AdSense is an advertising program that anyone who publishes a Web site can
use to generate income for their Web site. But there’s one small condition —
Google must approve your site before ads are shown on your site.
A longer explanation is that AdSense is an ad-placement program that utilizes
Google’s proprietary search capabilities to determine the best placement for
ads that are purchased through the Google AdWords program.
AdSense is contextual advertising, or ads that appear in the context of surrounding
content. What this means for you is that AdSense ads are related to
the content of the pages on which those ads appear.
It sounds complicated, I know. And really it can be very complicated, but the
bottom line is that with AdSense, you can place ads on your Web site that
are targeted to the content of your site. So, if your site is about Chinese
Crested dogs, ads for Web-based human resources applications don’t show
on your site.
In return for placing those ads on your site, you’re paid a small amount each
time one of your site visitors clicks an ad, and in some cases, even when site
visitors just see the ads.
Money Makes AdSense Go ’Round
Okay, so AdSense is (in essence) an advertising program. But why would
you want to use it? Well, for the money, of course. AdSense is an easy way
to generate income from your Web site, even if you’re not selling anything
on the site.
And while creating income is the most likely reason that publishers use
AdSense, it’s not the only one. Some publishers use AdSense as a means of
making their Web site more valuable to site visitors.
Anyone who displays an AdSense ad is considered a publisher, whereas
anyone who purchases the ads that are displayed through AdSense is an
advertiser.
Now, this is where a lot of debate usually begins. Experts (who are usually
people who know a lot just about a given subject) tend to disagree about
the value of any type of advertising on your Web site. Some experts say that
any advertisement that takes people away from your Web site is a bad thing.
Others say that ads are okay, in the right places. You can read more about ad
placement in Chapter 3.
When placed properly, AdSense ads can add value to your Web site by pointing
users to other resources related to the topic of your site. This means
they’ll probably surf away from your site at some point. But if your site is
well built (which is essential if you intend to grow traffic over time), it’s likely
that users will come back to your site again in the future.
The value here is that users not only get what they’re looking for, but you get
return traffic; and because you’re using AdSense to help those users find the
information they need, you’re also making a little extra money in the process.
you want to use it? Well, for the money, of course. AdSense is an easy way
to generate income from your Web site, even if you’re not selling anything
on the site.
And while creating income is the most likely reason that publishers use
AdSense, it’s not the only one. Some publishers use AdSense as a means of
making their Web site more valuable to site visitors.
Anyone who displays an AdSense ad is considered a publisher, whereas
anyone who purchases the ads that are displayed through AdSense is an
advertiser.
Now, this is where a lot of debate usually begins. Experts (who are usually
people who know a lot just about a given subject) tend to disagree about
the value of any type of advertising on your Web site. Some experts say that
any advertisement that takes people away from your Web site is a bad thing.
Others say that ads are okay, in the right places. You can read more about ad
placement in Chapter 3.
When placed properly, AdSense ads can add value to your Web site by pointing
users to other resources related to the topic of your site. This means
they’ll probably surf away from your site at some point. But if your site is
well built (which is essential if you intend to grow traffic over time), it’s likely
that users will come back to your site again in the future.
The value here is that users not only get what they’re looking for, but you get
return traffic; and because you’re using AdSense to help those users find the
information they need, you’re also making a little extra money in the process.
Deciding Whether AdSense Is Right for You
Even though there are a lot of benefits to using AdSense, it’s not for everyone.
Just like not everyone likes the idea of eating chocolate, there will be
some who aren’t willing to risk that AdSense ads push (or draw) traffic away
from their Web sites.
One good example of this is if you have an e-commerce Web site that features
products on every page. Many e-commerce site owners aren’t willing to
include advertisements on their pages because the ads can cause site visitors
to surf away before they complete a purchase.
What it all really comes down to is to know how badly you would be hurt if a
site visitor surfed away from your site. If the damage would be like cutting off
your left hand, you probably don’t want to include AdSense on your site.
If, on the other hand (the right hand because it’s not been cut off yet),
the possibility of a site visitor surfing away wouldn’t cost you any money,
AdSense is probably worth considering. To be clear, a certain percentage of
site visitors click an ad on a site and then don’t come back, either that day or
at all. But that percentage is likely to be very small. If you won’t lose money if
they don’t come back, why not try to make a little money?
Jenn Savedge, the owner of the blog The Green Parent (www.thegreenparent.
com), doesn’t use AdSense. She says, “I want to have complete control over the
products that are advertised on my site. I don’t want it to appear as though I am
endorsing products when I am not.” And that’s a valid reason to decide against
using AdSense.
A good rule of thumb is generally that all content-only sites can afford to
have AdSense ads displayed on some, if not all, pages on the site. Sites that
sell stuff? Well, that’s a little trickier, but if you have pages that don’t contain
links to purchase products (like product review pages, or articles that extol
the value of a particular product or group of products), you can probably feel
pretty secure about including AdSense ads on those pages.
Just like not everyone likes the idea of eating chocolate, there will be
some who aren’t willing to risk that AdSense ads push (or draw) traffic away
from their Web sites.
One good example of this is if you have an e-commerce Web site that features
products on every page. Many e-commerce site owners aren’t willing to
include advertisements on their pages because the ads can cause site visitors
to surf away before they complete a purchase.
What it all really comes down to is to know how badly you would be hurt if a
site visitor surfed away from your site. If the damage would be like cutting off
your left hand, you probably don’t want to include AdSense on your site.
If, on the other hand (the right hand because it’s not been cut off yet),
the possibility of a site visitor surfing away wouldn’t cost you any money,
AdSense is probably worth considering. To be clear, a certain percentage of
site visitors click an ad on a site and then don’t come back, either that day or
at all. But that percentage is likely to be very small. If you won’t lose money if
they don’t come back, why not try to make a little money?
Jenn Savedge, the owner of the blog The Green Parent (www.thegreenparent.
com), doesn’t use AdSense. She says, “I want to have complete control over the
products that are advertised on my site. I don’t want it to appear as though I am
endorsing products when I am not.” And that’s a valid reason to decide against
using AdSense.
A good rule of thumb is generally that all content-only sites can afford to
have AdSense ads displayed on some, if not all, pages on the site. Sites that
sell stuff? Well, that’s a little trickier, but if you have pages that don’t contain
links to purchase products (like product review pages, or articles that extol
the value of a particular product or group of products), you can probably feel
pretty secure about including AdSense ads on those pages.
Common AdSense Questions
If you’ve read to this point, you know just enough to be dangerous, which
means you probably have a ton of questions about AdSense. Other chapters
answer most of those questions for you, but to keep you focused, I answer a
few of the more pressing questions now.
What follows are answers to a few of the more common questions that are
usually asked about AdSense (which incidentally are probably the ones that
you want the answers to the most).
How much money can I
make with AdSense?
There’s just no easy answer to this question. Well, okay, there’s an easy
answer — it depends. But that easy answer isn’t really useful. The problem
is that several measurements impact your daily revenue from AdSense ads,
such as
Unique visits: A visitor is considered unique when she visits your Web
site the first time during a given period of time. Depending on the
metric — the measurement used to track visitors on your Web site —
that’s used, a visitor might be considered unique the first time he visits
your site in a 24-hour period, the first time in a week, or the first time
in an hour. For AdSense, the unique visits measurement is used to help
determine the click-thru rate for ads.
Click-thru rate (CTR) is the number of people who click an ad and are
taken to the Web page designated for the advertisement. This page is
usually a larger, more colorful ad, the opening page of a Web site, or a
page that displays more information about the product or service featured
in the ad.
Average click-through-rate (CTR): The CTR is the actual number of
visitors who click through an ad on your Web site. This is important
because you’re paid when users click your AdSense ads.
Average cost-per-click (CPC): The CPC is the amount that advertisers
pay each time someone clicks one of their ads. This number varies
widely and is dependent upon the cost of the keyword to which an ad is
related. For you, as an AdSense publisher, the CPC is the basis for how
much you’re paid.
Using these three measurements — measurements which are highly
variable — you can estimate how much you could make based on some
hypothetical numbers. For example, assume that your Web site gets 1,000
unique visits per day and that the average value of the ads that are displayed
on your site each day is $.25 per click (that’s the CPC). Finally, assume that
about 2 percent of your 1,000 visitors click through the ads on your site each
day. Now, you have numbers that you can work with.
With those hypothetical numbers in place, you can use this equation to estimate
how much you might make from your AdSense ads on a given day:
(unique visits x average CTR)average CPC = potential revenue
so
(1,000 x .02)$.25 = $5.00
Using that equation and the hypothetical numbers I’ve defined, you could
estimate that you’d make $5.00 per day, or $150.00 per month. Again, however,
that’s assuming your numbers are exactly what I’ve defined here, and
they probably won’t be — these are completely fictional numbers used solely
for the purpose of example.
Any change in those numbers — more or less visitors, higher or lower CTR,
or more or less average CPC — results in different numbers.
I can hear you wailing in frustration — “So what can I realistically expect
to earn with AdSense?” I understand your desire for solid numbers, but the
truth is, I can’t give you an exact figure. More accurately, I can tell you that if
your site is well-targeted and has high traffic levels, you can expect to make
pretty good money (at least enough to get a check every month). And if your
site traffic is slower or your site isn’t as highly targeted, you might be lucky
to make enough to pay for your Web site hosting each month.
In an effort to keep costs down, Google doesn’t release payments until you’ve
earned $100 or more in ad revenues. If you make less than $100 in a given
month, your earnings will be held until you reach the $100 minimum. So, if
you’re not making enough money, you’ll get your payment eventually, just not
right away.
Fortunately, there are ways to optimize your Web pages so that you get the
most possible return on your AdSense ads. I cover those strategies throughout
the rest of this book.
How much does AdSense cost?
Easy question, easier answer. AdSense doesn’t cost you a thing. Well, it doesn’t
cost you a thing unless you consider the time that it takes to implement the
ads on your Web site. But even this step isn’t overly time-consuming, so even
labor costs should be minimal.
What kind of ads will show
on my Web site?
The advertising kind.
Okay. All jokes aside, the ads that show on your site are determined by the
content of your site. Google uses a search algorithm to determine what ads
are best suited for your site — an algorithm that’s quite similar to the one
Google uses when you run a search query from the Google search pages or
through a Web site-based search box.
That said, it’s possible that the ads that show on your site might have nothing
at all to do with the content of the site. Here’s why: If your site content
isn’t very focused, the algorithm gets confused and isn’t sure which ads are
appropriate. So, it makes its best guess, which may or may not be correct.
The best way to ensure that the ads are highly relevant to your content is to
have well-focused, keyword-rich content. You can find guidelines for putting
together the best content for your site in Chapter 3.
Can I control ad content?
No one wants ads from their competitors on their Web site. Even if you’re not
selling anything from your site, it’s likely that some ads you just don’t want
shown on your site.
Fortunately, Google’s made it possible to exclude some companies from
showing their ads on your site. It’s not too difficult to do; simply ad your
competitors’ URLs (Uniform Resource Locator, the Web address) to your ad
filters, and the competition is then blocked from advertising on your site.
You can find more information on filtering the ads that are shown on your
site in Chapter 5.
Can I use AdSense on more
than one Web site?
Sure you can, and here are a couple ways to do it. First, you can use the same
AdSense code on all your sites, and the metrics — the tracking measurements,
like number of clicks and payment for clicks — are all collected in the
same report with no way to differentiate the Web site.
The other way you can track multiple sites (or even different pages within
the same site) is to use Google channels. Channels simply allow you to track
different sites or pages on a site by using code that’s written to indicate each
separate channel you set up.
You can set up channels by URL or by custom-defined differentiators. You
can find out about the fine art of using channels effectively in Chapter 14.
Can I have more than one
AdSense account?
Having more than one account might seem like a good idea in certain situations.
For example, if you run multiple Web sites, you might want to have a
different AdSense account for each of those sites.
Google doesn’t think that’s such a great idea.
You’re limited to a single AdSense account per payee. You can differentiate
between ads on your various Web sites with the channels that I mention earlier
in the preceding section, but having two accounts is a no-no.
Google’s very sensitive about the ways in which publishers use AdSense capabilities.
Reading through the AdSense program policies before you even being
to set AdSense up for your Web site is a very good idea. Google won’t think
twice about banning policy violators from using AdSense.
means you probably have a ton of questions about AdSense. Other chapters
answer most of those questions for you, but to keep you focused, I answer a
few of the more pressing questions now.
What follows are answers to a few of the more common questions that are
usually asked about AdSense (which incidentally are probably the ones that
you want the answers to the most).
How much money can I
make with AdSense?
There’s just no easy answer to this question. Well, okay, there’s an easy
answer — it depends. But that easy answer isn’t really useful. The problem
is that several measurements impact your daily revenue from AdSense ads,
such as
Unique visits: A visitor is considered unique when she visits your Web
site the first time during a given period of time. Depending on the
metric — the measurement used to track visitors on your Web site —
that’s used, a visitor might be considered unique the first time he visits
your site in a 24-hour period, the first time in a week, or the first time
in an hour. For AdSense, the unique visits measurement is used to help
determine the click-thru rate for ads.
Click-thru rate (CTR) is the number of people who click an ad and are
taken to the Web page designated for the advertisement. This page is
usually a larger, more colorful ad, the opening page of a Web site, or a
page that displays more information about the product or service featured
in the ad.
Average click-through-rate (CTR): The CTR is the actual number of
visitors who click through an ad on your Web site. This is important
because you’re paid when users click your AdSense ads.
Average cost-per-click (CPC): The CPC is the amount that advertisers
pay each time someone clicks one of their ads. This number varies
widely and is dependent upon the cost of the keyword to which an ad is
related. For you, as an AdSense publisher, the CPC is the basis for how
much you’re paid.
Using these three measurements — measurements which are highly
variable — you can estimate how much you could make based on some
hypothetical numbers. For example, assume that your Web site gets 1,000
unique visits per day and that the average value of the ads that are displayed
on your site each day is $.25 per click (that’s the CPC). Finally, assume that
about 2 percent of your 1,000 visitors click through the ads on your site each
day. Now, you have numbers that you can work with.
With those hypothetical numbers in place, you can use this equation to estimate
how much you might make from your AdSense ads on a given day:
(unique visits x average CTR)average CPC = potential revenue
so
(1,000 x .02)$.25 = $5.00
Using that equation and the hypothetical numbers I’ve defined, you could
estimate that you’d make $5.00 per day, or $150.00 per month. Again, however,
that’s assuming your numbers are exactly what I’ve defined here, and
they probably won’t be — these are completely fictional numbers used solely
for the purpose of example.
Any change in those numbers — more or less visitors, higher or lower CTR,
or more or less average CPC — results in different numbers.
I can hear you wailing in frustration — “So what can I realistically expect
to earn with AdSense?” I understand your desire for solid numbers, but the
truth is, I can’t give you an exact figure. More accurately, I can tell you that if
your site is well-targeted and has high traffic levels, you can expect to make
pretty good money (at least enough to get a check every month). And if your
site traffic is slower or your site isn’t as highly targeted, you might be lucky
to make enough to pay for your Web site hosting each month.
In an effort to keep costs down, Google doesn’t release payments until you’ve
earned $100 or more in ad revenues. If you make less than $100 in a given
month, your earnings will be held until you reach the $100 minimum. So, if
you’re not making enough money, you’ll get your payment eventually, just not
right away.
Fortunately, there are ways to optimize your Web pages so that you get the
most possible return on your AdSense ads. I cover those strategies throughout
the rest of this book.
How much does AdSense cost?
Easy question, easier answer. AdSense doesn’t cost you a thing. Well, it doesn’t
cost you a thing unless you consider the time that it takes to implement the
ads on your Web site. But even this step isn’t overly time-consuming, so even
labor costs should be minimal.
What kind of ads will show
on my Web site?
The advertising kind.
Okay. All jokes aside, the ads that show on your site are determined by the
content of your site. Google uses a search algorithm to determine what ads
are best suited for your site — an algorithm that’s quite similar to the one
Google uses when you run a search query from the Google search pages or
through a Web site-based search box.
That said, it’s possible that the ads that show on your site might have nothing
at all to do with the content of the site. Here’s why: If your site content
isn’t very focused, the algorithm gets confused and isn’t sure which ads are
appropriate. So, it makes its best guess, which may or may not be correct.
The best way to ensure that the ads are highly relevant to your content is to
have well-focused, keyword-rich content. You can find guidelines for putting
together the best content for your site in Chapter 3.
Can I control ad content?
No one wants ads from their competitors on their Web site. Even if you’re not
selling anything from your site, it’s likely that some ads you just don’t want
shown on your site.
Fortunately, Google’s made it possible to exclude some companies from
showing their ads on your site. It’s not too difficult to do; simply ad your
competitors’ URLs (Uniform Resource Locator, the Web address) to your ad
filters, and the competition is then blocked from advertising on your site.
You can find more information on filtering the ads that are shown on your
site in Chapter 5.
Can I use AdSense on more
than one Web site?
Sure you can, and here are a couple ways to do it. First, you can use the same
AdSense code on all your sites, and the metrics — the tracking measurements,
like number of clicks and payment for clicks — are all collected in the
same report with no way to differentiate the Web site.
The other way you can track multiple sites (or even different pages within
the same site) is to use Google channels. Channels simply allow you to track
different sites or pages on a site by using code that’s written to indicate each
separate channel you set up.
You can set up channels by URL or by custom-defined differentiators. You
can find out about the fine art of using channels effectively in Chapter 14.
Can I have more than one
AdSense account?
Having more than one account might seem like a good idea in certain situations.
For example, if you run multiple Web sites, you might want to have a
different AdSense account for each of those sites.
Google doesn’t think that’s such a great idea.
