Keyword Elite AdSense Arbitrage Experiment (Part 7)
Again, please refer to the previous parts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.
Time For A New Niche?
Although the first couple of days of results are muddled because I screwed up the channel IDs, it looks like I'm losing money. Not a lot, obviously, because I'm only bidding $0.05 per click, and I haven't been running it for very long, but at this point I don't think it's a winner. I did play with the ad text and with the page itself (I've actually moved it to a different URL to make sure anyone reading this series wasn't tampering with the results) but so far I haven't seen a big difference in the earnings. It's still early, but I think I'll look for a different niche.
This is what makes arbitrage so hard to do, of course. It's not like the best niches are obvious to everyone, otherwise everyone would be doing the same thing.
Omigod, you mean I have to do work?
Analyzing the Bid Gaps
Still, let's do some further analysis to see why spyware removers wasn't a good choice. Remember, I was just following the vague steps described in the free report, which is basically a pre-sell for Keyword Elite, where I chose the keywords to focus on based on their search popularity, not really looking at much else.
But I have access to a more sophisticated (and, admittedly, more expensive) tool called AdSenseAccelerator. One of the features that it has that's missing from Keyword Elite is a way to do bid gap analysis. In other words, it lets me see how much advertisers are really bidding for specific keywords at different bidding positions. By looking at the bid gaps (the difference between successive bids) and how quickly the bids drop down into the sub-dollar range we can determine whether a given keyword is likely to make us money or not.
And remember, the bids you see listed for advertisers are what the advertisers pay for search network bids, not for content network bids, so you have to discount those values greatly to come up with reasonable values for AdSense pages. So a $0.20 bid price will just as likely give us only $0.03 per click. Or less! If we're paying $0.05 to get the traffic then we're losing money, especially since not all the visitors we send to the page will click an ad on the page.
But I won't do the analysis today, I have to get ready for a book launch tomorrow…
Sponsored Link: Last chance to buy Uncommon AdSense at a special pre-launch price…
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
How Google Could Make Even More Money
Much as I think Keyword Elite is a powerful tool, I also think it's a very frustrating and non-intuitive keyword tool. And I hate the way I have to depend on Overture numbers to get search query numbers when it's Google I'm targeting. But Google doesn't give us the numbers we want, only supplying vague approximations via Google Suggest, Google Trends, etc.
If ever Google finds its revenue streams drying up, there's one easy way they could bring in a pile of cash, and that's by creating keyword tools that give outsiders insight into what's happening with the Google search engine. What are people querying for? How often are they querying? Those kinds of things. A lot of people would pay for that kind of data. I know I would.
Not that Google needs my advice on how to make money.
Sponsored Link: Get into affiliate marketing big-time with Affiliate “Project X”.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Keyword Elite AdSense Arbitrage Experiment (Part 6)
Please refer to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 of this series before continuing.
Status Update
So the spyware removers arbitrage scenario has been live for a couple of days, and I think I've made a profit. I say I think because I put the wrong custom channel ID on the ads on the page, which means that my tracking for that page was mixed in with the tracing for a completely different site… Obviously I chose the wrong tracking ID from the drop-down list when I generated my code. Oops. So there's a lesson for you, even the guys who generally know what they're doing screw up from time to time!
That said, I think I need to both expand the set of keywords I'm targeting — I'll need to create new AdWords ad groups for that — and tweak the text of the page itself, as I'm not sure it lends itself to much clicking based on the traffic data I can see, even though I muddied the results with the wrong tracking ID.
This is the thing about arbitrage: it takes a lot of fiddling to get it right, and don't be surprised if things don't work at first. Especially because there are three things to play with:
- The keywords you're targeting — do they give you enough traffic? You need lots of traffic to make lots of money with AdSense, arbitrage or not…
- The ad text — is it appealing enough to be clickable?
- The article text — does it leave the user wanting more so that they'll click an ad instead of hitting the “back” button?
If you misfire on any of those, you can either lose money or not make any money at all. I'm going to play around with things and see if I can improve them. It doesn't help that we're flying blind a bit without the explicit details found in the AdSense Arbitrage and Leveraging ebook.
And I'll make sure the tracking's right this time!
Sponsored Link: Buy Uncommon AdSense, my new AdSense book, at a special price, only until January 1!
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Buy Books and Software NOW for 2006 Tax Deductibility
The new year is approaching fast, which means the window for creating tax deductible expenses relating to your Internet business is fast closing. If you were thinking of buying books or software, now's the time to do it to ensure that the expenses are deductible for the 2006 tax year.
AdSense is a Business
If you've made even one cent from AdSense this year, you're running a business, whether you know it or not. The government's going to want to hear about the money you've made. And they will — remember those tax forms you had to fill out before Google would send you any money?
But if you're making money, you're also entitled to deduct certain expenses from that income. For an AdSense publisher this would include at a minimum domain registration fees, web hosting fees and some portion of your Internet connection charges. Even the computers and related hardware you buy will be deductible to some degree, most likely through some kind of capital depreciation. If you have a home office, you might even be able to write off part of your mortgage and related home maintenance expenses. (The rules vary greatly from tax jurisdiction to tax jurisdiction, of course, and you need to investigate what's right for you in terms of what can and can't be deducted — this post is not legal or tax advice.)
Not everyone realizes that books and software that directly relate to your business are usually tax deductible. Which leads us to…
The Uncommon AdSense Tax Special!
My new AdSense ebook, Uncommon AdSense, is officially launching on January 1 at a price of only $47. But I'm offering readers of this blog a pre-launch special: for the next few days, you can buy Uncommon AdSense for only $37, a $10 savings off the regular price. The details of the offer and the bonuses you get are on the Uncommon AdSense tax special page. Ordering is handled through ClickBank, which means there's an 8-week 100% refund guarantee period if you're not satisifed with your purchase. Payment can be made via PayPal or any major credit card.
Yes, the sales page is kind of lame right now, especially the book cover I created myself. I'm in the process of rectifying that. But if you're a regular reader of this blog you know that anything I write is of high quality, and Uncommon AdSense is no different.
Other Recommendations
If you're in the market for other books and software and want to buy them in the 2006 tax year, here are my recommendations in alphabetical order within each category. (I own all of these.)
Books
- AdSense Arbitrage and Leveraging. This is the book by Michael Plante that explains in great detail his AdSense arbitrage technique, a much more expanded version of the arbitrage experiment I'm running right now on this blog.
