you'll still have to check the device in your luggage, so be sure it's well-hidden.)
There's no doubt that air travel is getting more complicated and these if these rules spread outside the UK a lot of people are going to be dissuaded from traveling. Even the more relaxed rules forbidding liquids and gels from carry-on luggage are probably going to cause some people to think twice about air travel.
We live in troubled times. But our lives are worth infinitely more than our computers, so if this is what we have to do to be safe then we shouldn't complain.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
How to Get Relevant AdSense Ads (Especially For Bloggers)
This post is an offshoot of my ongoing series on using AdSense with WordPress and yesterday's post on ProductWiki AdSense optimization. The topic is ad relevance and it's not specific to either WordPress or ProductWiki, hence this separate post.
Bloggers often complain about irrelevant AdSense ads on their blogs, but you hear fewer relevancy complaints from non-blog site owners. Why is this? You have look at how AdSense works to see what might be causing those problems.
If you analyze the AdSense patent you'll see that a number of factors come into play when AdSense tries to determine what the page is about:
- The URL of the page
- The page title
- The anchor text of links on the page to other pages
- The anchor text of links to the page from other pages
- The content of the other pages the page links to or that link to the page
- The keywords that appear most frequently within the page
- The keywords on the page that appear less frequently across the entire site
- Search engine queries that lead to the page or to another page that links to the page
Sometimes all it takes is one word or phrase to trigger different ads. Look at these two examples I've concocted (the links open new windows): here and here. The pages differ in only two ways: the URLs are slightly different (abcde-1.html vs. abcde-2.html) and one phrase has been changed. Otherwise, they're identical. But you see different ads on them, don't you?
This is why section targeting is useful. Here are the same two pages with section targeting used to exclude the bolded phrase: here and here. The pages now show the same ads or none at all — use the AdSense preview tool to test different geographies. We've taken out some trigger words and there's not much else left in the content that corresponds to keywords that advertisers are bidding on. We could fix this by changing the URLs to include some descriptive keywords. Here are the same pages with meaningful URLs: here and here. See how important the URL is if there's no biddable content?
So if you're having trouble with ad relevancy, look objectively at your page and see what's on it that might be throwing AdSense off track. Do you have lots of links to feeds and other blog-specific stuff? Try excluding them with section targeting. Are your titles up to snuff? Make sure to include a keyword or two whenever possible. Do you have proper headings instead of plain text made to look like a heading via CSS? If not, fix it. Does the URL structure lend itself to giving AdSense good clues about your content? Fix it if it doesn't.
Remember that to do your testing you'll need to cause the AdSense crawler to visit a page so you can see what it thinks of the content by the ads it displays. The only way to guarantee that a crawl will occur when you want it is to use a new URL for the content. But you don't have to create new pages, you can just use the change the query parameter trick to quickly test changes to pages.
Hopefully this helps!
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
ProductWiki AdSense Optimization
So yesterday I discover (through a newspaper article) that ProductWiki is based here in Waterloo, where I live and work. Then today they post a note in their blog titled Don't settle for Google AdSense about their experiences with Google AdSense versus Shopping.com and how they prefer the latter. As you might imagine, I have a few comments about their post and how they're using AdSense and what they can do to increase their AdSense earnings.
But first, let me reiterate that every site is different and AdSense isn't necessarily the best ad program for your site. And there are other ways to monetize content, such as affiliate links, that are often complementary to AdSense. You have the find the mix of ad programs that is right for you. AdSense is dead easy to use (especially if you read this book) and has (as the ProductWiki folks state) a very large inventory of ads to draw from. So maybe AdSense isn't the best program for ProductWiki. Or maybe they can do things better. Let's focus on the latter and see what we can come up with.
The Heat Map Is Not Always Right
Let's look at a typical page on ProductWiki, the Nikon D80 digital camera. Using my handy-dandy highlight Google ads Greasemonkey script makes it very easy to pinpoint the AdSense ads on this page. Here's the screenshot: [Click on it to see it full size]
Hey, that looks like optimal ad placement according to the AdSense heat map:
Yes, but I don't think it's optimal for this site. The heat map is a general guideline, not the gospel truth. You have to consider the heat map in the context of the page you're trying to optimize.