You’re limited to a single AdSense account per payee. You can differentiate
between ads on your various Web sites with the channels that I mention earlier
in the preceding section, but having two accounts is a no-no.
Google’s very sensitive about the ways in which publishers use AdSense capabilities.
Reading through the AdSense program policies before you even being
to set AdSense up for your Web site is a very good idea. Google won’t think
twice about banning policy violators from using AdSense.
The Potential of AdSense
Okay, AdSense seems relatively simple, so what’s all the fuss about? Well, the
easy answer to that is money. Publishers use AdSense because it’s a potential
revenue stream that might not otherwise be available to them.
In some rare cases, you may have heard of AdSense publishers making
$20,000 or more each month. Those are rare cases, but it’s possible to build
a decent revenue stream with AdSense if you manage the use of the ads carefully
on sites that are very well designed. Is it likely that you’ll get rich? No.
What is likely is that you might be able to make enough to cover your Web
site hosting or even enough to cover your mortgage. AdSense definitely has
the potential. How you manage the program combined with how well your
site is designed and the amount of traffic that your site receives determine
how much you make.
In the coming pages, you can find out about all the tips and secrets that will
help you maximize the potential of AdSense for your Web site. It all starts in
Chapter 2, where I walk you through how to sign up for an AdSense account
and get it set up on your site, so keep reading. Plenty more information is to
come.
easy answer to that is money. Publishers use AdSense because it’s a potential
revenue stream that might not otherwise be available to them.
In some rare cases, you may have heard of AdSense publishers making
$20,000 or more each month. Those are rare cases, but it’s possible to build
a decent revenue stream with AdSense if you manage the use of the ads carefully
on sites that are very well designed. Is it likely that you’ll get rich? No.
What is likely is that you might be able to make enough to cover your Web
site hosting or even enough to cover your mortgage. AdSense definitely has
the potential. How you manage the program combined with how well your
site is designed and the amount of traffic that your site receives determine
how much you make.
In the coming pages, you can find out about all the tips and secrets that will
help you maximize the potential of AdSense for your Web site. It all starts in
Chapter 2, where I walk you through how to sign up for an AdSense account
and get it set up on your site, so keep reading. Plenty more information is to
come.
Setting Up for AdSense
One misconception that I had when I wanted to start using AdSense was that
it would be difficult and time-consuming to set up. Boy, was I wrong! Setting
up the account doesn’t require your first born child or your signature in
blood. Setting up the account takes only a few minutes and a minimum of
information. But how you set up the account is determined by whether you
already have a Google account.
Having a Google account isn’t a requirement, but it can be useful. If you don’t
have a Google account, you’re missing out on other Google applications, like
Gmail (Google’s Web mail program), possibly AdWords (the other side of
AdSense; it’s a pay-per-click advertising program in which you only pay for
ads that users click), and Google Analytics (a Web site traffic measurement
program that tells you all kinds of cool information about who visits your site
and what they do while they’re there). A Google account makes connecting
all these applications considerably easier, too.
If you’re going to use AdSense, you most definitely want to have some kind of
Web site analytics program. A Web site analytics program tracks the number
of visitors to your site and some of their behaviors while they’re on your site.
You can use a program like AWStats or ClickTracks, but those programs are
nowhere near as easy to use as Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is free, and it integrates with AdWords and AdSense, so it
makes it easy to track your efforts in those programs. You may also want a
program that’s easy to understand and use. Google Analytics fits that bill,
too. And did I mention the program is free?
But I digress.
One reason that many people choose not to have a Google account is
because they don’t like the way that Google collects personal information.
People fear that because Google’s claim to fame is its ability to analyze the
heck out of online information, it’ll use its expertise to dredge up all the personal
information that it can about them. To some people it just feels far too
much like Big Brother is watching.
In my experience, however, Google hasn’t used my personal information for
anything more than what I want it used for. I have a Google account, multiple
Gmail accounts, a Google Analytics account, and accounts with Google
AdWords and AdSense (and a couple dozen other Google applications and
accounts that I won’t list here). Not once in the past decade has Google used
my information inappropriately. And I’m pretty careful about who I give my
information out to. If you’re still not convinced, Google has a pretty rigorous
Privacy policy in place to protect you. You can find that policy at www.
google.com/privacy.html.
If, after reading that document, you still don’t want to register with Google,
you can jump to the instructions for opening an AdSense account if you don’t
have a Google account. Otherwise, you can set up a Google account while
you’re setting up your AdSense account. And if you already have a Google
account, you’re one step ahead of everyone else.
One more note about setting up a Google AdSense account: Some experts
suggest that you should have an AdSense account that’s separate from your
other Google accounts. The purpose behind having them separate is so that
there are no repercussions should you accidentally end up in Google’s bad
graces with your AdSense efforts. I think that caution is unfounded.
Unless you plan to use your AdSense account in a manner that’s prohibited
by Google, you should run into no problems at all. And I find that it’s much
easier to have an AdSense account that’s as easy to access as all the other
Google applications that you use. One difficulty that I’ve discovered is the
frustration of not having your AdSense account connected to other accounts,
especially Google Analytics and AdWords.
You have to decide what you’re most comfortable doing: using your existing
Google account, creating a new Google account, or not using one at all. But
no matter what your preferences are, you can still get started with AdSense
(even if not effectively) as soon as you get the approval from Google.
it would be difficult and time-consuming to set up. Boy, was I wrong! Setting
up the account doesn’t require your first born child or your signature in
blood. Setting up the account takes only a few minutes and a minimum of
information. But how you set up the account is determined by whether you
already have a Google account.
Having a Google account isn’t a requirement, but it can be useful. If you don’t
have a Google account, you’re missing out on other Google applications, like
Gmail (Google’s Web mail program), possibly AdWords (the other side of
AdSense; it’s a pay-per-click advertising program in which you only pay for
ads that users click), and Google Analytics (a Web site traffic measurement
program that tells you all kinds of cool information about who visits your site
and what they do while they’re there). A Google account makes connecting
all these applications considerably easier, too.
If you’re going to use AdSense, you most definitely want to have some kind of
Web site analytics program. A Web site analytics program tracks the number
of visitors to your site and some of their behaviors while they’re on your site.
You can use a program like AWStats or ClickTracks, but those programs are
nowhere near as easy to use as Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is free, and it integrates with AdWords and AdSense, so it
makes it easy to track your efforts in those programs. You may also want a
program that’s easy to understand and use. Google Analytics fits that bill,
too. And did I mention the program is free?
But I digress.
One reason that many people choose not to have a Google account is
because they don’t like the way that Google collects personal information.
People fear that because Google’s claim to fame is its ability to analyze the
heck out of online information, it’ll use its expertise to dredge up all the personal
information that it can about them. To some people it just feels far too
much like Big Brother is watching.
In my experience, however, Google hasn’t used my personal information for
anything more than what I want it used for. I have a Google account, multiple
Gmail accounts, a Google Analytics account, and accounts with Google
AdWords and AdSense (and a couple dozen other Google applications and
accounts that I won’t list here). Not once in the past decade has Google used
my information inappropriately. And I’m pretty careful about who I give my
information out to. If you’re still not convinced, Google has a pretty rigorous
Privacy policy in place to protect you. You can find that policy at www.
google.com/privacy.html.
If, after reading that document, you still don’t want to register with Google,
you can jump to the instructions for opening an AdSense account if you don’t
have a Google account. Otherwise, you can set up a Google account while
you’re setting up your AdSense account. And if you already have a Google
account, you’re one step ahead of everyone else.
One more note about setting up a Google AdSense account: Some experts
suggest that you should have an AdSense account that’s separate from your
other Google accounts. The purpose behind having them separate is so that
there are no repercussions should you accidentally end up in Google’s bad
graces with your AdSense efforts. I think that caution is unfounded.
Unless you plan to use your AdSense account in a manner that’s prohibited
by Google, you should run into no problems at all. And I find that it’s much
easier to have an AdSense account that’s as easy to access as all the other
Google applications that you use. One difficulty that I’ve discovered is the
frustration of not having your AdSense account connected to other accounts,
especially Google Analytics and AdWords.
You have to decide what you’re most comfortable doing: using your existing
Google account, creating a new Google account, or not using one at all. But
no matter what your preferences are, you can still get started with AdSense
(even if not effectively) as soon as you get the approval from Google.
Taking the Plunge
If you have a Google account that you want to use when you set up your
AdSense account, here are the steps for setting up the account:
1. Point your browser to the AdSense Web site at www.adsense.com.
2. Click the Sign Up Now button,
3. Fill in the requested information on the form that appears ) and then click the Submit Information button.
The information you’ll be requested to enter includes
• Your Web site URL: Google will check the site to ensure it’s appropriate
for ads to be displayed.
• Your Web site language: To ensure that AdSense is available to your
site visitors and that any ads placed are properly targeted to the
main language of your site.
• Type of account: Use this drop-down menu to select whether you’re
creating a personal account or a business account. (If the account
is for you, it’s personal, and if you plan to use it as part of a business
that you own, it’s a business account.)
• Country or territory: You do know where you live, don’t you?
• The payee name: This is the name under which you want your
payments issued. If you’re creating a personal account, it should
be your personal name. If you’re creating a business account, it’s
best to use the business name, but you can also use your personal
name if you prefer.
Payments are made electronically or by check, but you set that
information up after you’ve created your AdSense account, so for
now all you need to know is to whom and where payments should
be sent.
• Address and telephone number: Use the address where you would
like to have your payments sent, and be sure to include a working
telephone number in case the good people at AdSense need to contact
you concerning payments. You also need to select the I Agree
that I Can Receive Checks Made Out to the Payee Name I Have
Listed Above check box. This just ensures that you’re aware that
the name you have selected in the Payee Name portion of the form
is the name your checks will be made out to.
• Email preferences: If you want to receive the AdSense newsletter
and surveys about AdSense, place a check mark in the In Addition,
Send Me Periodic Newsletters with Tips and Best Practices and
Occasional Surveys To Help Google Improve AdSense check box.
• Who referred you: Use the drop-down menu provided to tell Google
how you heard about AdSense. This information is likely used to
help them effectively market the AdSense service.
• Agree to AdSense program policies: The last part of the form is
where you register your agreement or disagreement with the
AdSense program policies. Be sure to read these policies completely
(a link to them is provided on the form). If you don’t agree
to the program’s policies, you will not be approved for an AdSense
account. Two of the four check boxes on this list are the most
important points in the program policies. The third check box is
your agreement (if you agree) and the fourth check box is just confirmation
that you don’t already have an AdSense account. (You’re
only allowed to have one, so don’t try registering another because
it will be refused.) All four of these check boxes must be selected.
Don’t blow off the Policies section. You need to read the policies and
make sure you understand them because Google strictly requires that
publishers (AdSense users) adhere to these policies. Slip up, and Google
will strip your AdSense capabilities so fast you’ll wonder if there’s some
capability-stripping super power out there that you’ve never heard of.
4. In the new page that appears, confirm your payment information, and
then choose either the I Have an Email Address and Password (Google
Account) option or the I Do Not Use These Other Services option.
If you select the first option, you can jump right to the next section.
If you select the second option, a new form appears, .
5a. If you select the second option, choose a new e-mail address for the
account, designate and confirm a password for the account, and then
enter the verification word. When you’re finished, click Continue.
A Gmail account will be created for you, using the e-mail address you
select.
5b. If you choose the I Have an Email Address and Password (Google
Account) option, then you have to choose one of the other two options
on the page: I’d Like to Use My Existing Google Account for AdSense or
I’d Like to Choose a New Login Name and Password Just for AdSense.
If you choose to use your existing Google account for AdSense, a form
like the one appears. Enter your active e-mail
address and password and click Continue.
The other option you have is to set up a new login name and password
just for AdSense. If you select that option, a form like the appears. Create a new e-mail address for your username, add
a password (and confirm it), and then enter the verification word and
click Continue.
6. Wait.
First you have to wait for an e-mail confirmation from AdSense. That
should arrive in your e-mail Inbox within a matter of minutes.
After you’ve confirmed your e-mail address, you have to wait a little
longer for approval of your account. But don’t wait too long. Google
should only take a few days to approve or deny your application for an
AdSense account.
One question you may have is whether you really need a Gmail address to
complete the AdSense application. The answer is no. I can sing the praises of
Gmail — Google’s Web mail program. I’ve had an account since the program
was in beta testing, and it’s the best Web-based e-mail program you’ll find. But
it’s not necessary to have one. Any e-mail address will suffice. Just be sure it’s
an e-mail address that you have access to because that’s where Google sends
your communications from AdSense, and you must be able to access those
communications to verify your account.
AdSense account, here are the steps for setting up the account:
1. Point your browser to the AdSense Web site at www.adsense.com.
2. Click the Sign Up Now button,
3. Fill in the requested information on the form that appears ) and then click the Submit Information button.
The information you’ll be requested to enter includes
• Your Web site URL: Google will check the site to ensure it’s appropriate
for ads to be displayed.
• Your Web site language: To ensure that AdSense is available to your
site visitors and that any ads placed are properly targeted to the
main language of your site.
• Type of account: Use this drop-down menu to select whether you’re
creating a personal account or a business account. (If the account
is for you, it’s personal, and if you plan to use it as part of a business
that you own, it’s a business account.)
• Country or territory: You do know where you live, don’t you?
• The payee name: This is the name under which you want your
payments issued. If you’re creating a personal account, it should
be your personal name. If you’re creating a business account, it’s
best to use the business name, but you can also use your personal
name if you prefer.
Payments are made electronically or by check, but you set that
information up after you’ve created your AdSense account, so for
now all you need to know is to whom and where payments should
be sent.
• Address and telephone number: Use the address where you would
like to have your payments sent, and be sure to include a working
telephone number in case the good people at AdSense need to contact
you concerning payments. You also need to select the I Agree
that I Can Receive Checks Made Out to the Payee Name I Have
Listed Above check box. This just ensures that you’re aware that
the name you have selected in the Payee Name portion of the form
is the name your checks will be made out to.
• Email preferences: If you want to receive the AdSense newsletter
and surveys about AdSense, place a check mark in the In Addition,
Send Me Periodic Newsletters with Tips and Best Practices and
Occasional Surveys To Help Google Improve AdSense check box.
• Who referred you: Use the drop-down menu provided to tell Google
how you heard about AdSense. This information is likely used to
help them effectively market the AdSense service.
• Agree to AdSense program policies: The last part of the form is
where you register your agreement or disagreement with the
AdSense program policies. Be sure to read these policies completely
(a link to them is provided on the form). If you don’t agree
to the program’s policies, you will not be approved for an AdSense
account. Two of the four check boxes on this list are the most
important points in the program policies. The third check box is
your agreement (if you agree) and the fourth check box is just confirmation
that you don’t already have an AdSense account. (You’re
only allowed to have one, so don’t try registering another because
it will be refused.) All four of these check boxes must be selected.
Don’t blow off the Policies section. You need to read the policies and
make sure you understand them because Google strictly requires that
publishers (AdSense users) adhere to these policies. Slip up, and Google
will strip your AdSense capabilities so fast you’ll wonder if there’s some
capability-stripping super power out there that you’ve never heard of.
4. In the new page that appears, confirm your payment information, and
then choose either the I Have an Email Address and Password (Google
Account) option or the I Do Not Use These Other Services option.
If you select the first option, you can jump right to the next section.
If you select the second option, a new form appears, .
5a. If you select the second option, choose a new e-mail address for the
account, designate and confirm a password for the account, and then
enter the verification word. When you’re finished, click Continue.
A Gmail account will be created for you, using the e-mail address you
select.
5b. If you choose the I Have an Email Address and Password (Google
Account) option, then you have to choose one of the other two options
on the page: I’d Like to Use My Existing Google Account for AdSense or
I’d Like to Choose a New Login Name and Password Just for AdSense.
If you choose to use your existing Google account for AdSense, a form
like the one appears. Enter your active e-mail
address and password and click Continue.
The other option you have is to set up a new login name and password
just for AdSense. If you select that option, a form like the appears. Create a new e-mail address for your username, add
a password (and confirm it), and then enter the verification word and
click Continue.
6. Wait.
First you have to wait for an e-mail confirmation from AdSense. That
should arrive in your e-mail Inbox within a matter of minutes.
After you’ve confirmed your e-mail address, you have to wait a little
longer for approval of your account. But don’t wait too long. Google
should only take a few days to approve or deny your application for an
AdSense account.
One question you may have is whether you really need a Gmail address to
complete the AdSense application. The answer is no. I can sing the praises of
Gmail — Google’s Web mail program. I’ve had an account since the program
was in beta testing, and it’s the best Web-based e-mail program you’ll find. But
it’s not necessary to have one. Any e-mail address will suffice. Just be sure it’s
an e-mail address that you have access to because that’s where Google sends
your communications from AdSense, and you must be able to access those
communications to verify your account.
Understanding Google’s Policies
If you’ve read anything at all online about AdSense, you’ve probably seen the
phrase “familiarize yourself with the AdSense Program Policies” at least as
many times as you’ve seen the moon. There’s good reason for that.
Google is very strict about AdSense users (publishers, in their jargon) following
the guidelines set forth in the AdSense Program Policies document. If you
don’t adhere to the program policies, Google reserves the right to disable
your AdSense account. And Google will — faster than you can say “What did
I do wrong?” They’re that serious about the guidelines because the appearance
of your site and your adherence to their guidelines determine how
people view the advertisements. Google wants to be in users’ good graces,
and your cooperation helps to accomplish that.
The program policies aren’t filled with quite as much legalese as you might
find in other policy documents, but you’ll encounter ten-dollar words like pursuant.