- AdSense Discovery. This is an AdSense starter package put together by Ben Shaffer that has pretty much everything you need to get started. (Well complemented by Uncommon AdSense, by the way.)
- AdWords Miracle. A good introduction to using AdWords effectively, with an emphasis on getting cheap advertising.
- Affiliate “Project X” (APX). A thought-provoking book by the author of AdWords Miracle that focuses on advanced techniques for affiliate selling. Note: if you buy AdWords Miracle (AM) you can get APX at a reduced price as part of the AM purchase.
- Turn Words Into Traffic. A great introduction to article writing for those who are afraid to write. Gives you simple techniques for writing articles and other content that you can use on your own sites or distribute via article directories.
Software
- Build A Niche Store. A PHP script that lets you easily add pages of eBay auction listings to any of your sites, letting you make money when you refer customers to eBay.
- Keyword Elite. Perhaps the best keyword list creation and manipulation software there is at the moment. Pricey, but well worth it if you're spending a lot of time doing keyword analysis.
But Don't Buy Too Much!
Whatever you do, though, don't overload yourself with too many things. It's better to choose one or two books (Uncommon AdSense is a great choice, hint hint) then to buy a pile of them and have them gather dust (figuratively) on your computer.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Keyword Elite AdSense Arbitrage Experiment (Part 5)
And so we continue the series. Please refer to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 if you haven't been following along.
Step 4: Content Creation (continued)
But first, a few more words about content creation. Someone asked me if it was necessary to use such a simple page template for this to work, especially if it was necessary to use CSS. No, it's not necessary. But I find CSS makes page creation much simpler. You can focus on the structure of the document — title, headings, etc. — without polluting the HTML with <font> and other tags. It makes for much cleaner pages, easier for web crawlers (including the AdSense crawler) to read. And for the humans editing them!
Also, I didn't follow my own advice when choosing the URL for the page, because Synclastic.com/spyware-removal-tips.html exceeds the 35-character limit for AdWords display URLs. The solution was to drop the “.html” part of the URL. This is a common scenario with AdWords, having URLs that are too long, and one strategy is to drop the unnecessary parts of the URL as the “www.” prefix and the “.html” suffix.
Step 5: Advertising the Page
With the page ready, we can now advertise it. You'll need an AdWords account for this, of course.
Assuming you have your account ready, you need two things to start the arbitrage process: text for an ad and a list of keywords. Let's start with the keyword list first, it's easier.
Going back to our initial list of keywords, remember that we chose to focus on spyware removers. That's what we optimized the content for. So that's what we need to optimize our ad for. If you read books like AdWords Miracle you'll learn two important facts:
- Build keyword lists around a single keyphrase
- Include the keyphrase in the ad
The goal is to promote relevancy between the ad and the keywords that will activate it and the page that the ads lands on. If all three are focused on spyware removers then it will cost us less to advertise, because we'll have a higher quality score. Keeping our costs as low as possible is key to making money with arbitrage.
So what I did was use Keyword Elite's filtering tool on the large list of spyware keywords I had built initially (and saved — remember to keep saving your lists as you go along) to exclude all those that didn't have “spyware remover” (note the singular form) in them. I then tripled the list so that the broad, exact and phrase forms of the keyphrase were in the list. I ended up with this list:
a good free spyware remover a good spyware remover absolutely free spyware remover best free spyware remover bps spyware remover completely free spyware remover download free spyware remover free adware spyware remover program free downloadable spyware removers free kazaa spyware remover free online spyware remover free spyware remover free spyware remover download free spyware remover reviews free spyware remover software downloads free spyware remover trials free trial spyware remover freeware spyware remover kazaa cydoor spyware remover kazaa lite spyware remover microsoft free spyware remover microsoft spyware remover norton spyware remover powerful spyware remover safe spyware remover shareware spyware remover spyware spyware remover spyware remover for mac spyware remover free trial spyware remover ratings spyware remover reviews spyware remover spy chaser spyware remover with a free trial spyware remover" spyware remover] webroot spyware remover where can i fin a free spyware remover "a good free spyware remover" "a good spyware remover" "absolutely free spyware remover" "best free spyware remover" "bps spyware remover" "completely free spyware remover" "download free spyware remover" "free adware spyware remover program" "free downloadable spyware removers" "free kazaa spyware remover" "free online spyware remover" "free spyware remover" "free spyware remover download" "free spyware remover reviews" "free spyware remover software downloads" "free spyware remover trials" "free trial spyware remover" "freeware spyware remover" "kazaa cydoor spyware remover" "kazaa lite spyware remover" "microsoft free spyware remover" "microsoft spyware remover" "norton spyware remover" "powerful spyware remover" "safe spyware remover" "shareware spyware remover" "spyware" "spyware remover" "spyware remover for mac" "spyware remover free trial" "spyware remover ratings" "spyware remover reviews" "spyware remover spy chaser" "spyware remover with a free trial" "webroot spyware remover" "where can i fin a free spyware remover" [a good free spyware remover] [a good spyware remover] [absolutely free spyware remover] [best free spyware remover] [bps spyware remover] [completely free spyware remover] [download free spyware remover] [free adware spyware remover program] [free downloadable spyware removers] [free kazaa spyware remover] [free online spyware remover] [free spyware remover] [free spyware remover download] [free spyware remover reviews] [free spyware remover software downloads] [free spyware remover trials] [free trial spyware remover] [freeware spyware remover] [kazaa cydoor spyware remover] [kazaa lite spyware remover] [microsoft free spyware remover] [microsoft spyware remover] [norton spyware remover] [powerful spyware remover] [safe spyware remover] [shareware spyware remover] [spyware] [spyware remover] [spyware remover for mac] [spyware remover free trial] [spyware remover ratings] [spyware remover reviews] [spyware remover spy chaser] [spyware remover with a free trial] [webroot spyware remover] [where can i fin a free spyware remover]
I created an AdWords ad group called “spyware remover” with these keywords (note that I also threw in “spyware” by itself, just to see how it fared, although technically I should put it in a separate ad group) and created a series of ads like these:
Spyware Removers?
Do you even need a spyware remover?
Not if you follow these tips!
Synclastic.com/spyware-removal-tips
Note that the words you enter into your ad are very critical, as they need to entice the user to click the ad and made it to your page. You'll probably need to play around with several different ad variations and see what works. Just remember to keep the ad very relevant to the landing page (your content page) and the keyword list.