The problem is that the ads aren't where the visitor focuses his or her attention. If you're surfing through the ProductWiki, you're probably looking for advice on something you're looking to buy. After reading the product description at the top (above the ad), you focus your attention immediately to the Community area of the page, where the user reviews are found. In other words, you skip right over the ad unit. There's nothing in the ad unit to grab your attention because it's just text, and in fact when you land on the page your eye probably wanders naturally over to the camera image in the right hand corner before looking at the text.
The point I'm making is that I think that the text ads would be better placed after or within the reviews. There are a number of approaches you could take here. One is to put a vertical ad unit to the left of the community section. Or you could put the ads immediately after the last review. It needs to be somewhere noticeable.
Use Multiple Ad Units
Why have just one ad unit on the page? AdSense currently allows you to have three ad units per page. So blend them into strategic locations. Put one beside the reviews and one after the reviews. Do some testing to see what works best.
Use Horizontal Link Units
There is no link unit on this page. A horizontal (728 by 15) link unit could be integrated into the top of the page. It's surprising how well those link units can work, especially if they're close to navigational bread crumbs.
Place Images Near Ads
This is a tricky one to get right, but it works well: place one or more images near the ads. Google wants a clean separation between the two, but our eyes are naturally attracted to images and so the ads that are close to those images are more noticeable. In fact, it may be the images in the Shopping.com ads that are making them perform so much better than the AdSense ads. Take out those images and I bet the Shopping.com CTR will plummet.
For example, you could move the image of the product from the righthand corner to be immediately to the left of the “Where to buy” block, thereby bringing attention to the ad. Or maybe you would place a different image there, since moving the image would leave the voting wheel by itself.
Speaking of “Where to buy”, unless ProductWiki is a premium AdSense publisher (and if they are, why isn't their AdSense rep helping them out with these issues?) then they should really change that label to “Advertisements” or “Sponsored Links”. Of course, they may have received permission to label the ads the way they do.
(Psst. While we're talking about things that don't mesh with the AdSense Terms & Conditions… the AdSense code is obviously server-side generated because it's got blank lines in it… it needs to be tightened up to look identical to what the AdSense console would generate…)
Use Section Targeting For Better Relevance
One of the complaints ProductWiki has is that the AdSense ads aren't always very relevant. Well my answer to that is to use section targeting to highlight the important parts of the page, such as the description, the feature set, and the individual reviews/comments. If you run a simple keyword density test on the page you'll see that words and phrases like “2 hours ago”, “last edited by”, and so on are featured more prominently than the more important keywords. In fact, they should probably use section targeting to exclude those useless phrases around the comments (blogs have similar problems — that's why you often see a lot of “RSS” and “blogging” ads on blogs).
Also, it looks like there's only one heading tag (an <h1>) used on the page, and very little bolding or italicizing. These are are clues that AdSense uses to figure out what's important and what's not. I'm going to send them a free copy of my analysis of the AdSense patent, which explains these things in great detail.
Conclusion
There are some more things that could be done, but I think I've hit on the major points. I hope they'll listen to my advice — I normally charge big bucks for this kind of detailed help! Really, it sounds like they should find a happy medium of integrating AdSense ads and Shopping.com ads together on the same page. As long as the Shopping.com ads aren't contextual — and they shouldn't be, since ProductWiki can feed Shopping.com a hardcoded list of keywords — then the two can co-exist.
As for ProductWiki's wishes for more control of the ads shown, I'd like to see that, too, because it would make it easier to fine-tune the ads than playing with keyword density, the wording of the content, and the inclusion/exclusion of parts of a page.
Sponsored Link: Get your special report and analysis of the AdSense patent today, it's only $14.95!
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
Top 5 Ways To Get Banned From AdSense
Every once in a while someone unsubscribes from my AdSense newsletter. My mailing list provider provides my subscribers with a form to use for unsubscribing. On that form there's a comments field where the subscriber can optionally explain why they're unsubscribing. Most subscribers actually give a reason for unsubscribing, for which I'm always grateful. The most common reason for unsubscribing (which doesn't happen very often) is that they're subscribed to so many lists that they can't keep up with the messages. (My list is low volume, though.)
But every once in a while I get a very different reason. Here's the message I got today from a former subscriber:
..just got banned from adsense..now gonna go for online currency trading..