Here’s a quick list of what you’ll encounter in the policy document:
Legalese
Invalid clicks and impressions
Encouraging clicks
Site content
Copyrighted materials
Webmaster Guidelines
Site and ad behavior
Ad placement
Competitive ads and services
Product-specific policies
In the next few sections, I deal with each of these points in greater detail.
(Remember: This is just an overview. Read the document completely before
you agree to the policy requirements of the program.
Legalese
The document starts with an explanation of Google’s legal rights. Basically,
the Google lawyers are telling you that you need to be nicer and follow the
guidelines Google sets forth or Google can — and will, if it becomes necessary
— disable your AdSense account. The rub here is that after your
account is disabled, you’re just finished. You can’t use AdSense anymore.
(Yes, you could try to cheat fate by creating a new account, but if Google
finds out it’s you, they’ll just shut you down all over again.)
Invalid clicks and impressions
“Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest.”
That’s the first line of the most highly debated section of the program policies.
This section of the policy lays out the guidelines for what constitutes a
valid click. If you click your own ads, those clicks are invalid. If you program
(or purchase) some piece of software to click your ads, those clicks are
invalid. And these types of invalid clicks are click fraud. Click fraud is fraudulently
clicking your own or someone else’s ads with the intent of affecting
AdSense revenues or AdWords costs and is enough to get you banned from
AdSense completely, no questions asked — and please don’t re-apply.
A valid click or impression has these qualities:
It’s initiated by a real user to your Web site.
The actual click is performed by a real, live person.
The click is the result of genuine interest in the content of the advertisement
by the real, live person.
Any clicks that don’t meet these requirements can be (and usually are)
considered invalid clicks. Clicking your own ad even one time could get you
banned from AdSense. It’s not worth it.
You don’t have to say it. I hear your objection: How are you supposed to
know how the ads apply to your site if you can’t follow them? Or how will you
know how the ads will look or how they will integrate into your Web site?
Well . . . it’s half about trust and half about testing. Trying to view every
single ad that’s shown on your Web site probably isn’t prudent. Because ads
rotate constantly and each site visitor might see a different ad set — also
called an ad group or an ad block — you probably couldn’t view all the ads,
even if you wanted to.
Instead, AdSense has a testing capability — the AdSense preview tool. It’s a
small application you have to download and add to your computer’s registry,
which allows you to see what the ads look like and how they behave without
having to click your own ads.
Download the preview tool from the AdSense Help Center at https://www.
google.com/adsense/support/. In the Help Center, search for preview
tool. You should be taken to a search results page where the top result is a
link to the page from which you can download the preview tool. The directions
on the page walk you through downloading and installing the preview tool.
Here’s one catch: If you’re a Firefox user, the preview tool won’t be much
help. It only works with Internet Explorer. For the purposes of previewing
your AdSense ad blocks, it might be wise to keep Internet Explorer as a
backup browser. You don’t have to use it all the time — just when you want
to preview your AdSense ad blocks.
Encouraging clicks
The next section of the AdSense Program Policy document addresses the
kinds of things you shouldn’t pull in an attempt to encourage people to
click on your ads. I know this is a little negative, but it’s important that
you pay attention to these no-nos because ignoring them could have dire
consequences.
You can’t point out ads. You can’t pay people to click your ads. You also
can’t use any kind of misleading titling around the ads (for example, using
a Favorite Sites title when the ads really are just advertisements), and you
must be cautious about the graphics you include around ad blocks. If they’re
at all misleading and appear to be associated with the ads, that’s more fodder
for the banning machine.
In short, all you can really do to encourage ad unit clicks is to place the ads
in the best possible locations. Make them appealing with the design tools
that Google provides and then leave them alone. Much more than that and
you run the risk of landing on Google’s black list.
Site content
Here’s where the program policies begin to get interesting. Okay, not really.
There is rarely anything interesting about program policies. But a lot of meat
is in this section of the program policies, and you should pay close attention
to what’s here.
Google’s requirements for site content are basic: no violent content, no adult
content, nothing related to gambling, and nothing associated with any type of
illegal activities. But that’s not all. Google also frowns on Web sites that are
related to anything that could be construed as controversial — tobacco, alcohol,
prescription drugs, and weaponry of any kind. Google stops just short of
disallowing ads on political pages, though that might not be a bad idea.
Think of it this way: If you were Google, what would you not want your name
associated with? Just about anything you come up with will probably be on
the restricted list that Google’s created. Read the list closely. Google doesn’t
accept I didn’t know as a good excuse for violating the policies.
Copyrighted materials
This should really go without saying, but plagiarized content will ensure that
Google pulls your AdSense access. Copyright infringement is a serious crime;
one that’s more prevalent on the Internet than grains of sand on a beach.
Many people mistakenly believe that because articles and other content
on the Web are on the Web, they’re free for anyone to use. That’s not the
case, and Google is a bulldog in the copyright protection arena. The Google
crawler, which is the program that looks at your Web site to determine the
main topics, or keywords, that are relevant to the site, can determine if the
content on your page is original or if it appears in another place on the Web.
If it’s not original and you can’t prove you have permission to use it, you’ll
pay the price. So, be kind; use original content.
Take the time to read about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and
Google’s stance on that piece of legislation. The details are on the Web at
www.google.com/adsense_dmca.html. Not only will copyright infringement
and plagiarism get you banned from AdSense, but they can also get you
thrown in jail, so use original content. You not only protect your investment
in AdSense, but your Web site will probably rank better in search results, too,
because search engines — and site visitors — love fresh, original content.
Having fresh, original content would naturally make your site more popular.
Webmaster Guidelines
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines tell you everything you need to know about
what the company expects from the design of a Web site. The document is
pretty complicated, but it can be summed up in one word: simplicity.
Keep your Web site simple, easy to use, and relevant to your site visitors, and
you shouldn’t run into any problems with Google where site design is concerned.
Of course, it still doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with and follow
the Webmaster Guidelines. Read them here:
www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality
A more in-depth discussion of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines can be found
in topic . There’s even a bonus to using this set of guidelines — Google is
the search engine to rank in. Following these guidelines helps ensure that you
rank well in its search results.
Site and ad behavior
Need a few more guidelines for how your site should be designed? Not necessarily?
Well, tough because Google’s giving a few more anyway. In this section
of the program policies, Google outlines yet more no-nos. You can’t use
pop-ups or pop-unders in your site design. (Pop-ups are those annoying little
windows that pop up out of nowhere when you click a link leading to a Web
site or when you click away from the site. Pop-unders are the same except the
window appears under your Web browser so you don’t see them until you
close the browser window.)
You also can’t try to deceive your visitors into clicking through ads by disguising
the ads or hiding them within text, behind graphics, or in the background
of the Web page. The ads must appear as ads and not as sponsored
links of any kind.
And to take it all one step further, Google also has Landing Page Quality
Guidelines to help ensure that your landing page — the first page that site
visitors land on when they click into your Web site — is designed well and
adheres to the AdSense Program Policy requirements. These guidelines ask
the following of you and your site:
That you have relevant and original content on your site
That your site is clear in your intent and the nature of your business (if
that’s relevant)
That it’s clear how your visitors’ information will be used
That users can find their way around your site, or navigate the site,
easily
I recommend checking out the full set of Landing Page Quality Guidelines at
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=
46675&hl=en.
The real key to staying in Google’s good graces (for both search engine ranking
and the AdSense program) is to design your Web site with the end user
in mind. If you’re designing a site strictly to collect ad clicks, you might get
a high number of visitors for a short time, but that number will fall like a
penny dropped from the Empire State building as soon as users figure out
what you’re up to. Or worse, Google will figure it out first and ban you from
AdSense and probably from search engine rankings, too.
A much better idea is to design your site for site visitors. Provide the information
that visitors are looking for. They’ll spend more time on your site,
which means more exposure to AdSense ads, which means ultimately more
clicks. And Google will leave you alone to make your money. Not a bad trade
for doing things the right way instead of trying to deceive site visitors.
Ad placement
In case there was any doubt, Google set up guidelines for how and where ad
units can be placed on your site. The policy document lists the particulars,
but it’s safe to say that Google wants ads tastefully displayed and in context.
Google also doesn’t want visitors overwhelmed by the number of ads on a
page, so, you’ll also find guidelines for how many ad blocks of each type you
can have on any given Web page.
More information about how to actually place ads on your Web site — as well
as information about creating appealing ads — can be found in topic .
Competitive ads and services
This isn’t about your competition; it’s about Google’s competition. Like any
good contender, Google doesn’t want competitors competing for its share of
the prize money. So, you can’t display ads from any competing services that
could be confused with AdSense ads.
For example, it’s okay to include ads on your site from Amazon or other retail
services. And you can even include other pay-per-click ads, as long as they
don’t mimics AdSense ads. Ads that look like they belong to AdSense but do
not are a real no-no — that could really stir Google’s pot!
Google stops just this side of saying you can’t use other advertising services, but
only because denying your freedom to use any program without thought of how it
could be misconstrued as a Google capability is creating a monopoly. And monopolies
draw the attention of Big Brother. He’s a sibling no one wants to spend time with.
Product-specific policies
AdSense has a few different divisions, such as Internet ads, video ads, radio
ads, and a massive variety of content ads. Google is slowing working into
many other types of advertising as well. Because there are so many different
types of media in which you can use AdSense, and all those media differ in
some way, there have to be policies that directly address some of the differences
for each medium. You can find those guidelines at www.google.com/
adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=71600.
The AdSense Program Policy document seems pretty tame on first glance.
But as you look closer at the contents of the policy, you can quickly see that
there are additional bits and pieces about those program policies scattered
behind several different Web links. And after you start getting into those
links, you can truly see how complicated Google’s policies get.
Don’t skip anything, though. Read through all the policy documentation and
then read it all again. And read it again as you need to, to stay on the right
side of Google’s good graces, because if you get booted, it’s hard to reestablish
your presence on the Web.
phrase “familiarize yourself with the AdSense Program Policies” at least as
many times as you’ve seen the moon. There’s good reason for that.
Google is very strict about AdSense users (publishers, in their jargon) following
the guidelines set forth in the AdSense Program Policies document. If you
don’t adhere to the program policies, Google reserves the right to disable
your AdSense account. And Google will — faster than you can say “What did
I do wrong?” They’re that serious about the guidelines because the appearance
of your site and your adherence to their guidelines determine how
people view the advertisements. Google wants to be in users’ good graces,
and your cooperation helps to accomplish that.
The program policies aren’t filled with quite as much legalese as you might
find in other policy documents, but you’ll encounter ten-dollar words like pursuant.
Here’s a quick list of what you’ll encounter in the policy document:
Legalese
Invalid clicks and impressions
Encouraging clicks
Site content
Copyrighted materials
Webmaster Guidelines
Site and ad behavior
Ad placement
Competitive ads and services
Product-specific policies
In the next few sections, I deal with each of these points in greater detail.
(Remember: This is just an overview. Read the document completely before
you agree to the policy requirements of the program.
Legalese
The document starts with an explanation of Google’s legal rights. Basically,
the Google lawyers are telling you that you need to be nicer and follow the
guidelines Google sets forth or Google can — and will, if it becomes necessary
— disable your AdSense account. The rub here is that after your
account is disabled, you’re just finished. You can’t use AdSense anymore.
(Yes, you could try to cheat fate by creating a new account, but if Google
finds out it’s you, they’ll just shut you down all over again.)
Invalid clicks and impressions
“Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest.”
That’s the first line of the most highly debated section of the program policies.
This section of the policy lays out the guidelines for what constitutes a
valid click. If you click your own ads, those clicks are invalid. If you program
(or purchase) some piece of software to click your ads, those clicks are
invalid. And these types of invalid clicks are click fraud. Click fraud is fraudulently
clicking your own or someone else’s ads with the intent of affecting
AdSense revenues or AdWords costs and is enough to get you banned from
AdSense completely, no questions asked — and please don’t re-apply.
A valid click or impression has these qualities:
It’s initiated by a real user to your Web site.
The actual click is performed by a real, live person.
The click is the result of genuine interest in the content of the advertisement
by the real, live person.
Any clicks that don’t meet these requirements can be (and usually are)
considered invalid clicks. Clicking your own ad even one time could get you
banned from AdSense. It’s not worth it.
You don’t have to say it. I hear your objection: How are you supposed to
know how the ads apply to your site if you can’t follow them? Or how will you
know how the ads will look or how they will integrate into your Web site?
Well . . . it’s half about trust and half about testing. Trying to view every
single ad that’s shown on your Web site probably isn’t prudent. Because ads
rotate constantly and each site visitor might see a different ad set — also
called an ad group or an ad block — you probably couldn’t view all the ads,
even if you wanted to.
Instead, AdSense has a testing capability — the AdSense preview tool. It’s a
small application you have to download and add to your computer’s registry,
which allows you to see what the ads look like and how they behave without
having to click your own ads.
Download the preview tool from the AdSense Help Center at https://www.
google.com/adsense/support/. In the Help Center, search for preview
tool. You should be taken to a search results page where the top result is a
link to the page from which you can download the preview tool. The directions
on the page walk you through downloading and installing the preview tool.
Here’s one catch: If you’re a Firefox user, the preview tool won’t be much
help. It only works with Internet Explorer. For the purposes of previewing
your AdSense ad blocks, it might be wise to keep Internet Explorer as a
backup browser. You don’t have to use it all the time — just when you want
to preview your AdSense ad blocks.
Encouraging clicks
The next section of the AdSense Program Policy document addresses the
kinds of things you shouldn’t pull in an attempt to encourage people to
click on your ads. I know this is a little negative, but it’s important that
you pay attention to these no-nos because ignoring them could have dire
consequences.
You can’t point out ads. You can’t pay people to click your ads. You also
can’t use any kind of misleading titling around the ads (for example, using
a Favorite Sites title when the ads really are just advertisements), and you
must be cautious about the graphics you include around ad blocks. If they’re
at all misleading and appear to be associated with the ads, that’s more fodder
for the banning machine.
In short, all you can really do to encourage ad unit clicks is to place the ads
in the best possible locations. Make them appealing with the design tools
that Google provides and then leave them alone. Much more than that and
you run the risk of landing on Google’s black list.
Site content
Here’s where the program policies begin to get interesting. Okay, not really.
There is rarely anything interesting about program policies. But a lot of meat
is in this section of the program policies, and you should pay close attention
to what’s here.
Google’s requirements for site content are basic: no violent content, no adult
content, nothing related to gambling, and nothing associated with any type of
illegal activities. But that’s not all. Google also frowns on Web sites that are
related to anything that could be construed as controversial — tobacco, alcohol,
prescription drugs, and weaponry of any kind. Google stops just short of
disallowing ads on political pages, though that might not be a bad idea.
Think of it this way: If you were Google, what would you not want your name
associated with? Just about anything you come up with will probably be on
the restricted list that Google’s created. Read the list closely. Google doesn’t
accept I didn’t know as a good excuse for violating the policies.
Copyrighted materials
This should really go without saying, but plagiarized content will ensure that
Google pulls your AdSense access. Copyright infringement is a serious crime;
one that’s more prevalent on the Internet than grains of sand on a beach.
Many people mistakenly believe that because articles and other content
on the Web are on the Web, they’re free for anyone to use. That’s not the
case, and Google is a bulldog in the copyright protection arena. The Google
crawler, which is the program that looks at your Web site to determine the
main topics, or keywords, that are relevant to the site, can determine if the
content on your page is original or if it appears in another place on the Web.
If it’s not original and you can’t prove you have permission to use it, you’ll
pay the price. So, be kind; use original content.
Take the time to read about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and
Google’s stance on that piece of legislation. The details are on the Web at
www.google.com/adsense_dmca.html. Not only will copyright infringement
and plagiarism get you banned from AdSense, but they can also get you
thrown in jail, so use original content. You not only protect your investment
in AdSense, but your Web site will probably rank better in search results, too,
because search engines — and site visitors — love fresh, original content.
Having fresh, original content would naturally make your site more popular.
Webmaster Guidelines
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines tell you everything you need to know about
what the company expects from the design of a Web site. The document is
pretty complicated, but it can be summed up in one word: simplicity.
Keep your Web site simple, easy to use, and relevant to your site visitors, and
you shouldn’t run into any problems with Google where site design is concerned.
Of course, it still doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with and follow
the Webmaster Guidelines. Read them here:
www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality
A more in-depth discussion of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines can be found
in topic . There’s even a bonus to using this set of guidelines — Google is
the search engine to rank in. Following these guidelines helps ensure that you
rank well in its search results.
Site and ad behavior
Need a few more guidelines for how your site should be designed? Not necessarily?
Well, tough because Google’s giving a few more anyway. In this section
of the program policies, Google outlines yet more no-nos. You can’t use
pop-ups or pop-unders in your site design. (Pop-ups are those annoying little
windows that pop up out of nowhere when you click a link leading to a Web
site or when you click away from the site. Pop-unders are the same except the
window appears under your Web browser so you don’t see them until you
close the browser window.)
You also can’t try to deceive your visitors into clicking through ads by disguising
the ads or hiding them within text, behind graphics, or in the background
of the Web page. The ads must appear as ads and not as sponsored
links of any kind.
And to take it all one step further, Google also has Landing Page Quality
Guidelines to help ensure that your landing page — the first page that site
visitors land on when they click into your Web site — is designed well and
adheres to the AdSense Program Policy requirements. These guidelines ask
the following of you and your site:
That you have relevant and original content on your site
That your site is clear in your intent and the nature of your business (if
that’s relevant)
That it’s clear how your visitors’ information will be used
That users can find their way around your site, or navigate the site,
easily
I recommend checking out the full set of Landing Page Quality Guidelines at
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=
46675&hl=en.