Step 6: Enable the Content Network
One very important fact about this method is that it uses the Google Content Network almost exclusively. The content network consists of sites like yours and mine that display AdSense ad and link units. Prices on the content network are much, much more cheaper than prices on the Google Search Network, for reasons I've explained before many times on this blog.
After you've created your initial ad group, go the campaign settings page for the ad campaign and make sure that the content network is enabled and that separate bids for the content network are enabled as well. What this means is that you'll specify separate amounts for what you're willing to spend on the content network vs. the search network. You can even disable the search network entirely. In fact, you probably should, because even if you want to target the search network you should do so in a separate campaign so that the clickthrough ratio for the content network — which is going to be typically much smaller than that of the search network — doesn't affect your bidding for a good spot on the search network.
What I did, then, was enable the content network for the keywords shown above with a maximum bid price of $0.05. Now let's see what happens.
But that's next time…
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Learn About the Google Content Network
AdSense publishers might find the Google Content Network webinar interesting. It explains what the Content Network (i.e. us AdSense publishers) is to AdWords advertisers. Many advertisers have ignored (deliberately or not) the content network because of click fraud and made-for-AdSense (MFA) concerns. With the recent improvements in the way Google is handling the costs of advertising on the CN, they're trying to re-introduce advertisers to the CN. The presentation is seven minutes long, so take a look. If you've never played with AdWords (though I recommend you do) then you'll learn a few things about what advertisers can do with AdWords.
Sponsored Link: Learn about AdSense arbitrage with the AdSense Arbitrage and Leveraging ebook.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Keyword Elite AdSense Arbitrage Experiment (Part 4)
Boxing day is a big shopping day, but I'm planning on staying home today. Let's
continue with the keyword arbitrage experiment. Again, refer back to
href="http://www.memwg.com/blog/adsense/Keyword-Elite-AdSense-Arbitrage-Experiment -Part-3.html">Part 3 href="http://www.memwg.com/blog/adsense/Keyword-Elite-AdSense-Arbitrage-Experiment -Part-2.html">Part 2 href="http://www.memwg.com/blog/adsense/Keyword-Elite-AdSense-Arbitrage-Experiment -Part-1.html">Part 1
AdSense Arbitrage and Leveraging
First, though, I want to state that although I have now actually read Michael
Plante's ebook AdSense Arbitrage
and Leveraging, I'm still going to base this experiment on the information
found only in the free
href="http://www.memwg.com/KeywordEliteAdSenseArbitrage.pdf">AdSense Arbitrage - Still Alive and Well
however. For example, he tells you specifically which
href="http://www.memwg.com/go/keyword-elite.html">Keyword Elite
uses in the different stages of his process. As far as I can tell, he doesn't
leave anything back, and the book has a nice conversational tone to it. I'll do a
full review of it later, but if the arbitrage business is something that interests
you, it's not a bad place to start.
Step 4: Content Creation
To recap, we now have an initial list of keywords to work from:
- spyware
- adware
- spyware anti virus
- anti spyware virus
- about blank
- anti spyware
- anti virus avg
- spyware removers
- spyware remover
- spybot search and destroy
- windows defender
- free spyware
- spyware free
- computer virus
Now our job is to write a small page of content relating to one or more of those keywords. I'm going to focus on spyware removers. Here's what Michael says on page 7 of the report:
… used an article generating
software I own to produce a keyword specific article for some of those high paying
keywords. My keyword density is somewhere in the neighborhood of 6%…. I posted
this article on a domain I already own, under a subdirectory named after the high
paying keyword.
Now, normally using someone else's article isn't recommended, but he makes this
point:
Since my premise here is going
after targeted PPC traffic, I am not concerned about the issue of duplicated
content, since I am not primarily concerned with getting the page indexed.
One important thing he mentions is that he adds an outbound link on the page to
make sure the user has a way of getting away from the page. This isn't strictly
necessary in my opinion, because the user always has the option of hitting the
“back” button to go back. The AdSense terms and conditions only forbid you from
interfering with the user's navigation via the browser buttons. Still, it's not a
bad idea to include such a link. In fact, if you're using someone else's article
instead of your own content then it's often a requirement to include the article's
bio box on the page, which typically includes a link or two back to the author's
website.
Now while I could use software like
href="http://www.memwg.com/adsense-cash-machine-review.html">Desktop AdSense Cash Machine
so I wrote a short article on spyware removal. Here's the link to the
article without any ads on it:
href="http://www.synclastic.com/spyware-removal-text.html">Why You Don't Need A Spyware Remover
If you want to see what the keyword density is like, take the URL for the page
and enter it on this page, the
href="http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html">free Ranks.nl keyword density analyzer
Once I was satisfied with the page text, I moved it to its final URL and
enabled the ads:
Need a Spyware Remover (ad-enabled version)
As you can see, the URL includes the “spyware removal” keyphrase. Remember to keep the AdWords limit of 35 characters for the display URL in mind when you add the page to your site. Alternatively, I could have created a “spyware” or “spyware-removers” subdomain, but I chose to keep it very simple, and it's a free and painless way to test arbitrage scenarios, providing of course you have a domain that is generic enough to use for your content.
I decided to
vary the title a bit, though, and went for “spyware remover” there instead. It's a
good idea to mix up keyword variations whenever you can, which is easy to do when
you're writing naturally. However, you want to write your titles and headings very carefully, because you'll be writing AdWords ads that need to be relevant to the content of the page.
OK, so much for the content, now we need to start driving traffic to the page.
But that's next time…
Sponsored Link: Another good book with detailed instructions is
href="http://www.memwg.com/go/affiliate-project-x.html">Affiliate “Project X”
Eric Giguere wrote
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321321146/ericgiguerecom">Make Easy Money with Google
AdSense. His goal is to get his
href="http://www.memwg.com/blog/adsense/">AdSense blog
blogroll.
Merry Christmas
It's Christmas and most of us are busy with family and friends. While we're waiting for the turkey to finish cooking, I thought I'd just wish my readers a very merry Christmas, from my family to yours!
And yes, we have a new puppy to take Taffy's place, although we still miss Taffy. Surprisingly, Dino's still kicking around — he's 15 now, which is ancient for a dog…
Photo credit to Bob at Picture Yourself.
Tomorrow I'll continue with the keyword arbitrage experiment. And watch this space in a couple of days for a special announcement regarding my new AdSense book.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
h
Keyword Elite AdSense Arbitrage Experiment (Part 3)
As with any of my series, this post assumes you've read the previous parts. Please refer back to Part 1 and Part 2 before continuing.