Well, this person seems to have taken the banning quite well, and a mailing list about AdSense certainly won't do them any good anymore. Still, it made me wonder what the person did to get banned. It was probably one of the following items. Here are the top five ways (in no particular order) to get banned from AdSense.
1. Clicking Your Own Ads (Click Fraud)
Click fraud — see my click fraud page — is a hot topic these days, especially with yesterday's release of a Google document critical of third-party click fraud auditing processes. No matter how you slice it, though, there are definitely people out there who click their own ads, or encourage others to do so, for their own monetary gain.
Mind you, accidental clicks do happen and you shouldn't panic if you accidentally click an ad on one of your own sites. Just drop a quick note to Google telling them about it and take steps to prevent it from happening again.
2. Not Following the AdSense Terms and Conditions
It amazes me how many people never fully read the AdSense terms and conditions, often referred to as the TOS (terms of service). Though the TOS is vague about some things (like defining what a content page is), it is very explicit about various things you can't do.
3. Not Following the AdSense Program Policies
The AdSense program policies are technically part of the AdSense terms and conditions, even though they're listed on a separate page. This is where you'll find the information about how many link or ad units you can use on a page, what kind of sites are acceptable, etc.
4. Opening Multiple AdSense Accounts
This has become much harder to do since Google has added algorithms to detect multiple accounts belonging to the same person or entity. Each person or entity can only have one account. If you have a legitimate need for two or more accounts, you must create a separate legal entity (like a corporation) for each additional account, and that entity must separately apply and be approved for a new account.
5. Ignoring Warnings and Questions From Google
Although certain events cause Google to automatically terminate your account, many terminations are preceded by a warning note from the AdSense team. This is your chance to defend yourself and to change your site/behavior in response. If you're not responsive, they'll just go ahead and ban you. (If you're going away for an extended period of time, you should check your mail every day or two and keep an eye on your AdSense earnings as well. Be sure to report any suspicious activity as soon as you see it.)
See also my tips on keeping your nose clean.
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
The Camcorder as an SEO Tool
Search engine optimization (SEO) types have a wide array of tools available to them, ranging from free to commercial. But they're all software. Is there any hardware you can use as an SEO tool? Well, how about your camcorder?
If you really want an eye-opening experience as to how others use the Web, and more importantly how they find (or not find) your site, do the following:
- Put your camcorder on a tripod and aim it at your computer.
- Open a browser window to your favorite search engine.
- Invite a non-techie (this could be your spouse) to sit in front of your computer.
- Adjust the camcorder so that you can see the screen and the subject. Start recording.
- Ask the subject to find your site. Don't give him or her the address of the site, but give a description of the site and tell them to search for it.
- Record what they do. Stifle all attempts to direct them the right way. Do not ask leading questions. Do not imitate Homer Simpson. Let them do their thing.
- When subject finds your site or gives up in frustration, thank them profusely.
- Now watch the video you just took. Take notes on what the subject did or didn't do.
- Repeat this process with different subjects.
- Apply what you learned to make your site more findable.
It's easy to forget that most visitors are not like us. A few video sessions will remind you of that.
Of course, you can also make videos that drive traffic directly to your site. But that's a different kind of SEO…
Sponsored Link: Lots of hype today about the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript. So many of the new sites that you see (like The List FX, Mr. OverDeliver, Secret Page Spy) were built using the Butterfly Marketing techniques that there's probably something to this book, so check it out.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
Google Webmaster Central: New SEO Tools
It's always good to pay attention to what Matt Cutts is saying. Google has created Webmaster Central, a “one-stop shop” for webmasters (that's you) looking to submit their sites to Google, find out why they're not being indexed, and so on. Most of the resources available from Webmaster Central are not new, but now they're conveniently located in one spot. You can also subscribe to the Webmaster Central Blog to keep abreast of new tools and resources.
As part of this reorg, Google Sitemaps is now known as Google webmaster tools. I like the new name better, because “Google Sitemaps” always had an ambiguity to it, either referring to a Google “sitemap” (an XML file listing all the crawlable URLs on a site) or else the special webmaster “console” where you could check to see if your site was being indexed, etc.