The real key to staying in Google’s good graces (for both search engine ranking
and the AdSense program) is to design your Web site with the end user
in mind. If you’re designing a site strictly to collect ad clicks, you might get
a high number of visitors for a short time, but that number will fall like a
penny dropped from the Empire State building as soon as users figure out
what you’re up to. Or worse, Google will figure it out first and ban you from
AdSense and probably from search engine rankings, too.
A much better idea is to design your site for site visitors. Provide the information
that visitors are looking for. They’ll spend more time on your site,
which means more exposure to AdSense ads, which means ultimately more
clicks. And Google will leave you alone to make your money. Not a bad trade
for doing things the right way instead of trying to deceive site visitors.
Ad placement
In case there was any doubt, Google set up guidelines for how and where ad
units can be placed on your site. The policy document lists the particulars,
but it’s safe to say that Google wants ads tastefully displayed and in context.
Google also doesn’t want visitors overwhelmed by the number of ads on a
page, so, you’ll also find guidelines for how many ad blocks of each type you
can have on any given Web page.
More information about how to actually place ads on your Web site — as well
as information about creating appealing ads — can be found in topic .
Competitive ads and services
This isn’t about your competition; it’s about Google’s competition. Like any
good contender, Google doesn’t want competitors competing for its share of
the prize money. So, you can’t display ads from any competing services that
could be confused with AdSense ads.
For example, it’s okay to include ads on your site from Amazon or other retail
services. And you can even include other pay-per-click ads, as long as they
don’t mimics AdSense ads. Ads that look like they belong to AdSense but do
not are a real no-no — that could really stir Google’s pot!
Google stops just this side of saying you can’t use other advertising services, but
only because denying your freedom to use any program without thought of how it
could be misconstrued as a Google capability is creating a monopoly. And monopolies
draw the attention of Big Brother. He’s a sibling no one wants to spend time with.
Product-specific policies
AdSense has a few different divisions, such as Internet ads, video ads, radio
ads, and a massive variety of content ads. Google is slowing working into
many other types of advertising as well. Because there are so many different
types of media in which you can use AdSense, and all those media differ in
some way, there have to be policies that directly address some of the differences
for each medium. You can find those guidelines at www.google.com/
adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=71600.
The AdSense Program Policy document seems pretty tame on first glance.
But as you look closer at the contents of the policy, you can quickly see that
there are additional bits and pieces about those program policies scattered
behind several different Web links. And after you start getting into those
links, you can truly see how complicated Google’s policies get.
Don’t skip anything, though. Read through all the policy documentation and
then read it all again. And read it again as you need to, to stay on the right
side of Google’s good graces, because if you get booted, it’s hard to reestablish
your presence on the Web.
Creating Your First Set of Ads
You created your account, waited, and were approved. Now AdSense is
active. Now you can fill that blank space on your Web site with money-generating
ads. But first you have to set up your ads.
Log in to your new AdSense account by using the username and password
that you set up during the registration process. The page that appears at
login is the Reports tab (AdSense always opens to this), which features
a quick overview of your earnings and the reports that are available for
AdSense. Because you don’t have any data to be reported yet, you’ll have a
big, fat zero on that page, much like the one
If you want to change that big fat zero into something a bit more lucrative,
you need to set up a few ad blocks. Here’s how:
1. If you haven’t already done so, log in to your AdSense account.
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab, immediately to the right of the
Reports tab
3. On this page, select the type of ad block you want to set up.
For this example, go ahead and select AdSense for Content. The other
options are covered in later chapters.
The page that appears is the first step in the Ad Wizard, which walks
you through setting up your ad.
If you prefer a single-page form instead of using the wizard, click the
wizard’s Single Page link. The information you’re asked to enter is the
same, but on the single-page form, you just scroll down the page instead
of clicking a Continue button.
4. Choose your ad type and click Continue.
Your choices here are
• Ad Units: A graphical text box inside of
which linked ads are displayed.
• Link Units: A set of linked keywords that
lead to advertisers’ pages.
Just to keep it simple for now, select Ad Unit.
5. In the new page that appears, choose the size of ad you want to have
appear on your Web site.
Google offers a variety of different shapes, sizes, and types of ad formats.
The format that works best for you depends on the space you
have available, the content of your Web site, and the design of the page
on which the ad appears. For now, select 234 x 60 Half Banner from the
Format drop-down menu. (I give you all the details about ad styles and
formats in Chapter 7, when I cover designing the perfect content ad.)
6. On the same page, choose a color scheme for your ad.
Google has several pre-made color schemes available in the drop-down
list to the right, or you have the option to specify border, title, background,
text, and URL colors by hexadecimal number. This is useful if
you know the exact hexadecimal numbers of your Web page design and
want to match them.
For your purposes, select Seaside from the drop-down list.
7. Still on the same page, choose Slightly Rounded Corners from the
Corner Styles drop-down list.
The other options available here are Squared Corners or Very Rounded
Corners. Visually, each has a different appeal to people in different situations
and on different Web sites.
8. For the last option on the page, choose Show Public Service Ads from
the drop-down list and click Continue.
What’s this about public service ads? Well, Google shows public service
ads when your site is so new that it can’t be properly populated with
paid ads and when your site content doesn’t match ad content. You can
choose to have these ads displayed, to have ads from another service
displayed, or to have a solid color displayed as a placeholder if either of
these situations applies.
9. In the new page that appears, click Continue.
This page of the wizard gives you the option to assign the ad to a channel,
but you have not yet set up channels. I show you how to set up
channels in Chapter 14. For now, channels aren’t an aspect of AdSense
that you need to worry about. They’re for tracking your ads, but before
you can track them you need to know how to create them and get the
highest percentage of clicks possible. After all, tracking nothing — which
is exactly how many clicks you’ll have if you do your ads wrong — still
leaves you with nothing to track.
10. In the new (and final) page that appears, enter a name for your ad unit
in the appropriate field and then click the Save and Get Code button.
When the page appears, a default name is already filled into the Name
text box. I recommend renaming the ad unit something useful, but if you
want to leave the default name, that’s fine.
The page appears with the code for your ad unit.
11. Copy the code provided by AdSense and paste it into the HTML code
of your Web site.
How you access your HTML code depends on how you got your code in
the first place. If you’re using an HTML Editor/Web Page Creation program
to design your Web site, you may need to dig around the menus to find out
how to get the raw HTML code on-screen. If you’re writing your code from
scratch, though, all you need to do is pull up the Web site code and paste
the ad code into the spot on which you want AdSense ads to appear.
Creating the ad for your Web site is an easy process. Getting it to appear on
the right spot on your Web site might be a little bit like landing a jumbo jet in
the median of the New Jersey Turnpike. It’ll take a little practice, and in the
beginning, it could get a little hairy.
One resource you may find helpful during the implementation process is the
AdSense help page for code implementation:
www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=44511&sourceid=
aso&subidww-ww-et-asui&medium=link#3
The one thing you need to remember is that this is just an exercise in creating
your first ad block. There are more details to implementing ads that work
than there are quills on a porcupine. So maybe you do have an ad that you
think is ready to go online, but it might not be. You can put it online now, and
tweak it as you have time. Or, flip through some of the more detailed chapters
about creating specific types of ads. Putting a basic ad on your Web site
probably won’t hurt you, but your time might be better spent figuring out
how to make that ad really sing to your site visitors.
Creating ads seems easy enough. Even getting the ads to display isn’t all that
difficult. However, getting site visitors to take note of those ads is a completely
different tale. One way that you can get users to click your ads is to
ensure they appear in the right context on your Web site. In Chapter 3, you
find out about building content-rich Web sites and how you can optimize
your Web site content for AdSense. Use those tips to help create pages that
are complemented by the ads Google dishes out to your site.
active. Now you can fill that blank space on your Web site with money-generating
ads. But first you have to set up your ads.
Log in to your new AdSense account by using the username and password
that you set up during the registration process. The page that appears at
login is the Reports tab (AdSense always opens to this), which features
a quick overview of your earnings and the reports that are available for
AdSense. Because you don’t have any data to be reported yet, you’ll have a
big, fat zero on that page, much like the one
If you want to change that big fat zero into something a bit more lucrative,
you need to set up a few ad blocks. Here’s how:
1. If you haven’t already done so, log in to your AdSense account.
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab, immediately to the right of the
Reports tab
3. On this page, select the type of ad block you want to set up.
For this example, go ahead and select AdSense for Content. The other
options are covered in later chapters.
The page that appears is the first step in the Ad Wizard, which walks
you through setting up your ad.
If you prefer a single-page form instead of using the wizard, click the
wizard’s Single Page link. The information you’re asked to enter is the
same, but on the single-page form, you just scroll down the page instead
of clicking a Continue button.
4. Choose your ad type and click Continue.
Your choices here are
• Ad Units: A graphical text box inside of
which linked ads are displayed.
• Link Units: A set of linked keywords that
lead to advertisers’ pages.
Just to keep it simple for now, select Ad Unit.
5. In the new page that appears, choose the size of ad you want to have
appear on your Web site.
Google offers a variety of different shapes, sizes, and types of ad formats.
The format that works best for you depends on the space you
have available, the content of your Web site, and the design of the page
on which the ad appears. For now, select 234 x 60 Half Banner from the
Format drop-down menu. (I give you all the details about ad styles and
formats in Chapter 7, when I cover designing the perfect content ad.)
6. On the same page, choose a color scheme for your ad.
Google has several pre-made color schemes available in the drop-down
list to the right, or you have the option to specify border, title, background,
text, and URL colors by hexadecimal number. This is useful if
you know the exact hexadecimal numbers of your Web page design and
want to match them.
For your purposes, select Seaside from the drop-down list.
7. Still on the same page, choose Slightly Rounded Corners from the
Corner Styles drop-down list.
The other options available here are Squared Corners or Very Rounded
Corners. Visually, each has a different appeal to people in different situations
and on different Web sites.
8. For the last option on the page, choose Show Public Service Ads from
the drop-down list and click Continue.
What’s this about public service ads? Well, Google shows public service
ads when your site is so new that it can’t be properly populated with
paid ads and when your site content doesn’t match ad content. You can
choose to have these ads displayed, to have ads from another service
displayed, or to have a solid color displayed as a placeholder if either of
these situations applies.
9. In the new page that appears, click Continue.
This page of the wizard gives you the option to assign the ad to a channel,
but you have not yet set up channels. I show you how to set up
channels in Chapter 14. For now, channels aren’t an aspect of AdSense
that you need to worry about. They’re for tracking your ads, but before
you can track them you need to know how to create them and get the
highest percentage of clicks possible. After all, tracking nothing — which
is exactly how many clicks you’ll have if you do your ads wrong — still
leaves you with nothing to track.
10. In the new (and final) page that appears, enter a name for your ad unit
in the appropriate field and then click the Save and Get Code button.
When the page appears, a default name is already filled into the Name
text box. I recommend renaming the ad unit something useful, but if you
want to leave the default name, that’s fine.
The page appears with the code for your ad unit.
11. Copy the code provided by AdSense and paste it into the HTML code
of your Web site.
How you access your HTML code depends on how you got your code in
the first place. If you’re using an HTML Editor/Web Page Creation program
to design your Web site, you may need to dig around the menus to find out
how to get the raw HTML code on-screen. If you’re writing your code from
scratch, though, all you need to do is pull up the Web site code and paste
the ad code into the spot on which you want AdSense ads to appear.
Creating the ad for your Web site is an easy process. Getting it to appear on
the right spot on your Web site might be a little bit like landing a jumbo jet in
the median of the New Jersey Turnpike. It’ll take a little practice, and in the
beginning, it could get a little hairy.
One resource you may find helpful during the implementation process is the
AdSense help page for code implementation:
www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=44511&sourceid=
aso&subidww-ww-et-asui&medium=link#3
The one thing you need to remember is that this is just an exercise in creating
your first ad block. There are more details to implementing ads that work
than there are quills on a porcupine. So maybe you do have an ad that you
think is ready to go online, but it might not be. You can put it online now, and
tweak it as you have time. Or, flip through some of the more detailed chapters
about creating specific types of ads. Putting a basic ad on your Web site
probably won’t hurt you, but your time might be better spent figuring out
how to make that ad really sing to your site visitors.
Creating ads seems easy enough. Even getting the ads to display isn’t all that
difficult. However, getting site visitors to take note of those ads is a completely
different tale. One way that you can get users to click your ads is to
ensure they appear in the right context on your Web site. In Chapter 3, you
find out about building content-rich Web sites and how you can optimize
your Web site content for AdSense. Use those tips to help create pages that
are complemented by the ads Google dishes out to your site.
The Big Deal about Content
Content is king! Bet you’ve heard that a few times before, right? It’s an overused
phrase that’s lost some of its impact. It’s still true though — content is
king. And without enough content (and enough of the right kind of content)
on your Web site, you might as well toss the keys to your Web domain down
the nearest sewer drain because the domain will be worthless.
Think about what’s really motivating you when you surf the Internet. Go
ahead — pay close attention to what you do the next few times you go online.
To help you remember, keep a list of the Web sites you visit and what you
do while you’re there. I bet the search for information is the unifying theme
to all your Internet sessions. Information is content — words, pictures, audio,
and video — that relay the information you need when you’re online. That’s
one of the reasons why search engines like Google have grown exponentially
in size and popularity. People want information, and they want the best possible
way to get to exactly what they need in the least amount of time.
You can tap into that desire for information and use AdSense to generate a
decent income, but only if you have the content that draws visitors to your
site in the first place. Your site visitors care about content (or information),
and you should, too.
Content draws visitors to your site, and keeps them on your site or causes
them to return. Content equals traffic — but here’s the catch. Content only
translates to traffic if the content is relevant and fresh. Old content or completely
unrelated content doesn’t do you any more good than old fish — it
stinks up the place and makes people want to be somewhere else.
Good content is a good thing — I think we can all agree on that. You may ask
how good content ties in with AdSense and your desire to turn your Web
site into a handy little income stream. It turns out that content is also what
Google uses to target ads on your Web site. In fact, Google uses the same
technology to target AdSense ads that it uses to create search results. A software
program — called a Web crawler, a spyder, or a bot — literally counts the
number of times different words are used on your site and examines the words
surrounding them (the so-called context). Then, using a mathematical equation
that would probably take an entire ream of paper to write, the program determines
the probability that the site is related to the words used most frequently
on the site — the site’s keywords. (Smaller, common words, such as a, an, the,
and, nor, or, but, and etc., are completely ignored by the crawler.)
Then the content on your site — broken down to the keyword level — is used
to determine which ads are appropriate for your site. The keyword value —
how much someone is willing to pay to have their related ad shown in your
ad space — determines how valuable the ads for your site are to you, how
appropriate they are, and how valuable they can be to your site visitors. Run
a site that’s largely graphical in nature — lots of images, in other words —
and Google has a hard time placing the right ads on the site. What you end
up with instead are public service announcements, which are nice enough,
I suppose — if you’re not interested in making money, because they take up
space but generate no income.
My sense is that your interest in AdSense might be tied up with making a bit
of green on the side. If that’s so, keep the following mantra in mind: “Content
is a big deal. Content is king. Content is site traffic. Content is money in your
pocket if it’s done right.” Content done right starts with building the right
type of Web site.
phrase that’s lost some of its impact. It’s still true though — content is
king. And without enough content (and enough of the right kind of content)
on your Web site, you might as well toss the keys to your Web domain down
the nearest sewer drain because the domain will be worthless.
Think about what’s really motivating you when you surf the Internet. Go
ahead — pay close attention to what you do the next few times you go online.
To help you remember, keep a list of the Web sites you visit and what you
do while you’re there. I bet the search for information is the unifying theme
to all your Internet sessions. Information is content — words, pictures, audio,
and video — that relay the information you need when you’re online. That’s
one of the reasons why search engines like Google have grown exponentially
in size and popularity. People want information, and they want the best possible
way to get to exactly what they need in the least amount of time.
You can tap into that desire for information and use AdSense to generate a
decent income, but only if you have the content that draws visitors to your
site in the first place. Your site visitors care about content (or information),
and you should, too.
Content draws visitors to your site, and keeps them on your site or causes
them to return. Content equals traffic — but here’s the catch. Content only
translates to traffic if the content is relevant and fresh. Old content or completely
unrelated content doesn’t do you any more good than old fish — it
stinks up the place and makes people want to be somewhere else.
Good content is a good thing — I think we can all agree on that. You may ask
how good content ties in with AdSense and your desire to turn your Web
site into a handy little income stream. It turns out that content is also what
Google uses to target ads on your Web site. In fact, Google uses the same
technology to target AdSense ads that it uses to create search results. A software
program — called a Web crawler, a spyder, or a bot — literally counts the
number of times different words are used on your site and examines the words
surrounding them (the so-called context). Then, using a mathematical equation
that would probably take an entire ream of paper to write, the program determines
the probability that the site is related to the words used most frequently
on the site — the site’s keywords. (Smaller, common words, such as a, an, the,
and, nor, or, but, and etc., are completely ignored by the crawler.)
Then the content on your site — broken down to the keyword level — is used
to determine which ads are appropriate for your site. The keyword value —
how much someone is willing to pay to have their related ad shown in your
ad space — determines how valuable the ads for your site are to you, how
appropriate they are, and how valuable they can be to your site visitors. Run
a site that’s largely graphical in nature — lots of images, in other words —
and Google has a hard time placing the right ads on the site. What you end
up with instead are public service announcements, which are nice enough,
I suppose — if you’re not interested in making money, because they take up
space but generate no income.
My sense is that your interest in AdSense might be tied up with making a bit
of green on the side. If that’s so, keep the following mantra in mind: “Content
is a big deal. Content is king. Content is site traffic. Content is money in your
pocket if it’s done right.” Content done right starts with building the right
type of Web site.