Step 3: Keyword Analysis (continued)
We left off having used Keyword Elite's to do some quick analysis of spyware-related keywords. I showed you the top 25 keywords sorted by AdWords maximum cost-per-click (CPC) value. The point was to develop a list of high-paying keywords to focus on.
As I mentioned, ordering the keywords by max CPC isn't really a great way to find good keywords because those CPC values are so deceiving. What you want to do is look at the most highly-searched for keywords to develop your initial list of keywords.
So let's go back to the data we analyzed using KE's Project #2 and sort the values by number of searches instead of by AdWords max CPC. Here's what we end up with for the top 25 values:
| Keyword | Results | Searches | R/S Ratio | KEI | Adwords CPC | Adwords pos. | Adwords clicks | Google Campaigns |
| internet explorer | 244,000,000 | 1,346,618 | 181.19 | 7,431.89 | $1.83 - $2.28 | 1 - 3 | 534 - 667 | 10 |
| camel toe | 2,020,000 | 525,540 | 3.84 | 136,728.86 | $0.26 - $0.48 | 1 - 3 | 157 - 199 | 3 |
| spyware | 63,000,000 | 258,228 | 243.97 | 1,058.44 | $7.12 - $8.90 | 1 - 3 | 1,624 - 2,030 | 10 |
| adware | 26,200,000 | 135,474 | 193.40 | 700.50 | $5.98 - $7.87 | 1 - 3 | 383 - 478 | 11 |
| spyware anti virus | 35,800,000 | 131,035 | 273.21 | 479.61 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 11 |
| anti spyware virus | 24,900,000 | 131,035 | 190.03 | 689.57 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 11 |
| hidden camera | 8,390,000 | 116,498 | 72.02 | 1,617.61 | $1.54 - $1.93 | 1 - 3 | 89 - 113 | 8 |
| internet explorer 7 | 185,000,000 | 104,885 | 1,763.84 | 59.46 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 7 |
| about blank | 109,000,000 | 89,612 | 1,216.35 | 73.67 | $4.09 - $5.11 | 1 - 3 | 51 - 64 | 11 |
| spy cameras | 2,640,000 | 83,323 | 31.68 | 2,629.82 | $2.56 - $3.21 | 1 - 3 | 41 - 51 | 10 |
| spy camera | 4,110,000 | 83,323 | 49.33 | 1,689.23 | $2.53 - $3.16 | 1 - 3 | 59 - 74 | 10 |
| anti spyware | 41,800,000 | 78,605 | 531.77 | 147.82 | $4.96 - $6.20 | 1 - 3 | 181 - 227 | 11 |
| spy | 92,700,000 | 69,662 | 1,330.71 | 52.35 | $2.48 - $3.72 | 1 - 3 | 1,571 - 1,964 | 3 |
| anti virus avg | 2,880,000 | 57,068 | 50.47 | 1,130.82 | $4.05 - $5.07 | 1 - 3 | 23 - 29 | 6 |
| spyware removers | 1,840,000 | 56,585 | 32.52 | 1,740.14 | $5.78 - $7.22 | 1 - 3 | 14 - 17 | 11 |
| spyware remover | 4,530,000 | 56,585 | 80.06 | 706.81 | $8.07 - $10.09 | 1 - 3 | 114 - 142 | 10 |
| yahoo inc | 352,000,000 | 49,565 | 7,101.79 | 6.98 | $1.51 - $2.26 | 1 - 3 | 3 - 5 | 2 |
| torrent spy | 1,500,000 | 45,484 | 32.98 | 1,379.20 | $0.18 - $0.27 | 1 - 3 | 15 - 17 | 0 |
| spybot search and destroy | 2,040,000 | 45,468 | 44.87 | 1,013.40 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 7 |
| university of florida | 89,800,000 | 40,430 | 2,221.12 | 18.20 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 3 |
| windows defender | 2,470,000 | 38,323 | 64.45 | 594.60 | No estimate | No estimate | No estimate | 2 |
| free spyware | 47,800,000 | 37,843 | 1,263.11 | 29.96 | $6.34 - $7.93 | 1 - 3 | 141 - 176 | 11 |
| spyware free | 48,600,000 | 37,843 | 1,284.25 | 29.47 | $6.34 - $7.93 | 1 - 3 | 141 - 176 | 11 |
| microsoft windows | 574,000,000 | 37,105 | 15,469.61 | 2.40 | $3.15 - $3.94 | 1 - 3 | 554 - 693 | 10 |
| internet explorer downloads | 135,000,000 | 30,688 | 4,399.11 | 6.98 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 10 |
Warning: Some of the keywords above (the ones involving camel parts in particular) are not safe to explore at work. I considered scrubbing the data a bit, but I thought it best to show the “raw” data. If you do this kind of stuff, you'll occasionally run across questionable keywords in your research, so just be aware that it can happen.
The Searches values come from Yahoo Search Marketing, the organization formerly known as Overture. They're the number of times the given keyword was searched in the previous month. You can access this information directly from the Overture keyword suggestion tool. There are various rules of thumb for converting the search figures into Google search figures — some say you multiple by 2 or 3, some some you multiply by 9 or 10. Anyhow, we're just looking for relative orderings here.
It's amusing to see that Overture considers “internet explorer” to be a spyware-related term. But we'll discount it for our purposes as being too general, as we will anthing camel-related or spycam-related. So we come up with this list of keywords:
- spyware
- adware
- spyware anti virus
- anti spyware virus
- about blank
- anti spyware
- anti virus avg
- spyware removers
- spyware remover
- spybot search and destroy
- windows defender
- free spyware
- spyware free
- computer virus
Some duplication in this list, but on the whole the max CPC bid prices look pretty good for these terms, so we can use a trimmed-down version of this list as our starting point for creating content.
But that will have to wait for next time…
Sponsored Link: If you buy AdWords Miracle, you'll get a chance to upgrade your purchase to include Affiliate “Project X” for a discounted price over buying the two separately…
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Amazon Switches to Monthly Affiliate Payments
It's like the Eagles reunion all over again. Amazon's affiliate program, Amazon Associates, one of the longest-running affiliate programs around, is finally moving to a monthly payment cycle beginning in 2007. This is a big change, because up until now Amazon's program has paid on a quarterly basis, which has always seemed very backwards to me, especially when compared to ClickBank's semimonthly payment cycle. (Unlike AdSense, though, Amazon affiliate commissions earned during a month will be paid 60 dyas after the end of the month.)