If you don't already have a webmaster tools account, now's the time to go grab one. One of the things you can do now is tell Google what the preferred domain is for each of your sites, i.e. do you prefer the “www” version of your domain name or the non-”www” version? You should definitely set your preference. Note that this is no excuse for not redirecting one version to another: if all was good in the world, Google wouldn't even need to add a “preferred domain” option, they would just handle the redirections correctly (see The AdSense-ready WordPress Blog, Part 1 for details on how to do the redirection) and not force you to specify a preference. But they have problems with identifying multiple versions of the same site, so this feature is a little hack to avoid the problem. But you still want to redirect things on your end so that incoming links go to the right spot.
I'm sure more tools will be coming down the pipe in the next few months. Of course, if you're paranoid or a black hat type then giving all this information to Google about your sites is probably not a good idea. There are tools out there like SEO Elite that can help you get better rankings without Google's help.
Sponsored Link: Get free e-books and software from Mr. OverDeliver.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
Six Degrees of Web Separation: How to Link Multiple Sites
Although today is a holiday in most of Canada, that doesn't stop me from writing! This tip is more about search engine optimization (SEO) than AdSense, but since good SEO practices are critical to getting traffic and to obtaining relevant and useful ads, it's always important to pay attention to SEO.
Multi-Site Linking
Today's topic is multi-site linking. It's not uncommon for AdSense publishers to branch out and create more than one site or blog. In fact, one could argue that you almost have to do that to make serious money with AdSense or any other content monetization method — see my free e-book for why this is so.
It's very tempting to link your sites together so that visitors can find the other sites and to spread PageRank around, especially if one or two of your sites are very popular and/or authoritative. But random linkings between sites can do you more harm than good.
It's All About Relevance
As the Web continues to evolve, more emphasis is being placed on the relevance of links. If a site links to an unrelated site, the value of that link is degraded by the search engines. Do it enough times and the value of all links on that site can be downgraded and even the site itself may get flagged as being irrelevant or non-authoritative.
Google in particular puts a lot of trust in the perceived authority of a site. One can assume that they have or are developing systems similar to TrustRank to determine how “trustworthy” a site is. Google employee Matt Cutts, who heads up their search quality team, often discusses sites with irrelevant links on them to explain why those sites have been downgraded or dropped entirely from the Google search index.
So think before you link: is the site you're linking to relevant to the discussion at hand? Is the page you're linking to the most relevant page for the topic?
But how then is the average AdSense publisher supposed to link his or her sites together if they're on completely different topics?
Six Degrees of Separation
The answer lies in the six degrees of separation concept. This is the theory that says any human can be linked to another human via at most six hops: if you're my friend/spouse/co-worker/child that's one hop; if you're a friend of one of those, that's two hops; etc. Although every person only has a small number of direct links to other people, the network of links grows exponentially as the people that the others link to are considered and so on.
Now apply this concept to the Web: instead of linking directly to a site, link to another site that links to the destination site. Or link to a site that links to a site that links to the site. And so on and so forth. The trick is to keep the links relevant along the entire path. That's what's going to get you the most bang for the buck.
A concrete example might help clarify this. Say you have created two sites, one about dogs (a la pet fence guide) and one about gardening (I don't have one of those). There's probably no reason to directly link the two sites to each other. But what if you created a third site that could link to both of the other sites and that the other sites could link to?
Dogs. Gardening. Hmm… How about a site about common plants that are harmful to dogs? You could easily link to it from the dog and gardening sites. And it could link to the other two sites itself. Ideally, you'd deep link to pages within the sites and not just their home pages.
And here's a twist on this strategy: make these “linking” sites (you may need more than one to make the transition from topic A to topic B) non-commercial. Don't display any ads on them. No affiliate links. Just content. Now get those sites into the DMOZ, the Wikipedia and other directories or sites that like non-commercial sites. Sure, you won't make money directly from these sites, but there will be a spillover effect to the sites they link to.
Not everyone wants to link their sites together. But if it's something you do want to do, think about creating intermediate/transitionary sites as an SEO tactic.
Sponsored Link: Review my AdSense case study for a step-by-step account of how to develop a simple site monetized with AdSense.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense.