The Big Deal about Content
Content is king! Bet you’ve heard that a few times before, right? It’s an overused
phrase that’s lost some of its impact. It’s still true though — content is
king. And without enough content (and enough of the right kind of content)
on your Web site, you might as well toss the keys to your Web domain down
the nearest sewer drain because the domain will be worthless.
Think about what’s really motivating you when you surf the Internet. Go
ahead — pay close attention to what you do the next few times you go online.
To help you remember, keep a list of the Web sites you visit and what you
do while you’re there. I bet the search for information is the unifying theme
to all your Internet sessions. Information is content — words, pictures, audio,
and video — that relay the information you need when you’re online. That’s
one of the reasons why search engines like Google have grown exponentially
in size and popularity. People want information, and they want the best possible
way to get to exactly what they need in the least amount of time.
You can tap into that desire for information and use AdSense to generate a
decent income, but only if you have the content that draws visitors to your
site in the first place. Your site visitors care about content (or information),
and you should, too.
Content draws visitors to your site, and keeps them on your site or causes
them to return. Content equals traffic — but here’s the catch. Content only
translates to traffic if the content is relevant and fresh. Old content or completely
unrelated content doesn’t do you any more good than old fish — it
stinks up the place and makes people want to be somewhere else.
Good content is a good thing — I think we can all agree on that. You may ask
how good content ties in with AdSense and your desire to turn your Web
site into a handy little income stream. It turns out that content is also what
Google uses to target ads on your Web site. In fact, Google uses the same
technology to target AdSense ads that it uses to create search results. A software
program — called a Web crawler, a spyder, or a bot — literally counts the
number of times different words are used on your site and examines the words
surrounding them (the so-called context). Then, using a mathematical equation
that would probably take an entire ream of paper to write, the program determines
the probability that the site is related to the words used most frequently
on the site — the site’s keywords. (Smaller, common words, such as a, an, the,
and, nor, or, but, and etc., are completely ignored by the crawler.)
Then the content on your site — broken down to the keyword level — is used
to determine which ads are appropriate for your site. The keyword value —
how much someone is willing to pay to have their related ad shown in your
ad space — determines how valuable the ads for your site are to you, how
appropriate they are, and how valuable they can be to your site visitors. Run
a site that’s largely graphical in nature — lots of images, in other words —
and Google has a hard time placing the right ads on the site. What you end
up with instead are public service announcements, which are nice enough,
I suppose — if you’re not interested in making money, because they take up
space but generate no income.
My sense is that your interest in AdSense might be tied up with making a bit
of green on the side. If that’s so, keep the following mantra in mind: “Content
is a big deal. Content is king. Content is site traffic. Content is money in your
pocket if it’s done right.” Content done right starts with building the right
type of Web site.
phrase that’s lost some of its impact. It’s still true though — content is
king. And without enough content (and enough of the right kind of content)
on your Web site, you might as well toss the keys to your Web domain down
the nearest sewer drain because the domain will be worthless.
Think about what’s really motivating you when you surf the Internet. Go
ahead — pay close attention to what you do the next few times you go online.
To help you remember, keep a list of the Web sites you visit and what you
do while you’re there. I bet the search for information is the unifying theme
to all your Internet sessions. Information is content — words, pictures, audio,
and video — that relay the information you need when you’re online. That’s
one of the reasons why search engines like Google have grown exponentially
in size and popularity. People want information, and they want the best possible
way to get to exactly what they need in the least amount of time.
You can tap into that desire for information and use AdSense to generate a
decent income, but only if you have the content that draws visitors to your
site in the first place. Your site visitors care about content (or information),
and you should, too.
Content draws visitors to your site, and keeps them on your site or causes
them to return. Content equals traffic — but here’s the catch. Content only
translates to traffic if the content is relevant and fresh. Old content or completely
unrelated content doesn’t do you any more good than old fish — it
stinks up the place and makes people want to be somewhere else.
Good content is a good thing — I think we can all agree on that. You may ask
how good content ties in with AdSense and your desire to turn your Web
site into a handy little income stream. It turns out that content is also what
Google uses to target ads on your Web site. In fact, Google uses the same
technology to target AdSense ads that it uses to create search results. A software
program — called a Web crawler, a spyder, or a bot — literally counts the
number of times different words are used on your site and examines the words
surrounding them (the so-called context). Then, using a mathematical equation
that would probably take an entire ream of paper to write, the program determines
the probability that the site is related to the words used most frequently
on the site — the site’s keywords. (Smaller, common words, such as a, an, the,
and, nor, or, but, and etc., are completely ignored by the crawler.)
Then the content on your site — broken down to the keyword level — is used
to determine which ads are appropriate for your site. The keyword value —
how much someone is willing to pay to have their related ad shown in your
ad space — determines how valuable the ads for your site are to you, how
appropriate they are, and how valuable they can be to your site visitors. Run
a site that’s largely graphical in nature — lots of images, in other words —
and Google has a hard time placing the right ads on the site. What you end
up with instead are public service announcements, which are nice enough,
I suppose — if you’re not interested in making money, because they take up
space but generate no income.
My sense is that your interest in AdSense might be tied up with making a bit
of green on the side. If that’s so, keep the following mantra in mind: “Content
is a big deal. Content is king. Content is site traffic. Content is money in your
pocket if it’s done right.” Content done right starts with building the right
type of Web site.
Understanding Google’s
Google seems to have guidelines for everything, and Web site design is no
exception. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines (which I cover in some detail in
Chapter 2) are the de facto guidelines for how any Web site associated with
Google should be designed.
Google is certainly one of the most visible companies in the world. The
number of people who watch Google in hopes that it will one day screw up is
shadowed only by the number of people who are watching Microsoft hoping
for the same. And because Google is such a target, the company needs to
ensure that anyone who’s even very remotely associated with it meets certain
guidelines to help avoid the ire of an offended public.
The Google Webmaster Guidelines are only one step in the requirements that
Google has for people, but the guidelines are an important step — and it’ll
benefit you to understand them completely. Here’s a quick overview, but take
the time to read the complete guidelines at www.google.com/webmasters
as the ideas underpinning them are valuable for Web design even if you’re not
planning to use AdSense or any of Google’s other applications:
Make your site easy to navigate by creating a consistent navigational
structure across your site and by making that navigational structure
obvious to visitors. Nothing’s worse than getting stuck on a Web page
without a link to the home page or another way off the page without
using your back button or closing your browser completely.
Include relevant links to other Web sites.
Use a site map (a text document that links to every page on the site)
and submit it to Google. To submit your site map, you have to be a
member of Google’s Webmaster Central, but signing up for that is as
easy as signing up for any other Google account. After you sign up,
submit your site map by using the form. (You can find links to the forms
as well as other pertinent info at www.google.com/webmasters/
start.)
Include clear, relevant content.
Make sure the HTML that makes up your site is written correctly.
Repair broken links as soon as they’re noticed.
Allow crawlers access to your Web site by including a robots.txt file in
the design of your site. The robots.txt file has two lines:
User agent: *
Disallow: /
Create the file with a text editor, such as Notepad, save it using robots.
txt, and then when you upload your Web site to a server, be sure to
also upload this file. The file tells Web site crawlers that they’re
welcome to look at all the pages on your Web site.
Design your pages for users, not for search engines. Users come to your
site because they need something. Design your site so that the visitors
you’re targeting get exactly what they need — information and products
that they’re searching for. By designing your site with your visitors in
mind, you’ll automatically hit most of the requirements that search engines
have for ranking you in search results. A good rule of thumb is the more
useful your site is to real people, the better crawlers will rank the site.
Avoid any kind of underhanded Web site design, such as using hidden
pages or hidden text that’s only meant to be seen by Web crawlers.
Believe it or not, crawlers recognize this kind of sneaky design, and
you’ll be penalized in search rankings for it.
Use only relevant keywords in the titles, headings, and text of your
Web site. (You’ll also be using them in your HTML code, but more about
that is in Chapter 4.)
Many more guidelines are in the document, but these basics are a good place
to start. And one in particular really sums up the whole concept of Google’s
Webmaster Guidelines: Build your site for people, not for search engines. If you
do that, the chances that you’ll end up in trouble with Google (or AdSense) are
very slim.
exception. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines (which I cover in some detail in
Chapter 2) are the de facto guidelines for how any Web site associated with
Google should be designed.
Google is certainly one of the most visible companies in the world. The
number of people who watch Google in hopes that it will one day screw up is
shadowed only by the number of people who are watching Microsoft hoping
for the same. And because Google is such a target, the company needs to
ensure that anyone who’s even very remotely associated with it meets certain
guidelines to help avoid the ire of an offended public.
The Google Webmaster Guidelines are only one step in the requirements that
Google has for people, but the guidelines are an important step — and it’ll
benefit you to understand them completely. Here’s a quick overview, but take
the time to read the complete guidelines at www.google.com/webmasters
as the ideas underpinning them are valuable for Web design even if you’re not
planning to use AdSense or any of Google’s other applications:
Make your site easy to navigate by creating a consistent navigational
structure across your site and by making that navigational structure
obvious to visitors. Nothing’s worse than getting stuck on a Web page
without a link to the home page or another way off the page without
using your back button or closing your browser completely.
Include relevant links to other Web sites.
Use a site map (a text document that links to every page on the site)
and submit it to Google. To submit your site map, you have to be a
member of Google’s Webmaster Central, but signing up for that is as
easy as signing up for any other Google account. After you sign up,
submit your site map by using the form. (You can find links to the forms
as well as other pertinent info at www.google.com/webmasters/
start.)
Include clear, relevant content.
Make sure the HTML that makes up your site is written correctly.
Repair broken links as soon as they’re noticed.
Allow crawlers access to your Web site by including a robots.txt file in
the design of your site. The robots.txt file has two lines:
User agent: *
Disallow: /
Create the file with a text editor, such as Notepad, save it using robots.
txt, and then when you upload your Web site to a server, be sure to
also upload this file. The file tells Web site crawlers that they’re
welcome to look at all the pages on your Web site.
Design your pages for users, not for search engines. Users come to your
site because they need something. Design your site so that the visitors
you’re targeting get exactly what they need — information and products
that they’re searching for. By designing your site with your visitors in
mind, you’ll automatically hit most of the requirements that search engines
have for ranking you in search results. A good rule of thumb is the more
useful your site is to real people, the better crawlers will rank the site.
Avoid any kind of underhanded Web site design, such as using hidden
pages or hidden text that’s only meant to be seen by Web crawlers.
Believe it or not, crawlers recognize this kind of sneaky design, and
you’ll be penalized in search rankings for it.
Use only relevant keywords in the titles, headings, and text of your
Web site. (You’ll also be using them in your HTML code, but more about
that is in Chapter 4.)
Many more guidelines are in the document, but these basics are a good place
to start. And one in particular really sums up the whole concept of Google’s
Webmaster Guidelines: Build your site for people, not for search engines. If you
do that, the chances that you’ll end up in trouble with Google (or AdSense) are
very slim.
Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines
Search engine optimization is a lot like trying to catch the steam that you
breathe on a cold winter day. You can see it. You know it exists, but there’s
no way to actually contain and quantify the steam. You can see the results
of SEO and you can figure out how best to achieve it, but it’s still possible to
do everything right and not achieve the ultimate goal — landing the very first
listing on a search engine results page, or SERP.
Good news though, you don’t necessarily want to be the very top listing on a
SERP. Think about this — how often do you click the first search result and
not go any farther? Even if you find exactly what you’re looking for on the
first page you jump to, you still click through some of the other results just
to make sure the first page isn’t lying to you.
As a general rule, I go through the listings of about ten results pages, just to
make sure I’m getting the best info. Admittedly, I may be a little more patient
than your average searcher. Most people don’t go much deeper than the
second page of results. Because you should probably be targeting your Web
site to normal folks rather than obsessive-compulsive types like me, you want
your Web site to fall somewhere on the first or second page of results. If it
does, you’re fine — you can count your search marketing efforts a success,
even if your site isn’t at the very tippy-top of the first SERP.
Achieving that first- or second-page placement isn’t a sure thing — it requires
a little effort on your part. You can take a number of steps to ensure a better
search engine ranking — steps I get to in a bit — but the most important
piece in your SEO puzzle involves the keywords on which your Web site is
based. You do have keywords, right? If not, you need them. However, not just
any keyword will do, which the next section makes clear.
breathe on a cold winter day. You can see it. You know it exists, but there’s
no way to actually contain and quantify the steam. You can see the results
of SEO and you can figure out how best to achieve it, but it’s still possible to
do everything right and not achieve the ultimate goal — landing the very first
listing on a search engine results page, or SERP.
Good news though, you don’t necessarily want to be the very top listing on a
SERP. Think about this — how often do you click the first search result and
not go any farther? Even if you find exactly what you’re looking for on the
first page you jump to, you still click through some of the other results just
to make sure the first page isn’t lying to you.
As a general rule, I go through the listings of about ten results pages, just to
make sure I’m getting the best info. Admittedly, I may be a little more patient
than your average searcher. Most people don’t go much deeper than the
second page of results. Because you should probably be targeting your Web
site to normal folks rather than obsessive-compulsive types like me, you want
your Web site to fall somewhere on the first or second page of results. If it
does, you’re fine — you can count your search marketing efforts a success,
even if your site isn’t at the very tippy-top of the first SERP.
Achieving that first- or second-page placement isn’t a sure thing — it requires
a little effort on your part. You can take a number of steps to ensure a better
search engine ranking — steps I get to in a bit — but the most important
piece in your SEO puzzle involves the keywords on which your Web site is
based. You do have keywords, right? If not, you need them. However, not just
any keyword will do, which the next section makes clear.
A Keyword By Any Other Name
It doesn’t matter what you call it, a keyword will always be . . . well, a key
word or phrase around which your Web site content is centralized. A single
word is sometimes not enough to narrow the possibilities for a Web site,
which is why some keywords are actually keyword phrases or keyphrases. It’s
the same concept — a centralized theme — just using more than one word. I
use the term keyword generically to mean both keywords and keyphrases.
Web crawlers are programs that travel around the Internet examining and categorizing
Web pages by keyword. That’s how search engines, like Google, know to
return your Web site when someone searches for a specific keyword or phrase.
The crawler has already had a look-see and has placed your Web page into a
category along with all the other sites on the Web that fit into that category.
Keyword marketing, then, is using that keyword or phrase to market your Web
site. Advertisements for a Web site, product, or service are designed using the
keyword or keyphrase as the “foundation” for the ads. Then, when Internet
users search for that keyword, the ads are displayed in the search results.
Google then takes this process one step further by placing ads on Web pages
that are built around — or optimized for — that keyword. So, whoever said a
picture is worth a thousand words didn’t realize the Internet would come along
and reduce that value to just one or two — three at the most.
word or phrase around which your Web site content is centralized. A single
word is sometimes not enough to narrow the possibilities for a Web site,
which is why some keywords are actually keyword phrases or keyphrases. It’s
the same concept — a centralized theme — just using more than one word. I
use the term keyword generically to mean both keywords and keyphrases.
Web crawlers are programs that travel around the Internet examining and categorizing
Web pages by keyword. That’s how search engines, like Google, know to
return your Web site when someone searches for a specific keyword or phrase.
The crawler has already had a look-see and has placed your Web page into a
category along with all the other sites on the Web that fit into that category.
Keyword marketing, then, is using that keyword or phrase to market your Web
site. Advertisements for a Web site, product, or service are designed using the
keyword or keyphrase as the “foundation” for the ads. Then, when Internet
users search for that keyword, the ads are displayed in the search results.
Google then takes this process one step further by placing ads on Web pages
that are built around — or optimized for — that keyword. So, whoever said a
picture is worth a thousand words didn’t realize the Internet would come along
and reduce that value to just one or two — three at the most.
Understanding Keyword Marketing
Before finding out how keywords work, you first need a quick overview of how
Web sites are cataloged and then returned as search results. The way things
go, you first put up a Web site. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy — maybe
it’s your personal blog about your busybody Aunt Louise and how crazy she
makes you, or it could be a serious site about how frogs hibernate in the muck
at the bottom of ponds during winter. The topic of your Web site doesn’t
matter, but you have to get it on the Internet.
After you put up a Web site, a search crawler — a specialized software program
that examines Web sites and categorizes them by keyword — finds your Web
site. Search crawlers are designed to crawl every Web site within parameters
that are outlined by the search crawler’s designer. A designer could order a
search crawler to, say, examine Web sites contained on a list drawn by the
designer.
The crawler’s first stop is the first Web page of the first Web site on the
designer’s list. The crawler reads through the pages of the Web site, looking
at each word on the site.
Crawlers also look at what words are used together. For example, cosmetic
makeup is different from exam makeup, but the crawler knows that makeup
is used in two completely different ways because it looks at the words surrounding
it.
While the crawler makes its way through a site, it records the number of times a
keyword, a keyphrase, or a set of keywords is used on the site. If exam makeup is
used in the title and then three times in a 300-word section of text, it’s probably
a good bet that the Web site being crawled is about makeup exams. Of course,
the search engine crawler isn’t betting on anything. The crawler’s like the skeptic
who doesn’t count on anything that’s not immediately visible and physically
touchable. Exam makeup may be there, but it needs proof!
The crawler uses a very lengthy and complicated algorithm as its search
formula. The algorithm compares the number of times a keyword is used to
indicators that tell it if that keyword is important on the Web site. Like color
coding, that algorithm makes it possible to define a Web site in terms of how
it relates to a specific topic.
Algorithms in general are computer programs that systematically solve problems
such as determining how many times a keyword is used on a Web site.
They’re complicated creatures, highly technical in nature, and they are a
search engine’s lifeblood — which is why they’re so jealously guarded. Just
try to pry Google’s secret algorithm from their tightly clenched fist and see
where that gets you.