Now, I've not really talked much about Amazon Associates here before, although I've been a longtime member of the program, having joined back in 1999 when my first book was coming out. I've never made a lot of money referring people to Amazon for books, though, so it's not been a priority for me. However, Amazon's range of goods is so widespread now that there's definitely serious money to be made if you can refer enough people to the higher-end products. Take The HDTV Shoppe, the site I created in October purely to demonstrate how to integrate AdSense with embedded content like Amazon's aStore. So far, though, visitors to the site have bought 5 television sets through the store. Imagine my surprise… So if you can refer enough people to buy digital cameras, televisions, and other kinds of electronics — things that cost more than books — then you can certainly make a decent income stream from the program. In fact, consumer product sites would do well to combine AdSense, Chitika and Amazon Associates on their pages to see which revenue stream works best for them.
So this is good news for Amazon affiliates and brings their program more into line with how other affiliate programs operate.
Sponsored Link: And what about eBay's affiliate program? You could also use Build A Niche Store to add eBay listings to your site.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Eric Giguere's AdSense Blog Nominated for 2006 Search Blog Award
Thanks to my readers, this blog's been nominated in the “Best Contextual Advertising Blog” category of the Search Engine Journal 2006 Search Blog Awards. There's some pretty stiff competition in the category! If you wouldn't mind taking a few minutes and voting for Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense on the voting form, I'd really appreciate it. It'd be great if I won, but it's just an honor (or honour as I would normally spell it…) to be nominated.
Another thing you can help me with: I'd like to prepare a “best of” page for any new visitors that might be checking out the blog because of the awards. If you wouldn't mind dropping me a note telling me which postings over the last year (I don't need a link, just give me the general topic and I can find the URL) you liked the best and I'll compile them for the potential voters to examine.
And no, I haven't forgot the AdSense arbitrage experiment. I was up early this morning putting the finishing touches (finally!) on Uncommon AdSense, so I haven't had the time yet to write the next post in the series.
Uncommon AdSense, by the way, weighs in at about 100 information-packed pages of interest to all AdSense publishers, beginners and experienced. Now I just have to wait for ClickBank's approval to start selling it. Watch this space! (Those who sign up for the Uncommon AdSense notification list will get first crack at purchasing, followed by my newsletter subscribers, both at a reduced price and with a temporary embargo on affiliate sales…. so sign up today if you haven't already!)
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Keyword Elite AdSense Arbitrage Experiment (Part 2)
If you're just joining us for this experiment, please read Part 1 and AdSense Arbitrage - Still Alive and Well (the latter is a PDF file) before continuing.
Michael Plante's eBook
Not long after I published Part 1 of this series, one of my longtime readers (hi, Ed!) pointed out that the person who's the focus of the AdSense arbitrage report we're using as the basis for this experiment is actually selling an eBook on the topic based on his own experiences. The eBook is called AdSense Arbitrage and Leveraging. I have not read it yet, so I can't tell you if it's worth the money or not. We're going to continue this experiment using the technique described in AdSense Arbitrage - Still Alive and Well.
Michael Plante did visit my blog, though, and left me a note pointing out that my guess that he was targeting the spyware topic was incorrect. Neither was it customer relationship management. Oh well, I did say they were guesses… I'm going to continue on with spyware as the initial (public) topic.
Step 3: Keyword Analysis
At this point I've generated a list of over 1000 keywords related to the spyware topic using Keyword Elite's Project #1. Now we take the keywords and use KE's keyword analysis tool — Project #2 — to analyze them.
Again, the report's not too specific on how this stage works. On page 7:
I used KE to develop some keyword listings for this niche, using project #1, and then ran them through project #2 to get some basic information about searches, CPC, and number of Google AdWords campaigns…. I developed a list of about 10-15 high paying keywords in this niche….
Later on in the report Michael tells us to identify a group of 5-10 high paying keywords for that niche. So let's just settle on finding 10 keywords in our spyware niche.
I ran Keyword Elite on the list I generated yesterday. It actually took over an hour to fill out the list. KE throttles its queries to the various sites it's using so that you don't get banned from using them, so a full-fledged analysis can take quite some time.
Here's the top 25 keywords by AdWords cost according to KE:
| Keyword | Results | Searches | R/S Ratio | KEI | Adwords CPC | Adwords pos. | Adwords clicks | Google Campaigns |
| spyware sweeper | 1,700,000 | 1,698 | 1,001.18 | 1.70 | $21.44 - $26.79 | 1 - 3 | 3 - 4 | 10 |
| spyware doctor | 1,900,000 | 17,924 | 106.00 | 169.09 | $16.09 - $20.12 | 1 - 3 | 31 - 38 | 9 |
| pest patrol | 1,500,000 | N/A | N/A | N/A | $14.91 - $22.37 | 1 - 3 | 8 - 9 | 9 |
| spy sweeper | 1,850,000 | 18,301 | 101.09 | 181.04 | $13.77 - $20.65 | 1 - 3 | 69 - 87 | 10 |
| spyware detection | 2,250,000 | 2,705 | 831.79 | 3.25 | $12.37 - $15.46 | 1 - 3 | 16 - 20 | 11 |
| pestpatrol | 951,000 | 2,782 | 341.84 | 8.14 | $11.64 - $17.46 | 1 - 3 | 8 - 10 | 10 |
| spyware dr | 1,700,000 | 560 | 3,035.71 | 0.18 | $10.99 - $13.74 | 1 - 3 | 2 - 3 | 8 |
| stop spyware | 3,630,000 | 698 | 5,200.57 | 0.13 | $10.79 - $13.48 | 1 - 3 | 10 - 11 | 10 |
| spyware firewall | 13,200,000 | 234 | 56,410.26 | 0.00 | $10.30 - $12.87 | 1 - 3 | 2 - 3 | 11 |
| webroot software | 1,700,000 | 798 | 2,130.33 | 0.37 | $8.17 - $10.21 | 1 - 3 | 3 - 4 | 6 |
| spyware blocker | 1,620,000 | 3,906 | 414.75 | 9.42 | $8.07 - $10.09 | 1 - 3 | 11 - 14 | 10 |
| spyware checker | 1,060,000 | 729 | 1,454.05 | 0.50 | $7.97 - $9.96 | 1 - 3 | 2 - 3 | 11 |
| spyware scan | 2,250,000 | 3,279 | 686.18 | 4.78 | $7.61 - $9.52 | 1 - 3 | 28 - 35 | 10 |
| pc tools | 340,000,000 | 2,982 | 114,017.44 | 0.03 | $7.50 - $9.37 | 1 - 3 | 40 - 50 | 10 |
| spyware killer | 1,600,000 | 3,976 | 402.41 | 9.88 | $7.46 - $9.32 | 1 - 3 | 14 - 17 | 11 |
| spyware finder | 1,580,000 | 299 | 5,284.28 | 0.06 | $7.21 - $10.82 | 1 - 3 | 1 | 10 |