DB4T: A reader-submitted site
Another reader-submitted site, DB4T.com is a directory of technology and gaming. The owner of the site wrote to me about the problems he was having with getting his blog listed in the search engines:
I have tried to submit my site to Google and Yahoo. However, it takes a very long time for the spider to crawl my site. Now, I can search my site from Google but not Yahoo. I also don't get many visitors to my website.
Getting a blog indexed is actually very easy. Besides submitting the URL of your site to Google, Yahoo and MSN, also submit the feed for your blog to those three. Use the links on my handy-dandy Search Engine Submission Pages list. Of course, a link to your site from a frequently-indexed site like this one will pretty much ensure that the indexing happens. That's why I offer this service to my readers!
Of course, getting indexed doesn't guarantee you'll get traffic. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know I talk a lot about strategies and tips you can use to get more traffic. Spend some time walking backwards through the postings — it'll be worth it!
Sponsored Link: Have you taken my free Profitable Niche Discovery course yet? No? Why not?
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense.
Anecdota.org: New reader-built site
Another reader has setup a new blog thanks to the information in my book. Anecdota.org collects anecdotes from all over the web, publishing only the best stories that it finds.
Again, if the owner of the blog will excuse me, here are some ways to improve the blog:
- First of all, there are limits to what you can do using a Blogger-based blog. The good thing is that Anecdota.org has its own domain and is not using a Blogger subdomain. Think about switching to using WordPress, though.
- The layout needs some work. It would be nice if the box containing the blog posts and the box on the right with the topics, archives, etc. lined up. Also, the home page link looks out of place by its lonesome. (And it doesn't work on individual post pages…)
- Speaking of the home page link, it might be worthwhile to place a horizontal link unit next to it, since you have all that empty space to work with.
- The placement of the AdSense banner right above the entries like that isn't great. Again, since you're using Blogger there are limits to what you can to customize the layout. Ideally you'd want an ad unit associated with each of the top 3 blog entries, but I'm not sure you can do that with Blogger (it's trivial with WordPress). So for the main page of the blog you could try placing a leaderboard ad in the header area and one at the bottom, though the latter really wouldn't be seen by anyone. If you could get Blogger to only show the last 3 entries in your blog on the home page then you could place an ad unit at the top or bottom of each post and not go over the 3-per-page rule. You can certainly do this for individual blog posts.
- You're linking directly to the original articles for where the anecdotes came from and not making it easy to read them directly on your own site. You might want to rethink that, and you might want to add some commentary about the postings. (Don't get me wrong, you need to credit the original source and link back to it… but at a minimum open those pages in new browser windows…)
Yes, it needs work. But everyone's first blog needs work. I was playing with this blog's design for quite a while, and I still tweak it once in a while. The important thing is that the blog is started and that it's got some real content to it. Good luck!
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense.
The AdSense-ready WordPress Blog (Part 4)
Note: if you like this post (and the others in the series), please take a moment to bookmark it on Digg, del.icio.us and other social networking sites you use. There are convenient links for Digg and del.icio.us at the bottom of the post…
Sorry for the delay in continuing this series, it's been almost two weeks I think since I posted Part 3. Be sure to read it and Part 1 and Part 2 before continuing.
Plugins
In this installment we're going to add some AdSense code to our WordPress blog. First, though, we should install some useful plugins.
A plugin is an extension to WordPress. Written in PHP, they are provided as a set of files that you install in the plugins subfolder of the wp-content folder. So your first job is to figure out where this folder is on your system, because you'll need to copy the plugin files over to it via FTP.
The easiest way to copy those files is via an FTP application. The one I recommend is the free FileZilla application, but there are other popular choices out there like CuteFTP. Or you can just do it at the command line if you're so inclined. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which client to use.
Plugins are usually distributed as a single ZIP file. You unzip the file into a folder on your desktop computer and use the FTP client to copy the files up to the site hosting your blog. Simple plugins often consist of a single PHP file and can be copied directly to the plugins folder. More complicated plugins with several files are usually stored in their own folder, and normally you copy the folder itself into the plugins directory — this is where an FTP application like FileZilla comes in handy because you can literally just drag and drop the folder from your own machine up to the website.