The crawler takes a stab at what your Web site’s all about by registering the
site’s keywords. The crawler then takes another look at the site, this time
considering those keywords in the context of the Web site — not just the keywords
but also things like keyword placement (where on the site the words
appear), the alternative text you put in for graphics (the stuff that shows up
if the graphic won’t load), and the links into and out of the Web site.
After looking at all these elements and many others (some search engines
use over 100 different considerations), the crawler makes a determination
about where in the great scheme of things a particular Web site belongs.
That information is then stored in a database the size of Manhattan.
Okay, it’s not really the size of Manhattan, but it’s huge. Way larger than any
database you’ve ever encountered before.
After the Web site’s cataloged, it can be pushed to visitors that do a search
based on keywords related to the main keyword of the Web page. That’s
another algorithm altogether. That algorithm cross-references the search
that a user makes with the data stored in the database to determine which
sites — of the billions of cataloged sites — are the best fit for the keyword
or phrase that the searcher used.
In other words, your Web site basically boils down to the keywords on which
it’s built. To rank successfully in any search engine, you not only need the
right keywords but you also need keywords that are closely associated with
the topic of your Web site. Those keywords also need to be at the right
places on your Web site. If they’re not, the search crawler won’t feel completely
confident about which particular section of the database is the proper
home for your site — so the site might be put lower in the rankings behind
many other (perhaps far less relevant) sites
Choosing the right keywords
Choosing the right keywords is a bit of a science — but it’s also a bit of oldfashioned
luck. No keyword guide is out there for the perplexed that can
tell you whether the keyword is perfect for this or that subject. Instead, the
words that apply to your subject are what they are. So, the best place to start
looking for the right keywords for your topic is to brainstorm all the words
that are most prevalent when the topic is in discussion.
Use search engine optimization (SEO) as an example. In any conversation you
ever have about SEO, you’ll hear the term keyword come up time and again.
Keyword is clearly one of the top keywords for SEO — come on, SEO is built
around keyword marketing!
Okay, that was the easy part. Getting the number-one keyword down is like
shooting fish in a barrel, but you can’t stop there. You need a larger pool of
keywords to get you started. If you keep brainstorming additional words,
you’ll probably come up with the following keywords:
Search engine
Search
Marketing
List
Link
Linking strategy
Alt tags
Metatags
Metadata
Media
Content
Social media
That’s just the short list. If you really put some time into brainstorming the
SEO topic, you could come up with a couple hundred words. And don’t forget
phrases, too — up to three words. They’re more useful and help you target
better than just single words.
You’ll find hundreds of words for your own Web site topic, too. Sit down with
a pen and a piece of paper and think through your topic. Write down all the
words that come to mind as you consider each aspect of your business. Don’t
worry about compartmentalizing the words, just get them on paper. When
you’re done, cover up the page and walk away for half a day or so.
Walking away gives the list time to rest. Take the time away from the list to do
something completely unassociated with determining keywords. During that
time, try to keep your mind off the list so that when you come back to it, you
can look at it with fresh eyes.
When you do return to the list, read through it slowly and take the time to consider
each word while you read it. Ask if a particular word is really a term that
a searcher would use to find your Web site or a page on your site. If the answer
is a resounding “No,” cross the word off the list. When you’re done, you should
have a reasonably sized list from which to choose that magic number of words.
So, what’s the magic number? Who knows? Just use exactly the number of
words you need (to market your site properly) and not one more. Here are
some general rules you should follow:
Start with a list of 50–100 keywords. You won’t use all the keywords,
but the list gives you a good point from which to narrow the words that
are most likely used to find your Web site.
Don’t use more than three words on a single page. Also, only use three
words if they’re all contained within a phrase. It’s better to use one word
or phrase per page on your Web site, but each page can have a different
word or phrase.
Avoid words that are overused. Overused words are obvious search
terms, but they’re also the most competitive terms and can cost a fortune
if you’re targeting them for advertisements. No kidding. It’s not unheard of
for some words to cost as much as $50 per click to advertisers who want
their ads prominently displayed if someone searches for that keyword.
Advertisers would have to have an endless budget to market with these
words. On the other side of that equation is AdSense — which arranges to
display those superexpensive ads on Web sites like your own — and yes,
those words pay really well, but the competition for sites to place those
ads on is also very tough. Best to stick with something that will get you a
regular listing of some great ads that will truly interest your visitors.
Try to think like site visitors think. What keywords represent your
visitors’ interests? One way to keep up with this information is to use a
Web site analytics program, such as Google Analytics (www.google.
com/analytics). An analytics program tracks visitors to your site, such
as where they came to your site from and what keywords they used to
find your site on search engines, along with many other statistics. If you
don’t have a Web site analytics program, get one. Right now.
After you narrow down your keyword list, put in the hard work — research
the words on the list. Researching keywords isn’t difficult, but it can be
time-consuming. That’s one of the reasons you don’t want to start the process
with a list of 500 potential keywords. You’d never have enough time to
research them all. It’s also unwise to use too many keywords on your Web
site because it makes it hard for crawlers to properly classify your site — a
problem that could leave you without well-targeted AdSense ads.
The first step in researching keywords is to select the top 20 or so words or
phrases that most accurately reflect your Web site. Then, with that list, start
searching for each word or phrase on the list.
Look through the first couple results pages for matches to your site. Do the
pages returned by your search engine reflect the content of your site in any
way? If not, how do the sites that do get returned differ from yours? Are they
structured differently, for example? If you examine your results critically, you
can find clues that help you decide how well the word or phrase you selected
will actually result in traffic to your site.
The next step is to look at statistics, such as the amount of competition and
the cost of advertisements for the keyword or phrase. Keyword research
tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.
com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and the Yahoo! Search Marketing
Keyword Tool (http://pixelfast.com/overture can help here). You
must have a Yahoo! Search Marketing account to use the Yahoo! tool, and
while I write this, Yahoo! Search Marketing is still under construction, but
should be up and running soon.
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool performs two functions: It allows you to see
what other keywords you might be missing when putting together your keyword
list and it also lets you see which of those keywords are most valuable to you as
a publisher. The Keyword Tool is easy enough to get the hang of. At first glance,
it may look like it’s just a generator for keyword ideas, but as you dig deeper into
using it, you can learn valuable facts about keywords, such as how much competition
there is for a keyword, what kind of placement an advertiser can expect
for ads targeting that keyword, and what the search volume is for the keyword.
Here’s how a typical keyword search using the Keyword Tool works:
1. Point your browser to https://adwords.google.com/select/
KeywordToolExternal.
2. Under the How Would You Like to Generate Keyword Ideas? heading,
select the Descriptive Words or Phrases radio button.
3. Enter a few keywords from your list into the center text box, as shown
, and then click Get Keyword Ideas.
After a few seconds (the exact time depends on the number of words
you enter), the suggested keywords appear beneath the search box, The default information shown includes the Advertiser Competition
(how many advertisers are bidding on that keyword), the previous
month’s Search Volume (how often that keyword was searched for in
the past month), and the Avg Search Volume. (The average is figured
monthly, based on the number of searches each month for the past
year.) Each statistic is represented by a colored bar, representative of
what you see in a bar graph. The more color in the bar, the greater the
competition or volume.
The average cost of a keyword to the advertiser doesn’t appear automatically,
but you can change the way the keywords are filtered (see
with the Filter drop-down menu.
4. To determine the average cost of a keyword, choose Show Estimated
Avg. CPC from the Filter drop-down menu.
The CPC, or cost-per-click, is the amount that it costs an advertiser every
time one of their ads based on that keyword is clicked. That amount is
paid to Google, which then distributes portions of the money to AdSense
publishers that allow those ads to be shown on their Web sites. Of
course, Google keeps a fair chunk of it to line its own pockets, too.
After you make your selection from the Filter drop-down menu, another
small section appears immediately below the Filter drop-down menu 5. Choose your currency from the menu provided; and then in the text
box beside it, enter the maximum CPC and click Recalculate.
The keyword list changes slightly, and a new column appears with the
estimated average cost-per-click (CPC) for each keyword suggested,
. Now you not only see the competition for the
keyword or phrase, but you also see what it costs advertisers who use
those words. Only a percentage of that is paid to publishers (you) who
show the ads, but this gives you an idea of how valuable your available
ad space is, based on the keywords you use on your Web site.
income in mind, use a high figure for your maximum CPC, like $50 per
click. This really doesn’t determine how much you make per click on
advertisements that appear on your site, but it gives you an idea of
which keywords you’ll be paid the most for. In keyword marketing, the
advertiser pays a fee to display ads. How much they pay for that privilege
directly affects how much you make. So, the more a keyword costs
the advertiser, the more you’ll make as a publisher of those ads.
Keep in mind that whatever keywords you choose should be used intelligently
on your Web page. If you include the keywords but don’t use them properly,
you’ll do yourself more harm than good by causing inappropriate ads to
appear or by causing Google to disqualify your site from the AdSense program
for not following proper Web design practices. More information about Web
design practices can be found in Chapter 3, and I address how to properly use
keywords on your Web pages in the next few sections, so keep reading.
The importance of keyword placement
After you finish researching your keywords and then selecting the most
valuable — those worth most to your pocketbook — and the most appropriate
words for your Web site, you have to actually integrate them into your Web
site. Using those valuable and appropriate keywords in your site’s content is
good practice, and more information about how to use those words in your
content is in the section “It’s all about placement,” later in this chapter, or you
can flip back to Chapter 3 for even more Web design help. But there’s more to
keyword placement than just putting the words into the content on the page,
as the next few sections make clear.
Placing keywords in site design
Face it: You don’t need much of the old gray matter to place keywords in
prominent places in the content of your Web site. Stick them in a title, a few
headings, or the opening paragraph and voilà — you’ve placed your keywords.
The thing is, if any idiot can do it, many will; which means that all
those Web sites with keywords prominently placed in the text start looking
alike — at least to Web crawlers sent out by search engines. To make your
site stand out, feature your keywords in the less-obvious corners of your
Web site, such as places that may never be seen by Web site visitors but are
visited by Web crawlers. “Where are these dark corners?” you ask. Read on
to discover the hidden mysteries of Web site design.
When you’re designing your Web site, there are places under the hood — in
the actual HTML (HyperText Markup Language) structure of the site, in other
words — that you can use as hidden storage areas for placing informational
tidbits about your site. Because all this stuff is information about your Web
site content — information about your information, in other words — such
tidbits are referred to as metadata, or data about your data. Metadata is
placed within special HTML tags (dubbed, curiously enough, metatags) within
the code for a Web site that search engine crawlers then read when cataloging
your site for inclusion in search results. As such, you’d be smart to stuff
your metatags with as many keywords as your HTML structure will bear.
Metatags where keywords should appear include the following:
Title metatags
Description metatags
Keyword metatags
Heading metatags
Alt text
Now, for those of you out there who are faint-of-heart when it comes to HTML
coding, be aware that you need to physically place these metatags (with the
exception of the alt text) in the top section of the HTML code of your Web
page, between the tags that indicate the head of your page.part of the raw HTML code for the Google Geek Web site, including the head
tag, metatags, and body tag.
As I mention earlier, metadata are usually indicated within the HTML of your
Web site as metatags.
The head tags usually have far more information between them because this
is where the heading of your Web site is set up. Information about the colors,
images , and styles of the page are also included here, but those don’t really
concern you when you’re thinking about keywords. Those elements are all
associated with site design, not keyword placement.
Working with alt text
Another area in which you can place your keywords is the alt text on your page.
Alt text is the alternative text that’s used to describe images on your page to
search engines and to site visitors who can’t view the images. This alt text is usually
included in the image tag in your page’s HTML and looks something like this:
Alt text should be limited to as few effective words as possible. So, if the
image on your Web site is a magnifying glass, the alt text might simply be
search if that’s one of your keywords.
Adding keywords to the HTML descriptors on your Web site is far from a difficult
task. When you know where to put the keywords, it takes little time to do it. If
you’re writing your Web site code from scratch, you can insert your keywords
in the appropriate places while you write it. If you’re using an HTML editor or a
WYSIWYG — what you see is what you get — Web site design program, you can
switch to the HTML view for the HTML editor and add the tags that way.
The extra effort improves the search engine rankings for your site and ultimately
makes it easier for Google to find the right AdSense ads to appear on
your site. The tags also help to ensure that ads appearing on your site are
targeted to the correct audience — assuming that the keywords you’re using
are well targeted.
The secret of keyword density
If you’ve been following along in this chapter so far, you’ve already found
out that your chosen keywords need to appear somewhere in your content.
(D’oh!) Clearly, your Web site articles and other elements (stuff like video
content) should be targeting the topics your potential visitors are searching
for — which means your articles and other elements will have your keywords
embedded in them somewhere.
That’s pretty much a no-brainer. But if you take this a little bit further, it gets
a bit more interesting. Some folks might be tempted to adopt what I call an
in for a penny, in for a pound strategy — if a little bit of something is a good
thing, a lot of something is a very good thing. Why settle for a sprinkling of
keywords on your Web site when, with a little bit of effort, you can saturate
your Web site with a veritable blizzard of keywords?
Why indeed? Because if you yield to temptation, you’re guilty of committing
keyword spam, the act of deploying your keywords merely to increase
search engine results placement (bad!) rather than using them to provide site
visitors with desired information (good!). No one likes spam. You don’t like
spam, your potential Web visitors don’t like spam, and even spammers don’t
like spam. Keyword spam doesn’t even help you increase your search engine
results placement. In fact, Web crawlers that recognize keyword spam can
get your number and list your site deeper in search results, or worse, completely
de-list your site from those results.
The secret to having the right balance of keywords in your site content is
keyword density — the ratio of keyword occurrences to the overall number
of words used on your site. Search engines vary on what’s acceptable for a
keyword density. Google, for example, looks for a keyword density of around
2 percent, whereas Yahoo! and MSN look for a keyword density closer to 5
percent. Remember, these are guidelines. So, if your keyword density is less
than 5 percent, your page will still appear in Yahoo! and MSN search results.
But over 2 percent and you might be penalized by Google.
Most folks who do search engine optimization for a living tend to stay around
the 2 percent keyword density mark to stay in Google’s good graces.
Time to picture what a 2 percent keyword density might actually look like.
Think of it this way: If the page contains an article that’s 1,000 words in
length, your selected keyword or phrase should appear no more than 20
times in the article. Twenty seems like a small number until you start adding
keywords to articles and then you find that it takes some serious work to
spin 1,000 words around one word or phrase and still have everything make
sense and not sound repetitive.
The key here is to build an article around a specific topic, like “credit monitoring,”
but then not to go overboard using the keyword or term — which in
this case is “credit monitoring.” The article should be a coherent information
piece, and the use of the keyword or phrase will automatically grow out of
that. You just have to be careful not to stuff that keyword or phrase into the
article out of context in a misguided attempt to use your selected keyword as
often as possible.
One trick that might help, though, involves thinking outside your body text
box. It turns out that putting keywords into the body text of your article is
only half the work when you’re dealing with keywords. Keywords should also
appear in the title and the headings of articles you place on your Web site.
Titles and headings are also given additional weight in search engine rankings
because those are the elements on a page that catch a visitor’s eye.
Think of it as being like reading a newspaper. Most people scan a page of the
newspaper before committing to reading any of it. They look at headlines,
paragraph headings, and bold or italicized text before they decide which
stories to read. Reading behavior is the same online — someone clicks onto
your page, scans the titles, headings, and specially formatted sections of the
articles there, and then decides to read deeper or click away.
Keywords in your titles and headings help pull readers into the content of the
article and help search crawlers classify your site by those keywords. See,
search crawlers are designed to weigh the appearance of keywords in certain
places — like titles and headings — just like people do. It’s written into their
programming, so you might think of a search crawler as the ultimate reader.
Web sites are cataloged and then returned as search results. The way things
go, you first put up a Web site. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy — maybe
it’s your personal blog about your busybody Aunt Louise and how crazy she
makes you, or it could be a serious site about how frogs hibernate in the muck
at the bottom of ponds during winter. The topic of your Web site doesn’t
matter, but you have to get it on the Internet.
After you put up a Web site, a search crawler — a specialized software program
that examines Web sites and categorizes them by keyword — finds your Web
site. Search crawlers are designed to crawl every Web site within parameters
that are outlined by the search crawler’s designer. A designer could order a
search crawler to, say, examine Web sites contained on a list drawn by the
designer.
The crawler’s first stop is the first Web page of the first Web site on the
designer’s list. The crawler reads through the pages of the Web site, looking
at each word on the site.
Crawlers also look at what words are used together. For example, cosmetic
makeup is different from exam makeup, but the crawler knows that makeup
is used in two completely different ways because it looks at the words surrounding
it.
While the crawler makes its way through a site, it records the number of times a
keyword, a keyphrase, or a set of keywords is used on the site. If exam makeup is
used in the title and then three times in a 300-word section of text, it’s probably
a good bet that the Web site being crawled is about makeup exams. Of course,
the search engine crawler isn’t betting on anything. The crawler’s like the skeptic
who doesn’t count on anything that’s not immediately visible and physically
touchable. Exam makeup may be there, but it needs proof!
The crawler uses a very lengthy and complicated algorithm as its search
formula. The algorithm compares the number of times a keyword is used to
indicators that tell it if that keyword is important on the Web site. Like color
coding, that algorithm makes it possible to define a Web site in terms of how
it relates to a specific topic.
Algorithms in general are computer programs that systematically solve problems
such as determining how many times a keyword is used on a Web site.
They’re complicated creatures, highly technical in nature, and they are a
search engine’s lifeblood — which is why they’re so jealously guarded. Just
try to pry Google’s secret algorithm from their tightly clenched fist and see
where that gets you.
The crawler takes a stab at what your Web site’s all about by registering the
site’s keywords. The crawler then takes another look at the site, this time
considering those keywords in the context of the Web site — not just the keywords
but also things like keyword placement (where on the site the words
appear), the alternative text you put in for graphics (the stuff that shows up
if the graphic won’t load), and the links into and out of the Web site.
After looking at all these elements and many others (some search engines
use over 100 different considerations), the crawler makes a determination
about where in the great scheme of things a particular Web site belongs.
That information is then stored in a database the size of Manhattan.
Okay, it’s not really the size of Manhattan, but it’s huge. Way larger than any
database you’ve ever encountered before.
After the Web site’s cataloged, it can be pushed to visitors that do a search
based on keywords related to the main keyword of the Web page. That’s
another algorithm altogether. That algorithm cross-references the search
that a user makes with the data stored in the database to determine which
sites — of the billions of cataloged sites — are the best fit for the keyword
or phrase that the searcher used.
In other words, your Web site basically boils down to the keywords on which
it’s built. To rank successfully in any search engine, you not only need the
right keywords but you also need keywords that are closely associated with
the topic of your Web site. Those keywords also need to be at the right
places on your Web site. If they’re not, the search crawler won’t feel completely
confident about which particular section of the database is the proper
home for your site — so the site might be put lower in the rankings behind
many other (perhaps far less relevant) sites
Choosing the right keywords
Choosing the right keywords is a bit of a science — but it’s also a bit of oldfashioned
luck. No keyword guide is out there for the perplexed that can
tell you whether the keyword is perfect for this or that subject. Instead, the
words that apply to your subject are what they are. So, the best place to start
looking for the right keywords for your topic is to brainstorm all the words
that are most prevalent when the topic is in discussion.
Use search engine optimization (SEO) as an example. In any conversation you
ever have about SEO, you’ll hear the term keyword come up time and again.
Keyword is clearly one of the top keywords for SEO — come on, SEO is built
around keyword marketing!
Okay, that was the easy part. Getting the number-one keyword down is like
shooting fish in a barrel, but you can’t stop there. You need a larger pool of
keywords to get you started. If you keep brainstorming additional words,
you’ll probably come up with the following keywords:
Search engine
Search
Marketing
List
Link
Linking strategy
Alt tags
Metatags
Metadata
Media
Content
Social media
That’s just the short list. If you really put some time into brainstorming the
SEO topic, you could come up with a couple hundred words. And don’t forget
phrases, too — up to three words. They’re more useful and help you target
better than just single words.
You’ll find hundreds of words for your own Web site topic, too. Sit down with
a pen and a piece of paper and think through your topic. Write down all the
words that come to mind as you consider each aspect of your business. Don’t
worry about compartmentalizing the words, just get them on paper. When
you’re done, cover up the page and walk away for half a day or so.
Walking away gives the list time to rest. Take the time away from the list to do
something completely unassociated with determining keywords. During that
time, try to keep your mind off the list so that when you come back to it, you
can look at it with fresh eyes.
When you do return to the list, read through it slowly and take the time to consider
each word while you read it. Ask if a particular word is really a term that
a searcher would use to find your Web site or a page on your site. If the answer
is a resounding “No,” cross the word off the list. When you’re done, you should
have a reasonably sized list from which to choose that magic number of words.
So, what’s the magic number? Who knows? Just use exactly the number of
words you need (to market your site properly) and not one more. Here are
some general rules you should follow:
Start with a list of 50–100 keywords. You won’t use all the keywords,
but the list gives you a good point from which to narrow the words that
are most likely used to find your Web site.
Don’t use more than three words on a single page. Also, only use three
words if they’re all contained within a phrase. It’s better to use one word
or phrase per page on your Web site, but each page can have a different
word or phrase.
Avoid words that are overused. Overused words are obvious search
terms, but they’re also the most competitive terms and can cost a fortune
if you’re targeting them for advertisements. No kidding. It’s not unheard of
for some words to cost as much as $50 per click to advertisers who want
their ads prominently displayed if someone searches for that keyword.
Advertisers would have to have an endless budget to market with these
words. On the other side of that equation is AdSense — which arranges to
display those superexpensive ads on Web sites like your own — and yes,
those words pay really well, but the competition for sites to place those
ads on is also very tough. Best to stick with something that will get you a
regular listing of some great ads that will truly interest your visitors.
Try to think like site visitors think. What keywords represent your
visitors’ interests? One way to keep up with this information is to use a
Web site analytics program, such as Google Analytics (www.google.
com/analytics). An analytics program tracks visitors to your site, such
as where they came to your site from and what keywords they used to
find your site on search engines, along with many other statistics. If you
don’t have a Web site analytics program, get one. Right now.
After you narrow down your keyword list, put in the hard work — research
the words on the list. Researching keywords isn’t difficult, but it can be
time-consuming. That’s one of the reasons you don’t want to start the process
with a list of 500 potential keywords. You’d never have enough time to
research them all. It’s also unwise to use too many keywords on your Web
site because it makes it hard for crawlers to properly classify your site — a
problem that could leave you without well-targeted AdSense ads.
The first step in researching keywords is to select the top 20 or so words or
phrases that most accurately reflect your Web site. Then, with that list, start
searching for each word or phrase on the list.
Look through the first couple results pages for matches to your site. Do the
pages returned by your search engine reflect the content of your site in any
way? If not, how do the sites that do get returned differ from yours? Are they
structured differently, for example? If you examine your results critically, you
can find clues that help you decide how well the word or phrase you selected
will actually result in traffic to your site.
The next step is to look at statistics, such as the amount of competition and
the cost of advertisements for the keyword or phrase. Keyword research
tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.
com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and the Yahoo! Search Marketing
Keyword Tool (http://pixelfast.com/overture can help here). You
must have a Yahoo! Search Marketing account to use the Yahoo! tool, and
while I write this, Yahoo! Search Marketing is still under construction, but
should be up and running soon.
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool performs two functions: It allows you to see
what other keywords you might be missing when putting together your keyword
list and it also lets you see which of those keywords are most valuable to you as
a publisher. The Keyword Tool is easy enough to get the hang of. At first glance,
it may look like it’s just a generator for keyword ideas, but as you dig deeper into
using it, you can learn valuable facts about keywords, such as how much competition
there is for a keyword, what kind of placement an advertiser can expect
for ads targeting that keyword, and what the search volume is for the keyword.
Here’s how a typical keyword search using the Keyword Tool works:
1. Point your browser to https://adwords.google.com/select/
KeywordToolExternal.
2. Under the How Would You Like to Generate Keyword Ideas? heading,
select the Descriptive Words or Phrases radio button.
3. Enter a few keywords from your list into the center text box, as shown
, and then click Get Keyword Ideas.
After a few seconds (the exact time depends on the number of words
you enter), the suggested keywords appear beneath the search box, The default information shown includes the Advertiser Competition
(how many advertisers are bidding on that keyword), the previous
month’s Search Volume (how often that keyword was searched for in
the past month), and the Avg Search Volume. (The average is figured
monthly, based on the number of searches each month for the past
year.) Each statistic is represented by a colored bar, representative of
what you see in a bar graph. The more color in the bar, the greater the
competition or volume.
The average cost of a keyword to the advertiser doesn’t appear automatically,
but you can change the way the keywords are filtered (see
with the Filter drop-down menu.
4. To determine the average cost of a keyword, choose Show Estimated
Avg. CPC from the Filter drop-down menu.
The CPC, or cost-per-click, is the amount that it costs an advertiser every
time one of their ads based on that keyword is clicked. That amount is
paid to Google, which then distributes portions of the money to AdSense
publishers that allow those ads to be shown on their Web sites. Of
course, Google keeps a fair chunk of it to line its own pockets, too.
After you make your selection from the Filter drop-down menu, another
small section appears immediately below the Filter drop-down menu 5. Choose your currency from the menu provided; and then in the text
box beside it, enter the maximum CPC and click Recalculate.
The keyword list changes slightly, and a new column appears with the
estimated average cost-per-click (CPC) for each keyword suggested,
. Now you not only see the competition for the
keyword or phrase, but you also see what it costs advertisers who use
those words. Only a percentage of that is paid to publishers (you) who
show the ads, but this gives you an idea of how valuable your available
ad space is, based on the keywords you use on your Web site.
income in mind, use a high figure for your maximum CPC, like $50 per
click. This really doesn’t determine how much you make per click on
advertisements that appear on your site, but it gives you an idea of
which keywords you’ll be paid the most for. In keyword marketing, the
advertiser pays a fee to display ads. How much they pay for that privilege
directly affects how much you make. So, the more a keyword costs
the advertiser, the more you’ll make as a publisher of those ads.
Keep in mind that whatever keywords you choose should be used intelligently
on your Web page. If you include the keywords but don’t use them properly,
you’ll do yourself more harm than good by causing inappropriate ads to
appear or by causing Google to disqualify your site from the AdSense program
for not following proper Web design practices. More information about Web
design practices can be found in Chapter 3, and I address how to properly use
keywords on your Web pages in the next few sections, so keep reading.
The importance of keyword placement
After you finish researching your keywords and then selecting the most
valuable — those worth most to your pocketbook — and the most appropriate
words for your Web site, you have to actually integrate them into your Web
site. Using those valuable and appropriate keywords in your site’s content is
good practice, and more information about how to use those words in your
content is in the section “It’s all about placement,” later in this chapter, or you
can flip back to Chapter 3 for even more Web design help. But there’s more to
keyword placement than just putting the words into the content on the page,
as the next few sections make clear.
Placing keywords in site design
Face it: You don’t need much of the old gray matter to place keywords in
prominent places in the content of your Web site. Stick them in a title, a few
headings, or the opening paragraph and voilà — you’ve placed your keywords.
The thing is, if any idiot can do it, many will; which means that all
those Web sites with keywords prominently placed in the text start looking
alike — at least to Web crawlers sent out by search engines. To make your
site stand out, feature your keywords in the less-obvious corners of your
Web site, such as places that may never be seen by Web site visitors but are
visited by Web crawlers. “Where are these dark corners?” you ask. Read on
to discover the hidden mysteries of Web site design.
When you’re designing your Web site, there are places under the hood — in
the actual HTML (HyperText Markup Language) structure of the site, in other
words — that you can use as hidden storage areas for placing informational
tidbits about your site. Because all this stuff is information about your Web
site content — information about your information, in other words — such
tidbits are referred to as metadata, or data about your data. Metadata is
placed within special HTML tags (dubbed, curiously enough, metatags) within
the code for a Web site that search engine crawlers then read when cataloging
your site for inclusion in search results. As such, you’d be smart to stuff
your metatags with as many keywords as your HTML structure will bear.
Metatags where keywords should appear include the following:
Title metatags
Description metatags
Keyword metatags
Heading metatags
Alt text
Now, for those of you out there who are faint-of-heart when it comes to HTML
coding, be aware that you need to physically place these metatags (with the
exception of the alt text) in the top section of the HTML code of your Web
page, between the tags that indicate the head of your page.part of the raw HTML code for the Google Geek Web site, including the head
tag, metatags, and body tag.
As I mention earlier, metadata are usually indicated within the HTML of your
Web site as metatags.
The head tags usually have far more information between them because this
is where the heading of your Web site is set up. Information about the colors,
images , and styles of the page are also included here, but those don’t really
concern you when you’re thinking about keywords. Those elements are all
associated with site design, not keyword placement.
Working with alt text
Another area in which you can place your keywords is the alt text on your page.
Alt text is the alternative text that’s used to describe images on your page to
search engines and to site visitors who can’t view the images. This alt text is usually
included in the image tag in your page’s HTML and looks something like this:
Alt text should be limited to as few effective words as possible. So, if the
image on your Web site is a magnifying glass, the alt text might simply be
search if that’s one of your keywords.
Adding keywords to the HTML descriptors on your Web site is far from a difficult
task. When you know where to put the keywords, it takes little time to do it. If
you’re writing your Web site code from scratch, you can insert your keywords
in the appropriate places while you write it. If you’re using an HTML editor or a
WYSIWYG — what you see is what you get — Web site design program, you can
switch to the HTML view for the HTML editor and add the tags that way.
The extra effort improves the search engine rankings for your site and ultimately
makes it easier for Google to find the right AdSense ads to appear on
your site. The tags also help to ensure that ads appearing on your site are
targeted to the correct audience — assuming that the keywords you’re using
are well targeted.
The secret of keyword density
If you’ve been following along in this chapter so far, you’ve already found
out that your chosen keywords need to appear somewhere in your content.
(D’oh!) Clearly, your Web site articles and other elements (stuff like video
content) should be targeting the topics your potential visitors are searching
for — which means your articles and other elements will have your keywords
embedded in them somewhere.
That’s pretty much a no-brainer. But if you take this a little bit further, it gets
a bit more interesting. Some folks might be tempted to adopt what I call an
in for a penny, in for a pound strategy — if a little bit of something is a good
thing, a lot of something is a very good thing. Why settle for a sprinkling of
keywords on your Web site when, with a little bit of effort, you can saturate
your Web site with a veritable blizzard of keywords?
Why indeed? Because if you yield to temptation, you’re guilty of committing
keyword spam, the act of deploying your keywords merely to increase
search engine results placement (bad!) rather than using them to provide site
visitors with desired information (good!). No one likes spam. You don’t like
spam, your potential Web visitors don’t like spam, and even spammers don’t
like spam. Keyword spam doesn’t even help you increase your search engine
results placement. In fact, Web crawlers that recognize keyword spam can
get your number and list your site deeper in search results, or worse, completely
de-list your site from those results.
The secret to having the right balance of keywords in your site content is
keyword density — the ratio of keyword occurrences to the overall number
of words used on your site. Search engines vary on what’s acceptable for a
keyword density. Google, for example, looks for a keyword density of around
2 percent, whereas Yahoo! and MSN look for a keyword density closer to 5
percent. Remember, these are guidelines. So, if your keyword density is less
than 5 percent, your page will still appear in Yahoo! and MSN search results.
But over 2 percent and you might be penalized by Google.
Most folks who do search engine optimization for a living tend to stay around
the 2 percent keyword density mark to stay in Google’s good graces.
Time to picture what a 2 percent keyword density might actually look like.
Think of it this way: If the page contains an article that’s 1,000 words in
length, your selected keyword or phrase should appear no more than 20
times in the article. Twenty seems like a small number until you start adding
keywords to articles and then you find that it takes some serious work to
spin 1,000 words around one word or phrase and still have everything make
sense and not sound repetitive.
The key here is to build an article around a specific topic, like “credit monitoring,”
but then not to go overboard using the keyword or term — which in
this case is “credit monitoring.” The article should be a coherent information
piece, and the use of the keyword or phrase will automatically grow out of
that. You just have to be careful not to stuff that keyword or phrase into the
article out of context in a misguided attempt to use your selected keyword as
often as possible.
One trick that might help, though, involves thinking outside your body text
box. It turns out that putting keywords into the body text of your article is
only half the work when you’re dealing with keywords. Keywords should also
appear in the title and the headings of articles you place on your Web site.
Titles and headings are also given additional weight in search engine rankings
because those are the elements on a page that catch a visitor’s eye.
Think of it as being like reading a newspaper. Most people scan a page of the
newspaper before committing to reading any of it. They look at headlines,
paragraph headings, and bold or italicized text before they decide which
stories to read. Reading behavior is the same online — someone clicks onto
your page, scans the titles, headings, and specially formatted sections of the
articles there, and then decides to read deeper or click away.
Keywords in your titles and headings help pull readers into the content of the
article and help search crawlers classify your site by those keywords. See,
search crawlers are designed to weigh the appearance of keywords in certain
places — like titles and headings — just like people do. It’s written into their
programming, so you might think of a search crawler as the ultimate reader.
The Magic of Linking Well
Search engine optimization plays a key role in generating AdSense income
because how well your Web site places in search results determines how
much traffic your site sees. If you plan to have AdSense ads on your site and
you hope to generate a decent revenue stream with them, having a welloptimized
site is essential. And part of site optimization is having a linking
structure — the links that connect the pages of your site together as well as
the links that connect your page to other pages on the Web — that leads to
other, complementary sites as well as having other sites link to you. Like keyword
placement, link management is almost as much of an art form as it is a
strategy.
Linking schemes
Linking schemes are nothing more than the structure of how your Web site
is linked to other sites, how other sites are linked to you, and where internal
links lead. Good Web design principles include all three types of linking
schemes, and all are important to search engines because what a search
crawler is looking for is site usability first — how easy it is for visitors to go
from one place to the next on your Web site — and then site relevancy, or
how appropriate your site is to the topic for which a site visitor is searching.
Crawlers literally follow all the links on a Web page to make sure that what’s
connected together makes sense and is useful in the context of where the
links appear both in text and in navigational menus.
When you’re creating your linking schemes, remember that the ultimate goal
is to make your site as usable and as valuable as possible to your site visitors.
Assume that your visitors have landed on your page because it contains
information for which they’re searching; the idea here is to make your site as
valuable to those visitors as possible by providing your visitors with the info
they’re looking for and then some. (It’s the and then some that keeps them
coming back for more.)
Creating value for your user encompasses one concept — provide the user
the information he seeks. It’s that simple. That doesn’t mean that you need to
have every detail or product related to a specific topic on your site. But if you
don’t have it and you don’t plan to put it there, at least be prepared to point
visitors to another site that does have the information or products sought.
All of that is accomplished through linking. You’re either linking to another
page on your site where the information being sought is available or you’re
linking to another site entirely. In return, you should also have other sites
linking to your own, for the same reasons. (I have some tips on how to get
other sites to link back to you later in the chapter.)
Internal linking
Internal linking is the process by which the pages on your site are actually
linked together. The type of links isn’t nearly as important as the way
in which the pages are linked, but even the structure can have some benefits.
