As I mentioned before, Google has been moving to a more-or-less continuous update cycle. This means that changes in page rankings can occur quite quickly. Point in case is my Invisible Fence Guide Pet Fence Guide, which I mentioned almost two weeks ago was in need of resurrection, because it had slipped enough in the ranking for “invisible fence” to seriously impact its traffic levels. At the time I wrote the post, it was on the second page of the results, around the 15th position or so. So I decided to start the process of getting it back on the first results page. I did this by “reintroducing” the Googlebot to those pages right here in this blog, by linking directly to each page in the guide (it only has a dozen or so pages) with appropriate anchor text.

That was only the first step, of course, and I didn't think it'd be enough to make a big impression, but apparently it did. Today the Guide is ranking at #3 for “invisible fence”. Just because of that posting.

If anything, this should be more proof that a respected and high-ranking feeder blog is a tool you definitely need in your arsenal. I'm still going to proceed with my other changes, though. Can't hurt, that's for sure.

Sponsored Link: Learn more about the ins and outs of
AdSense by reading Uncommon AdSense, my latest book about AdSense.

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

I've been seeing more marketers push Patrick Hillenbrand's AdSense Decoded video series lately. (Actually, he's usually referred to as “Dr. Patrick Hillenbrand”, although I'm not sure what relevance his degree has to making money with AdSense. I guess it's supposed to make you trust him more. OK. I have a master's degree in computer science, so please call me “Master” from now on.) The videos look similar in nature to Michael Cheney's AdSense Videos. I haven't seen either so I can't compare the two, but I suspect that if you're the type of person that likes learning from videos rather than reading books, I'm sure that either series of videos is fine. Presumably, though, AdSense Decoded is more up-to-date.

The point of this posting, however, is not to review either set of videos, but to talk about some claims I see more and more often on the promos for these types of products.

Instant Traffic = Pay-Per-Click (AdWords)

When you see a product claiming that “no organic search engine traffic” is required or that you can “get loads of traffic 15 minutes from now”, you can bet that they're talking about one thing exactly: pay-per-click traffic, likely via Google's own AdWords program. Because it's true, if you have a credit card, a list of keywords, and a set of pages already prepared, you can sign up for AdWords and start getting hits on those pages in about 15 minutes.

Now, I don't see the sales page for AdSense Decoded say anything about using AdWords. But the author does put his “AdWords Qualified Individual” logo on the page. And later on he goes on to vaguely discuss his “AdSense brokerage” (not “arbitrage”, he points out) method. And notice how he says this:

I'm sure if we looked at his AdWords account for that day we'd see that's when he turned on the AdWords floodgate. Which brings us to the other part of this.

AdSense Earnings vs. AdSense Profits

Most AdSense books/videos like to show you “proof” of their AdSense earnings. Nice screen grabs from their AdSense account. OK, ignoring the fact that it's incredibly easy to fake that information, let's look at the wording they use. They never talk about “profits”, only “earnings” from AdSense. “Do this and your earnings will increase dramatically”, they'll tell you. The “this” part is what we've just discussed, use PPC programs like AdWords to drive traffic to your sites.

What they're leaving out, of course, is the cost of getting that traffic. Let's assume they are making $10,000 a month in AdSense earnings. But maybe they're spending $9,000 a month on “traffic acquisition costs” (that's how Google describes paid traffic in its own earnings reports). So really they're only making $1,000 a month in profit. Which is fine, don't get me wrong, a lot of people would be happy to make an extra $1,000 a month. But there's a big difference in making $1,000 a month in profits vs. making $10,000 a month in profits.

Again, look at the numbers on the AdSense Decoded sales page. When you go from less than 100 impressions per day to over 20,000 impressions per day and you have a decent clickthrough rate (over 50% is what they're claiming) then you're absolutely going to see large AdSense earnings. But again, how much did it cost you to get those 20,000 impressions? It's a tricky game to play, as anyone who's tried their hand at AdSense arbitrage will tell you. And don't forget that you'll have to carry those advertising costs for a couple of months before you see the first earnings payment from Google. Are you prepared to spend that kind of money?

It's alright to be skeptical when you read some of these claims. It doesn't mean that the techniques these products are teaching are bad, but they may require a significant investment in time and money for them to pay off, something that they certainly don't emphasize.

Sponsored Link: Learn more about the ins and outs of
AdSense by reading Uncommon AdSense, my latest book about AdSense.

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

Well, complaining in public on a mailing list about Technorati's inability to index my blog seems to have gotten me somewhere. Someone from Technorati apparently subscribes to that list and left me a message saying the problem's been fixed, although implying it was really my fault in the first place. Hey, that's OK, if it was my fault then fine, let me know what the problem is and I'll fix it. But when you leave repeated messages with Technorati that get unanswered, it's kind of hard to figure out what exactly's wrong, is it?

Hopefully the indexing will continue and allow surfers who are looking on Technorati for AdSense-related material to find me much more easily. Meanwhile, the blog's had a precipitous drop in ranking because of the adjustment. That's OK, it should start to go up again slowly over time, just like it was doing a year ago. If you're a Technorati user, I've made it easy for you to mark the blog as one of your favorites, just use the link at the bottom of this post or in the sidebar. Of course, links back to this blog from anywhere are always appreciated!

Sponsored Link: Learn more about the ins and outs of
AdSense by reading Uncommon AdSense, my latest book about AdSense.

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.