| spyware | 63,000,000 | 258,228 | 243.97 | 1,058.44 | $7.12 - $8.90 | 1 - 3 | 1,624 - 2,030 | 10 |
| free spyware scan | 1,960,000 | 2,402 | 815.99 | 2.94 | $7.10 - $8.88 | 1 - 3 | 9 - 12 | 10 |
| counter spy | 2,550,000 | 737 | 3,459.97 | 0.21 | $6.97 - $8.71 | 1 - 3 | 2 - 3 | 5 |
| remove spyware | 4,040,000 | N/A | N/A | N/A | $6.63 - $8.28 | 1 - 3 | 34 - 42 | 10 |
| spywear | 70,700 | 573 | 123.39 | 4.64 | $6.54 - $8.17 | 1 - 3 | 6 - 8 | 10 |
| anti free spyware | 18,500,000 | 14,243 | 1,298.88 | 10.97 | $6.50 - $8.13 | 1 - 3 | 16 - 20 | 10 |
| anti spyware free | 20,100,000 | 14,243 | 1,411.22 | 10.09 | $6.50 - $8.13 | 1 - 3 | 16 - 20 | 10 |
| detecting spyware | 1,250,000 | 478 | 2,615.06 | 0.18 | $6.47 - $8.09 | 1 - 3 | 1 | 11 |
| spyware tool | 13,500,000 | 525 | 25,714.29 | 0.02 | $6.40 - $8.00 | 1 - 3 | 10 - 12 | 11 |
The naive approach would be to just take the first 10 keywords in this list. But the maximum CPC values shown here can be quite deceiving, as I've written before. Just because the top advertiser bids very high doesn't mean that the next-highest advertiser is bidding anywhere near the same amount. There may be a huge bid gap between those bids. Or between the 2nd and 3rd place bids. And, of course, let's not forget that these values we're seeing are for bidding on Google's search network (the search engine results pages) and not on the content network (AdSense sites), so they're definitely not reflective of the kind of money an AdSense publisher would get per-click. (Please refer to my high-paying keyword lists series for more details.)
Now, someone with access to AdSenseAccelerator could take those keywords and do a formal bid gap analysis of them, but I won't do that here because I want to replicate the experiment as described in the report.
The point of all this is to find the keywords that will trigger higher-paying ads. We'll then write content around those keywords and send traffic to that content by bidding on lower-priced keywords. If enough of the traffic converts and the spread between the lower-priced and higher-priced keywords is high enough, we end up spending money to make money — hence the arbitrage.
I think I'll stop here for now and let you think about the keywords shown above. What do you think is a good keyword to focus on, and why? We'll continue with the analysis in the next instalment.
Sponsored Link: Learn how to use AdWords effectively with AdWords Miracle.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Google's Official Word on AdSense Ads and Image Placement
AdSense publishers should read Google's new post about images placed near AdSense ad and link units for more information about what Google considers to be acceptable ways to combine images and ads. Actually, in true Google fashion, it's not so much a set of firm guidelines but a set of examples of what not to do. (Remember my posting way back on how Google doesn't explicitly define what a “content” page is? Same general issue.)
With the examples shown, I'd say that 90% or more of the sites I come across that place images near ads are in violation of the rules. I particularly like this example:
Clever use of a half-banner ad in the top rectangle.
Remember the good old days of AdSense when the gurus were recommending you place big honking arrow images pointing straight at your ads? Things have certainly changed since then…
What's really funny is that at least one site that the Google guys have featured in one of their case studies is in violation of the rules according to this post.
Bottom line: when you put images near your ads, make sure the images don't have anything to do with the ad and don't line up with the ads, and use different colors and/or full borders to distinguish them from each other.
At least, those are the rules for now.
Sponsored Link: Add eBay auctions to your sites with Build A Niche Store and make money by sending traffic to eBay. Plus get lots of lovely content for AdSense to analyze and display relevant ads….
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Keyword Elite AdSense Arbitrage Experiment (Part 1)
A couple of weeks ago in my posting AdSense Arbitrage Explained I mentioned a free report called AdSense Arbitrage - Still Alive and Well that gave a step-by-step account of how one person spent just over $1000 on AdWords to earn over $4000 from AdSense. The report's primary purpose is to sell the Keyword Elite product, which played a big part in the arbitrage's success. I thought it would be interesting to follow the steps outlined in the report and see if we can achieve some similar success.
Step 1: Select a Niche
So what I'm going to do is find three niches that I can use for arbitrage purposes and follow the model Michael Plante (the guy who did the arbitrage) used. Unlike Michael, however, I'm going to reveal one of the niches I'll be pursuing, although for the sake of experimental purity and to keep any clowns from skewing my results one way or another I'm not going to reveal the other two niches. (I reserve the right to pull the “public” niche out of the experiment at any time if I think there's tampering occurring.)
Although Michael didn't reveal his niche, he did say that it was a type of software. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume he was targeting the spyware removal niche. I know from previous research that it's a pretty hot topic. If you look at the ClickBank Marketplace you'll see that spyware removers and registry cleaners dominate most of the top spots in the “Computing & Internet” category. Like I said, a guess, but an educated one: as long as Windows is the dominant operating system, there will always be people looking for spyware and adware removers. A niche where people are willing to spend money is a good niche to be in, something that a lot of AdSense publishers forget.
A caveat here: in the report, Michael mentioned that he tried the same techniques with 4 or 5 other niches and he wasn't successful with them initially. This is why niche selection is critical if your primary purpose is to make money from the niche. Not all AdSense publishers are out to make a living from their sites. The small publishers who are the most successful work in niches that they're passionate about. The trick is to find a passionately profitable niche.
What if I'm wrong about the spyware niche? Well, we'll find out soon enough once we analyze the list of generated keywords. I could be way off with the niche. Maybe Michael actually targeted customer relationship management (CRM) software. We'll see what works…
Step 2: Generate 1000 Keywords
After selecting his niche, Michael used Keyword Elite (KE) to generate a set of 1000 keywords. This is done using what KE calls “Project #1″.