In any case, here are some plugins I recommend installing:
1. SimpleTags makes it easy to insert Technorati tags into your postings, either by surrounding individual words/phrases with “” and “” or by adding a “
” section at the end of the post.2. AdSense-Deluxe lets you insert AdSense ads into individual posts by inserting an HTML comment like <!–adsense–>. That inserts the default AdSense code, you can also insert named blocks of code using syntax like <!–adsense#halfbanner–>. Or you can insert the blocks directly into your page templates. We'll look at this one in more detail below.
3. Sociable automatically displays links to various social bookmarking sites (Technorati, del.icio.us, etc.) at the end of each posting.
4. Google Sitemap Generator generates a comprehensive sitemap of your blog. Use it with your Google Sitemaps account to ensure that Google is finding all of your posts from the beginning.
This just scratches the surface of available plugins, of course, and at some point you should spend some time seeing what else is available to enhance your blog.
Adding The Code
Now it's time to add some AdSense code. The first thing we're going to do is modify the page templates to add a horizontal link unit to the top of each page. You'll need to use the theme editor discussed in Part 3. Don't worry, this will be a very simple change!
You actually need to change three templates. Let's start with the page template. In WordPress parlance, a page is a non-blog HTML page. A blog's About page is a typical example — see this one. Notice the horizontal link unit immediately below the header? That's what we want to do.
Login to the administration console for your blog, click Presentation and then Theme Editor. From the list of templates on the right click on Page Template. What you see should look like this:
<?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<div class="entrytext">
<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page »</p>'); ?>
<?php link_pages('<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', '</p>', 'number'); ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
<?php edit_post_link('Edit this entry.', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>
</div>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>
Again, this may look complicated, but it's not. The part you want to focus on is the second line, the first div tag. This defines the part of the web page where the WordPress page contents are found. Insert the AdSense code right after this line so that the template looks something like this:
<?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
<div style="width: 468px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-5964030199537728";
google_alternate_color = "FFFFFF";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 15;
google_ad_format = "468x15_0ads_al";
google_ad_channel ="1500227689";
google_color_border = "FFFFFF";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "0000FF";
google_color_text = "000000";
google_color_url = "008000";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
</div>
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<div class="entrytext">
<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page »</p>'); ?>
<?php link_pages('<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', '</p>', 'number'); ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
<?php edit_post_link('Edit this entry.', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>
</div>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>
If you look carefully, you'll see that I wrapped the AdSense code in another div tag. This is to add some padding above and below the link unit. It's usually a good idea to wrap your AdSense code in a div like that so you can position the ads perfectly within your layout.
Now do you see why in Part 3 we increased the size of the narrowcolumn CSS style to 468 pixels? It's so we could match the size of the link unit.
Another alternative would be to use the larger horizontal link unit size (728 pixels) and put the link unit at the very top of the page, in which case you'd need to modify the Header template. You could also place the link unit right in the heading box itself provided you weren't using a gradient background, since AdSense only supports solid colors for ad and link unit backgrounds.
You would make similar changes to the Single Post and Main Index Template templates, inserting the AdSense code immediately after the topmost div tag in each template.
Using AdSense-Deluxe in Templates
An alternative to manually inserting the AdSense code in three different places is to let the AdSense-Deluxe plugin handle it. You first go to the AdSense-Deluxe configuration page (you'll find it under the Options tab once you've activated the plugin) and configure an AdSense block with the link unit code. Let's call it “narrowlinks”. In the three templates, add this code immediately after the first div tag:
<?php if( function_exists('narrowlinks') ) :
adsense_delux_ads('narrowlinks'); endif; ?>
Then whenever you change the link unit code on the AdSense-Deluxe options page your changes will immediately propagate to the pages that use that block of code.
At this point you'll have a blog that displays a horizontal link unit on most pages. Next time we'll look at getting the AdSense to display within individual blog posts.
Sponsored Link: Free keyword tools are available at Secret Page Spy. Join now (it's free) and you also get a copy of AdSense Money Machine, an e-book about AdSense, and a bunch of other books and software.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense.
Google Pays You To Build Web Pages
Well, it's official, you can now put AdSense on websites created with Google Pages. So, in effect, Google is (indirectly) paying you to build web pages. I'll have more to say about this later, but this is no surprise. People looking to build MFA sites will have to be careful about using Google Pages if they also use other Google services — there's a lot of data there that Google can mine to find some “interesting” behaviors.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense.