Website Marketing Resource

Wouldn’t it be great if every keyword in Google’s entire inventory could be relevant to your site? Imagine that no matter what any person searched for, all of the ads that came up in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) paid you whenever someone clicked on them.

Sound good to you? That’s great. I think it sounds pretty cool as well, so let’s get busy making it happen for your web site.

Here’s a very much overlooked opportunity for AdSense users

That opportunity is called Google Search and this is how it works:

Tucked inside of your AdSense control panel is a section for creating a Google search box. Most AdSense users don’t even pay attention to it, and that’s a shame because hidden inside of that box is a lot of money that’s wanting to be yours.

When you add that search box to your web site you are creating an instant portal into Google’s entire keyword inventory. Any time a visitor runs a Google search from your site, every resulting AdWord ad that appears on the SERPs is tagged back to you. That means that no matter which ads they click on, money goes in your pocket. Got that? What an amazing earning opportunity.

There are no guarantees in life, so I don’t guarantee that following these tips will bring you more money every time. However, I do guarantee that they will greatly increase your chances of pulling more of the top-paying AdSense ads to your site than if you don’t follow these suggestions.

Enough with the disclaimers, let’s get down to the business of making money. Google lets advertisers bid anywhere from a minimum of .05 per click right up to a whopping $100. It should be pretty obvious that you’re not going to get rich running .05 cent ads on your site, but getting a few $100 ads, or even some $10, $20, or $30 ads can’t be a bad thing, right?

Now the problem is, Google is pretty closed-mouthed about who is paying what for their ads, and there is no real way to determine which words pay the most per AdSense click.

AdSense is one of the best ways to monetize your web traffic. People see those little "Ads by Gooogle" tidbits and they click like crazy. Or at least that’s the plan. But have you ever given though to where those ads are coming from? That would be AdWords, the Pay-Per-Click program for people who want to advertise their products on Google.

They are the fine men and women who are willing to part with some coin of the realm every time a visitor to your web site chooses to click on an AdSense ad. Google grabs the cash from the AdWords’ member’s account, keeps some of it for themselves, and gives the rest to you. How much they keep and how much give away is a State secret, but who cares; just as long as we’re getting ours each month.

How AdWords Works

AdWords provides pay-per-click advertising to merchants who are willing to shell out anywhere from a minimum 05 .05 per click all the way up to a maximum of $100 per click. Can you imagine anyone paying $100 just to have someone click on an ad?

Despite what you may hear, the Google AdSense program is not for everyone. There are some types of web sites that do poorly no matter how hard the owners try, and there are others that should be doing well but the webmaster simply isn’t putting in the effort to make things happen.

Here are some tips to make AdSense work better for you. If you do them all and you’re still not having any luck, then you just might be running one of those sites that don’t make money

1. Determine if your visitors are "in the mood"

Like I mentioned at the top of this article, some web sites just don’t work with pay-per-click programs. The best performing sites fall into one of these categories:

? Sites where users go and expect to buy something while they are there. E-commerce sites fit the bill here..

? Sites where users go to find specific information on something that they want to buy now. Music and video review sites, vacation information sites, resume building sites, etc. You don’t have to actually be selling these types of things; your site can just be a mecca for information pertaining to these things. Then, when the visitor comes to read your content, they are more likely to click on your ads.

No matter how hard you work to optimize your page, there are going to be times when Google just can’t figure out which AdSense ad to deliver, so it defaults to delivering a PSA (Public Service Ad) instead.

Now I don’t have any problem with charities, but I give to the ones that I choose to give to. Since I don’t have a non-profit license of my own, the goal of my web site is to make money and I depend on Google AdSense revenues to help pay my bills. Someday I want it to fund my retirement as well, so I can’t afford to have non-revenue PSAs showing up on my site.

The good news is the Google understands the human’s basic greedy nature, so it provides us with an alternative to donating our precious web real estate to charitable organizations. That alternative is known as AdSense Alternate Ads.

As strange as it seems, this feature allows you to let Google competitors into your site. Don’t worry, Google is allowing it with their eyes wide open. They even tell you how to set up the alternate ad code to work on your site and they let you do it right in your AdSense control panel.

Why, on your web pages of course. Ok, just kidding. The real question should be: "Is there really any truth to the rumors that where you place those Google AdSense ads can actually improve response?" According to my best information, the answer to that question is: Yes.

Google’s own AdSense experts say that that there is a direct correlation between the placement of the AdSense ads and the resulting clickthrough.

When ads are placed in "content zones", rather than in "advertising zones", response rates on Google AdWords goes up. There are also indications showing that ads appearing on the right side of the page get clicked more than ads appearing on the left side.

Advertising analysts with degrees in human behavior and psychology have spent thousands of man-years (people-years?) studying how people read printed and Internet content and what it takes to get them to respond to ads. While some of these studies are proprietary, or are only available to anyone with $10,000 or more to spend on a copy, other studies have been made public and can be read by anyone who is interested.

Google themselves has released some relevant information which is focused directly on increasing your Google AdSense response. You can read their findings Here

Looking back in time, I could still remember standing in awe and reading the exploits of one adsense guru who was starting a membership service for people keen to maximise their earnings as a google adsense publisher. He claimed to be making over $40K a month from his google adsense revenue and an almost equal amount from affiliate products.

In my mind,I could not help but believe that if he could be so successful, I could also be successful…and everyone can also be equally successful in developing content websites and allowing google adsense to be published on these websites.

Months followed later where I carried out research on Google Adsense, talked to people who were successful publishers, joined a couple of memberships sites myself, read a few ebooks on the subject, spent hundreds of dollars on tools and webpage generating software…the whole works.

My aim was simple - uncover the successful methods and make at least one of these techniques as mine and be equally successful , if not better.

What were my results? Briefly, there were 3 models that could lead to success. There might be more, but these 3 models figured prominently as I carried out my personal private research.

Lots of people say to make your ads blend in. However, some people are having a lot of success by making their links stand out. The most effective style seems to be having your links blue, while your other links are a less-noticeable color. A good example can be seen at www.lockergnome.com

- Place images directly above your ads. This simple technique has been known to increase CTR by 400%. To keep the images fresh some people randomize related images on their site using PHP code. You can see an example of these images at

http://www.how-to-make-money-online.info/

- Google has cited the 336×280 large rectangle as the most effective ad size.

- Place ads where your visitors will likely be focused.

Check out this heat map by Google -

http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html

- Weave your articles into your content. This is shown at lockergnome.com

- Place link units in the top left-hand corner. This part of the website has shown to be clicked on more than any other part of the page. You can see an example at lockergnome.com. (Look at the links at the top, towards the left in blue.)

Pay per click or search engine optimization, which one should you use? Many view PPC marketing as a colossal waste of money while others disdain search engine optimization. In reality, the two marketing strategies form a perfect marriage.

Pay-Per-Click - PPC

PPC marketing is a love it or hate platform. For the "love it" crowd, PPC marketing is a way to get instant exposure and feedback on site designs. In a matter of minutes, you can start receiving traffic and adjusting your site to convert the traffic at the best rate possible. For those in the "hate it" crowd, bids are to high and one never knows how may of the clicks are fake and worthless.

Search Engine Optimization ? SEO

As with PPC, seo marketing has its proponents and detractors. Those who love it look at the free traffic and glorious profitability of a site that converts the traffic at a decent rate. Detractors view seo as an unnecessary waste of time since it can take a year or more to get high rankings, particularly on Google. Detractors also argue that high listings are subject to changes in the search engine ranking process, which means you can lose your rankings.

1: The ideal Google AdSense page should have great content about a very specific topic. Take pains to be very clear about what the topic is, and carefully choose the keyword (or key phrase) describing the topic. Users don’t like vague pages that don’t make it very clear what the page is all about.

Don’t even think about trying to ‘trick’ AdSense. (They have penalties, including getting kicked out.) Don’t create a page on one topic and give it a file name about a different topic-that’s too confusing.

In a nutshell, you want to make sure the page you create offers great value to people interested in the topic. When you provide excellent information on a specific topic, your visitors will benefit and will be more likely to click through to relevant AdWords.

2: Everyone’s seen way too many horizontal banner ads up top. Thus, Google recommends you choose the vertical — not horizontal — format to display your AdWords. I agree. People have become “banner blind” to a horizontal format. Plus, Google has “trained” us to click on relevant text ads on their own site and they use the vertical format.