A word about how Keyword Elite works. KE is really five different keyword tools bundled into one software package. (Note that there's nothing in KE that you can't do yourself using other tools or via manual processes. The main reason to buy KE is as a timesaver for keyword research. I prefer to spend my time doing other things than compiling large lists of keywords.) Each tool is called a “Project” for some unknown reason. I think the terminology is confusing, as to me a “project” is something you work on, not a type of tool. But anyhow, maybe that's just the software developer in me talking. Project #1 is the Create a keyword list tool.
Michael gives some details on page 21 of the report on how he generates the initial list of keywords:
… focus on general, one-word terms for the 1st round… and focus on those that are high priced “sell” items, where you will have larger companies, with nice, fat advertising budgets, that are willing to pay those high bids on keywords.
This is great advice. Again, you have to focus your energies on things that people are willing to pay for. And you want a niche where there are advertisers paying good money for the tops spots in AdWords. Remember, you're going to make your money on the difference between what you spend on AdWords to send traffic to your site and what you make back via AdSense. Obviously you need to spend less per-click than what you make per-click, so you need to find gems in the rough — the high-paying keywords among a sea of lower-paying keywords — that you can write your content around.
As I've been writing this, Keyword Elite has been generating me a list of 1000 spyware-related keywords. The generation process takes a while, because I've asked KE to query Google Suggest, Overture, Ask.com and Yahoo as the keyword sources. This takes a good 15-20 minutes depending on what else you're doing with your computer. (Imagine what it would take to do by hand!) In fact, it's not done yet, but here's a sampling (you can see the list as it grows) of the keywords it's generating for me:
- adware free remover spyware
- spyware anti virus
- free spyware download
- spyware remover
- delete spyware
- spyware blocker
- free anti spyware
When it's done, I'll be able to use some of the features of Project #1 to manipulate the list in various ways, such as removing phrases that match certain criteria, adding prefixes and suffixes to the keywords, etc. The point, though, is to generate a large set of keywords that you'll then pass through Project #2 (the keyword analyzer) to see which are the high-paying keywords to focus on.
Join me next time as I move past the keyword generation phase to the keyword analysis phase.
Sponsored Link: You can also use Keyword Elite with Affiliate “Project X” to make money with affiliate selling, as the latter includes some techniques written specifically fo KE owners.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Google Enters The Domain Business
Although not everyone knows it, Google's been a domain registrar for quite a while now. But they did this primarily so they could get access to useful data about domains, such as when they were first registered and how long they're registered for. They can factor this information into their search algorithms to help discern “quality” sites from the riff-raff. (Of course, their definition of “quality” may not agree with yours, but that's a different topic…)
Anyhow, today Google has officially entered the public domain registration business by partnering with a couple of other registrars. The domains will sell for $10 a year. They're really aiming this service at people who are using the “Google Apps For Your Domain” suite.
Now, unless you're a real Google lover, I wouldn't get too excited by this. You can get .com domains today from 1 & 1 for only $5.99, which includes privacy. That's a pretty good deal. Even using GoDaddy directly will get you domains more cheaply.
Also, conspiracy theorists will no doubt conclude that this is just one more way for Google to get access to information about who actually owns which sites.
I've always recommended keeping your domain registration and web hosting separate. I'd say you should extend this separation-of-church-and-state principle to Google, too. You make money from Google with AdSense. Go somewhere else for your domains.
Sponsored Link: Affiliate “Project X” is a different way of thinking about affiliate marketing.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Read this AdSense Blog By Mail
For a long time now this blog's been available as an email subscription, which is handy for people who don't use RSS readers (like Bloglines) and don't like to remember to visit this site. I use AWeber's blog-to-email service, and it was really easy to set up.
Now, I've had some complaints from my readers that I'm posting too much, so for them I'm offering a second blog-to-email option. Instead of getting one email per posting, you can now get one email per 10 postings. So that will mean approximately one email every 6 to 8 days.
If you're interested in this option, send a blank email to memwg-blog-10@aweber.com. If you want the regular 1-mail-per-post option, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com.
You can unsubscribe any time from either list, of course. Same with my free AdSense newsletter.
Sponsored Link: Check out the new home page for Build A Niche Store.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Do You Have An "AdSense Will"?
My 7-year-old daughter asked me the other day who would take care of her if my wife and I were both dead. I don't know what prompted the question — perhaps the recent deaths of her grandfather and one of our dogs — but I knew the answer because it's explicitly spelled out in our wills. But it did make me think about a related issue: what happens to my AdSense sites when I die?
The sites keep running, of course. They'll keep making money, though over the long term I'd expect revenues to go down, especially those tied to (by then dormant) blogs. That's the whole point of creating a passive income stream with AdSense and/or embedded affiliate links.
The problem comes in managing it all. If I dropped dead tomorrow, my wife would have no clue what to do with my sites. Currently I use two different domain registrars and four different hosting service. I have umpteen different affiliate accounts. No one else understands any of it but me, and a lot of it isn't written down anywhere, just buried in various email folders. Even getting access to my email would be challenging because my mail client uses SSH tunnels exclusively to connect to my mail servers.
I don't think my situation is very unusual, either. If, say, Matt Cutts were to take out GrayWolf, I bet Michael's wife would have a hard time figuring out all the odds and ends of his business. (Especially his MySpace accounts…)
And that's the key word here: business. What I've jokingly called an “AdSense will” in the title of this post is more properly called a disaster recovery plan for your online business so that if (heavens forbid) anything should befall you, your partner/heir would be able to keep the business running if they choose. They might not understand how it all works or why you have 100 domains to your name, but with the right information they could always hire somebody who could explain or manage it for them. Or even sell it, the likeliest scenario.
You need to write down all the pertinent information — or print out the relevant emails — and put it in a secure location like a safety deposit bank. You might even go so far as to include a list of instructions as to what to do immediately after your death, such as logging into your AdSense account and suspending payments until things get sorted out. Just make sure all the right details are there — it can be as simple as a list of usernames and passwords for all your important accounts. Don't worry about being too geeky in your descriptions of what's what, they'll find someone to explain it for them.
It's not the happiest of topics to think about, but a disaster recovery plan will make you feel a lot better about what will happen after you're gone.
Sponsored Link: Looking to lower your AdWords costs? AdWords Miracle will definitely help.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
The Keyword Report: Opportunities from Keyword Research
A few weeks ago, reader Steve Robertson wrote to tell me of his new newsletter, The Keyword Report, which he thought might be interesting to some of my readers. See the full description for more detailed information.
This newsletter uses a paid subscription model and currently costs $29 a month. What you get is a weekly report of what Steve refers to as “special situations” — well-searched keywords that are being underserved by the market according to Steve's research. Steve gave me a trial subscription so I could see a few reports in action and give you my opinion. (Note there's no affiliate program involved here.) Here's what he says in his latest issue about the research he's doing:
I'm following Mark Joyner's “thirsty crowd” philosophy
here. In my mind, the best use of these special keywords
involves developing a new product (or finding one, if you
are an affiliate) that satisfies the high demand inherent
in each keyword. Then, of course, you need to develop or
adapt a high quality website that sells your product -
while also offering the visitor valuable free information.
A lot of work, but worth it when the higher profits start
rolling in!
Let me show you what he means. Without giving away the actual keyword he listed, here's the kind of information Steve includes in the newsletter:
Keyword - xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Overture searches - 17,951
AdWords campaigns - none
Exact bid - $0.07
Another great website topic for the sports lover. My
database shows the large number of searches for this term
in an earlier month. The current check shows zero searches,
which must be a mistake. Obviously, the number of searches
would be much higher in months with lots of Olympics news.
Each newsletter includes ten niche topics that Steve thinks are ripe for development. Basically he's doing the initial legwork for you by finding topics with little competition but high demand. You can then build a site/blog that targets that niche and use either SEO or pay-per-click advertising (note the information about AdWords bids) to drive traffic to the site and monetize that traffic via AdSense and/or affiliate links.
If you're always looking for new niches to exploit, you should consider subscribing to The Keyword Report. It's highlighted some very different niches for me, niches that I'd never think about otherwise. And, as a general rule, if it makes me think, I like it. (Note that you can try the report for one month and cancel at any time during that month and get a full refund.)
Sponsored Link: Speaking of keywords, eBay is full of them. Here's a home office furniture site built by one of my readers using Build A Niche Store.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
WineInvestor.com: New reader-built site
Well, despite being a year-and-a-half old, Make Easy Money with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising Program still sells the occasional copy. Sure, the screenshots are out-of-date (Google changes the AdSense console every few months, after all), but the advice in it is still sound. Unfortunately, I didn't have a large mailing list to promote it with and push it up onto Amazon's best seller list… oh well, live and learn 
Anyhow, a reader is taking advantage of my free listing offer to announce his new site, WineInvestor.com. To quote his email:
Eric, thanks for the book it was an easy read and helpful. I've created the following site: www.wineinvestor.com, which is a site designed to help everyone, and not just the very rich, buy, sell, drink and invest in wine. There are a lot of the principles of your book built into the site.
Thank you for the kind words, Raef.
Now, the site is still a work in progress. I've told them that requiring users to register to view the blog is counter-productive, so hopefully they'll make some changes to make it more friendly to casual visitors. When you're trying to build a community of like-minded individuals, it's very important to make it easy and non-threatening for potential new members to join the community.
Sponsored Link: Affiliate “Project X” was the first eBook in a long while that actually made me think!
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
10 Steps to Increase Your Technorati Ranking
So Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense is getting indexed by Technocrapi Technorati again, and I hope it's going to stick this time. Unfortunately, four months of not being indexed has caused my blog to drift down in the rankings. Since Technorati operates on a feedback cycle — the higher your blog is ranked, the more links it will get and the higher (where “higher” means closer to 1) it will rank — here are my 10 steps on how to increase your Technorati ranking over the long term. (No splogs here, thank you very much…)
- Consolidate your blogs into one. Ultimately, it's all about the links back to your blog. Multiple blogs means fewer links to each blog, hence lower rankings for each blog. One way I could get Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense to rank higher is to fold in GeekAffiliate, but I'm not going to do that. Consolidating your blogs might be better for your Techorati ranking, but it may be bad for your readership, especially if the different blogs you run on are very different and unrelated topics. Only you can decide what's more important. But if you're going for a high ranking, There Can Be Only One.
- Claim your blog. Self-evident, but Technorati's not going to rank your blog if they don't know about it!
- Tag the blog. When you claim the blog, you get to tag it with up to 20 keywords that describe the blog. Fill all 20 slots with relevant keywords.
- Tag the posts. Place relevant Technorati tags in each post. If you're using WordPress, the SimpleTags plugin makes it really easy to tag your posting as you're writing it.
- Use good tags. There's a bit of an art to choosing how you'll tag a post. You'll have a list of standard tags (for this blog, I obviously tag almost every post with “AdSense” and “Google”) but you'll want to spend some time exploring the Technorati tag clouds to find popular tags that you might be missing. (This applies both to the blog tags and the post tags.)
- Ping promptly. When you post a new blog entry, immediately ping Technorati. It's trivial to do it automatically, but you can also do it manually if you must. But the timing is important because Technorati lists blog postings by their publication time, not by their ping time. So if you post an item and only ping an hour later, your entry might never show up on the first page for a given keyword, especially for popular topics.
- Make sure your blog is being indexed. Some blogs (such as mine) have had problems getting Technorati to index them properly. Make sure you posts are showing up and that your “last updated” time for your blog is correct.
- Develop some authority. Anyone with a half-decent blog on any remotely profitable topic is going to have splogs linking to them in no time flat. What you want, though, are links from older, more established, authoritative blogs. These will confer an aura of authority on your own blog. Technorati browsers can selectively filter out low- or no-authority blogs, so it's important to get some authority as quickly as possible.
- Add a photo/avatar to your blogs. A lot of blogs don't have a photo or avatar associated with them. It's really easy to add one to your Technorati account. When people are scanning through Technorati looking for interesting blogs, using an eye-catching graphic as the photo/avatar is one way to make your blog jump out at them. You still have to convince them to read, though, so…
- Be interesting. Ultimately, your blog's going to be judged on its content. If you're writing good stuff, others will link to you, though you can make that more likely by writing good headlines (see 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work) and leaning towards topics and opinions that are more on the controversial side.
The Technorati ranking is just one measure of a blog's popularity, of course, but not every well-read blog is necessarily going to show up high in Technorati's list. But if public recognition is what you crave, the steps I just described will help you climb the rankings.
Remember, it's one post at a time, and don't forget that you're competing against other blogs who are also trying hard to increase their rankings. That's why your rankings drift if you don't keep your blog going — it's not really that you lose links, but that other blogs keep getting links. (Refer back to The Tyranny of the Blog.)
Sponsored Link: Nominate Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense for Search Engine Journal's 2006 Search Blogs Awards.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.