For example, text links — called hotlinks — can be more valuable than
graphic links because they allow you to use your keywords within the link.
But it’s also important to have a consistent navigational structure — the links
that usually grace the side or top of a page that lead to different sections of
your Web site. Both hotlinks and navigational links can be used in your internal
linking process.
Using keywords in your navigational structure gives you freebie opportunities
to use them — the keywords within links don’t count toward the keyword
density of a page because the percentage of times a keyword is used is
based solely on the content on the page. This means you can use your keywords
more often. But using hotlinks does count toward keyword density, so
be careful about how you place those links.
It’s also important that no matter how your links are formatted, you always
need to leave an escape hatch — every page on the site has to have a clearly
defined navigation area with easily recognizable links that make it a snap to
return to whatever page the visitor wants. Users who click from one page to
another in your Web site may not appreciate having to click the Back button
to get them back to the page they were previously on. Even more importantly,
if there’s no way for users to go back from whence they came, they’ll
leave. Typical surfer behavior when they can’t escape a page is to close
the window or browser that’s pointing to the site on which you have them
trapped. They may also just type a new address in the browser bar and navigate
away from your page that way.
Internal links all qualify as navigational links, even when they include hotlinks.
Use these links wisely, and always provide a way for users to navigate back
the way they came. I don’t care whose fault it is; if you lock a visitor in Web
page hell, she’ll leave and probably won’t come back.
It’s far better to have all your pages (even those that are unrelated) connected
in a loose kind of way. Every page should have a way to go back to
the main page as well as a way for visitors to get back at least to the previous
page if not to the beginning of a section. It may be that your navigational
structure expands to show previous pages or sections of your Web site,
based on where the visitor is on the site at any given moment. Whatever you
choose to do, make sure visitors have plenty of ways out.
When you’re creating the way that your internal pages are linked, also remember
to keep like pages grouped together. When you think of the structure of
your Web site, think of it as a tree. The trunk of the tree is your main page, and
each of the branches is a major topic. Subtopics are the smaller branches off
the main branches, and the leaves are individual pages of information.
If you were to draw your Web site structure, it should resemble (in an
abstract kind of way) a tree lying on its side, as shown in Figure 4-6.
Each different topic of content on your Web site should be related to the
overall theme of the site — nobody would argue with that — but each topic
should also be further broken down into smaller categories so that site visitors
can quickly find what they’re looking for. For example, if your site is
about healthy cooking, every page on your site should be related to healthy
cooking. However, individual sections of your site can be broken down into
the different types of dishes that you cook or the techniques that you use to
create healthy dishes. Keep like content together and keep it all related to the
main theme of the Web site.
External linking
External linking — the links you use to connect your Web sites to other relevant
sites on the Web — is also going to play a major role in the way that
your Web site is categorized by search engine crawlers. External links lead
away from your page, and for this reason, many Web site designers think
it’s best to avoid external links on a page. Not true. In fact, if you don’t have
some element of external linking on your page, it becomes an obstacle in
both search rankings and in helping potential visitors find the information
they’re searching for.
Search crawlers look for external linking on a page as a sign of how well connected
the page is to the industry or category that it’s included in. For example,
if your site is about mental health issues, users will expect to find links
to other sites on the same topic. Crawlers will too. And if a crawler examines
your site and finds you’re not linked to other related sites, it devalues the
site, assuming that the site will be less useful to site visitors (because no
single site can have every piece of information about a topic or category).
What you don’t want to do is create a Web page that’s an island — surrounded
by cyberspace, but cut off from everything. Even the most beautiful islands can
become useless if nothing connects them to the rest of the world. And if your
Web site isn’t connected to other Web sites, (especially where search crawlers
are concerned), the usability rating of the site falls considerably.
It’s necessary to have outgoing and incoming external links to your site. But
there’s a catch (isn’t there always?): The external links on your site should
lead to or from other sites that are relevant to the content on your site. If
you’re linking to other sites in some disorderly, couldn’t-figure-it-out-witha-
clear-explanation kind of way, you might as well not have any links at all.
Search crawlers follow every link leading out from your site and will evaluate
the content on the linked site for relevancy. If the content doesn’t compute,
your search rankings will plummet.
Having one or two links to unrelated sites isn’t a big worry. It’s not at all
unusual for your best friend, who sells handmade soaps, to link to your Web
site about money management. But if you want search engines to take notice
of your Web site, I recommend that you have far more links to other sites
related to money-management vehicles, tools, and information.
Reciprocal linking
One way to gather links to your site and to share your site with other relevant
Web sites is to use reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is the new-age
version of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You find sites that would be
of interest to your site visitors and then approach the Web site owner with
the offer of putting a link to her site on your own if she’ll do the same for you
in exchange.
It’s a good strategy to get some inbound links built into your site if it’s a new
site, but don’t rely on this type of linking to gain you much favor with search
crawlers. A limited amount of reciprocal linking is acceptable, but when a
search engine is examining the links to your site, it ranks them by determining
if the keywords used on your Web site are similar to the keywords on the
sites that are linking to you. That’s why links always need to be generated
out of true interest in the content on your site. If your link to another page
is matched by a link back to your own page on too many pages, the value of
those links is lessened because the pattern of “I’ll link to you if you link to
me” becomes obvious.
Think about the wildly popular Web sites in your business (or personal)
scope. Even better than just thinking about it, surf on over there and have a
look. Click through a few of the external links on the page and look at where
they lead. Are there links back to the page you just left? In most cases, the
answer to that will likely be “No” because the most popular pages on the
Web don’t need reciprocal linking schemes. People link to them all the time
because the site offers information that’s of interest to everyone concerned
with that topic.
It’s all about placement
One last strategy to extend your linking mileage: Where you place your links
matters. When a crawler is navigating through your site, it’s looking at the
usability of your site. So, if you’re hiding links in places that users can’t find
them simply to improve your Web site ranking, you’ll find your Web site in
search results’ nether regions. And yes, that’s a trick some Web site designers
really use. The idea behind hidden links is to have them there because
you must have that linking structure, but to have the links hidden in places
users don’t think to click so they won’t navigate away from your Web site.
Wrong move. That kind of linking strategy will turn the curious search
crawler into a snotty search crawler that doesn’t score your Web site well for
ranking purposes.
Keep in mind that hidden links are very different from strategies like using
metadata keywords, as I talk about earlier in this chapter. Metadata keywords
and tags are built into the structure of your site and are designed to provide
additional information to crawlers. Hidden links and keywords are actually built
into the visitor-facing structure or user interface. Hidden links and keywords,
however, are intentionally blended into the site so that visitors can’t see them.
This is a deceptive way to include elements of Web design that crawlers look for
but that a Web site owner might not want the site visitor to see.
Creating a well-designed site that uses a more traditional link placement
structure is much better. Not only are Web surfers accustomed to seeing a
navigation structure, or links, in a few places (the top of the page, the left
side of the page, or within the text), but a well-designed site meets a need —
the visitor’s need for information. By meeting that need, you give visitors a
reason to return to your site again and again.
Most often on a well-designed site, some combination of those navigation
structures is going on. Most Web sites have their main navigation bar on the
left side of the page, and users know that that’s where they can usually go
to find the link to the next page within the site. Links to other sites can be
included in the text or in combination with the navigational structure on the
sides of the page.
Once in a while, a page will have the main navigational structure on the right.
In fact, that’s a common structure in blogs, and there’s nothing wrong with
setting up your page that way. Web crawlers don’t give a hoot if your navigational
structure and other links are located on one side of the page or the
other. But it’s important that however you decide to do it on the main page
of your Web site, you maintain that structure across every other page on the
site. Users get frustrated if the navigation scheme changes on every single
page, and Web crawlers will notice the inconsistency and lower the usability
ranking of your site.
Keyword marketing is like watching the news. A big story could hit today, and
it might hang around for a few days until journalists have wrung all the interest
out of the story. Then something else happens, and those same journalists toss
that story aside in favor of the newer, more interesting piece of news.
With keyword marketing, marketers might be willing to fight hard to win
the bids on one keyword today, only to find that another keyword is much
more popular and worth more to them in advertisements tomorrow. These
changes affect the income that you make from each click through, as well as
affecting the click throughs themselves. When the higher-paying marketer
moves on, it opens a keyword for lower-paying advertisers. Sometimes,
though, those lower-paying advertisers aren’t writing ads that are as appealing
to your users.
Users’ moods change, too. What they’re interested in today will certainly not
be the same tomorrow or next week. So, to keep your CTR optimized, you
have to stay on top of your keywords. Watch the effectiveness of the keywords
around which your Web site is built. And don’t be afraid to test new
and different keywords, especially if your traffic statistics begin to fall. Your
AdSense income depends on you staying at the razor’s edge of the marketing
curve. And that requires attention from you.
because how well your Web site places in search results determines how
much traffic your site sees. If you plan to have AdSense ads on your site and
you hope to generate a decent revenue stream with them, having a welloptimized
site is essential. And part of site optimization is having a linking
structure — the links that connect the pages of your site together as well as
the links that connect your page to other pages on the Web — that leads to
other, complementary sites as well as having other sites link to you. Like keyword
placement, link management is almost as much of an art form as it is a
strategy.
Linking schemes
Linking schemes are nothing more than the structure of how your Web site
is linked to other sites, how other sites are linked to you, and where internal
links lead. Good Web design principles include all three types of linking
schemes, and all are important to search engines because what a search
crawler is looking for is site usability first — how easy it is for visitors to go
from one place to the next on your Web site — and then site relevancy, or
how appropriate your site is to the topic for which a site visitor is searching.
Crawlers literally follow all the links on a Web page to make sure that what’s
connected together makes sense and is useful in the context of where the
links appear both in text and in navigational menus.
When you’re creating your linking schemes, remember that the ultimate goal
is to make your site as usable and as valuable as possible to your site visitors.
Assume that your visitors have landed on your page because it contains
information for which they’re searching; the idea here is to make your site as
valuable to those visitors as possible by providing your visitors with the info
they’re looking for and then some. (It’s the and then some that keeps them
coming back for more.)
Creating value for your user encompasses one concept — provide the user
the information he seeks. It’s that simple. That doesn’t mean that you need to
have every detail or product related to a specific topic on your site. But if you
don’t have it and you don’t plan to put it there, at least be prepared to point
visitors to another site that does have the information or products sought.
All of that is accomplished through linking. You’re either linking to another
page on your site where the information being sought is available or you’re
linking to another site entirely. In return, you should also have other sites
linking to your own, for the same reasons. (I have some tips on how to get
other sites to link back to you later in the chapter.)
Internal linking
Internal linking is the process by which the pages on your site are actually
linked together. The type of links isn’t nearly as important as the way
in which the pages are linked, but even the structure can have some benefits.
For example, text links — called hotlinks — can be more valuable than
graphic links because they allow you to use your keywords within the link.
But it’s also important to have a consistent navigational structure — the links
that usually grace the side or top of a page that lead to different sections of
your Web site. Both hotlinks and navigational links can be used in your internal
linking process.
Using keywords in your navigational structure gives you freebie opportunities
to use them — the keywords within links don’t count toward the keyword
density of a page because the percentage of times a keyword is used is
based solely on the content on the page. This means you can use your keywords
more often. But using hotlinks does count toward keyword density, so
be careful about how you place those links.
It’s also important that no matter how your links are formatted, you always
need to leave an escape hatch — every page on the site has to have a clearly
defined navigation area with easily recognizable links that make it a snap to
return to whatever page the visitor wants. Users who click from one page to
another in your Web site may not appreciate having to click the Back button
to get them back to the page they were previously on. Even more importantly,
if there’s no way for users to go back from whence they came, they’ll
leave. Typical surfer behavior when they can’t escape a page is to close
the window or browser that’s pointing to the site on which you have them
trapped. They may also just type a new address in the browser bar and navigate
away from your page that way.
Internal links all qualify as navigational links, even when they include hotlinks.
Use these links wisely, and always provide a way for users to navigate back
the way they came. I don’t care whose fault it is; if you lock a visitor in Web
page hell, she’ll leave and probably won’t come back.
It’s far better to have all your pages (even those that are unrelated) connected
in a loose kind of way. Every page should have a way to go back to
the main page as well as a way for visitors to get back at least to the previous
page if not to the beginning of a section. It may be that your navigational
structure expands to show previous pages or sections of your Web site,
based on where the visitor is on the site at any given moment. Whatever you
choose to do, make sure visitors have plenty of ways out.
When you’re creating the way that your internal pages are linked, also remember
to keep like pages grouped together. When you think of the structure of
your Web site, think of it as a tree. The trunk of the tree is your main page, and
each of the branches is a major topic. Subtopics are the smaller branches off
the main branches, and the leaves are individual pages of information.
If you were to draw your Web site structure, it should resemble (in an
abstract kind of way) a tree lying on its side, as shown in Figure 4-6.
Each different topic of content on your Web site should be related to the
overall theme of the site — nobody would argue with that — but each topic
should also be further broken down into smaller categories so that site visitors
can quickly find what they’re looking for. For example, if your site is
about healthy cooking, every page on your site should be related to healthy
cooking. However, individual sections of your site can be broken down into
the different types of dishes that you cook or the techniques that you use to
create healthy dishes. Keep like content together and keep it all related to the
main theme of the Web site.
External linking
External linking — the links you use to connect your Web sites to other relevant
sites on the Web — is also going to play a major role in the way that
your Web site is categorized by search engine crawlers. External links lead
away from your page, and for this reason, many Web site designers think
it’s best to avoid external links on a page. Not true. In fact, if you don’t have
some element of external linking on your page, it becomes an obstacle in
both search rankings and in helping potential visitors find the information
they’re searching for.
Search crawlers look for external linking on a page as a sign of how well connected
the page is to the industry or category that it’s included in. For example,
if your site is about mental health issues, users will expect to find links
to other sites on the same topic. Crawlers will too. And if a crawler examines
your site and finds you’re not linked to other related sites, it devalues the
site, assuming that the site will be less useful to site visitors (because no
single site can have every piece of information about a topic or category).
What you don’t want to do is create a Web page that’s an island — surrounded
by cyberspace, but cut off from everything. Even the most beautiful islands can
become useless if nothing connects them to the rest of the world. And if your
Web site isn’t connected to other Web sites, (especially where search crawlers
are concerned), the usability rating of the site falls considerably.
It’s necessary to have outgoing and incoming external links to your site. But
there’s a catch (isn’t there always?): The external links on your site should
lead to or from other sites that are relevant to the content on your site. If
you’re linking to other sites in some disorderly, couldn’t-figure-it-out-witha-
clear-explanation kind of way, you might as well not have any links at all.
Search crawlers follow every link leading out from your site and will evaluate
the content on the linked site for relevancy. If the content doesn’t compute,
your search rankings will plummet.
Having one or two links to unrelated sites isn’t a big worry. It’s not at all
unusual for your best friend, who sells handmade soaps, to link to your Web
site about money management. But if you want search engines to take notice
of your Web site, I recommend that you have far more links to other sites
related to money-management vehicles, tools, and information.
Reciprocal linking
One way to gather links to your site and to share your site with other relevant
Web sites is to use reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is the new-age
version of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You find sites that would be
of interest to your site visitors and then approach the Web site owner with
the offer of putting a link to her site on your own if she’ll do the same for you
in exchange.
It’s a good strategy to get some inbound links built into your site if it’s a new
site, but don’t rely on this type of linking to gain you much favor with search
crawlers. A limited amount of reciprocal linking is acceptable, but when a
search engine is examining the links to your site, it ranks them by determining
if the keywords used on your Web site are similar to the keywords on the
sites that are linking to you. That’s why links always need to be generated
out of true interest in the content on your site. If your link to another page
is matched by a link back to your own page on too many pages, the value of
those links is lessened because the pattern of “I’ll link to you if you link to
me” becomes obvious.
Think about the wildly popular Web sites in your business (or personal)
scope. Even better than just thinking about it, surf on over there and have a
look. Click through a few of the external links on the page and look at where
they lead. Are there links back to the page you just left? In most cases, the
answer to that will likely be “No” because the most popular pages on the
Web don’t need reciprocal linking schemes. People link to them all the time
because the site offers information that’s of interest to everyone concerned
with that topic.
It’s all about placement
One last strategy to extend your linking mileage: Where you place your links
matters. When a crawler is navigating through your site, it’s looking at the
usability of your site. So, if you’re hiding links in places that users can’t find
them simply to improve your Web site ranking, you’ll find your Web site in
search results’ nether regions. And yes, that’s a trick some Web site designers
really use. The idea behind hidden links is to have them there because
you must have that linking structure, but to have the links hidden in places
users don’t think to click so they won’t navigate away from your Web site.
Wrong move. That kind of linking strategy will turn the curious search
crawler into a snotty search crawler that doesn’t score your Web site well for
ranking purposes.
Keep in mind that hidden links are very different from strategies like using
metadata keywords, as I talk about earlier in this chapter. Metadata keywords
and tags are built into the structure of your site and are designed to provide
additional information to crawlers. Hidden links and keywords are actually built
into the visitor-facing structure or user interface. Hidden links and keywords,
however, are intentionally blended into the site so that visitors can’t see them.
This is a deceptive way to include elements of Web design that crawlers look for
but that a Web site owner might not want the site visitor to see.
Creating a well-designed site that uses a more traditional link placement
structure is much better. Not only are Web surfers accustomed to seeing a
navigation structure, or links, in a few places (the top of the page, the left
side of the page, or within the text), but a well-designed site meets a need —
the visitor’s need for information. By meeting that need, you give visitors a
reason to return to your site again and again.
Most often on a well-designed site, some combination of those navigation
structures is going on. Most Web sites have their main navigation bar on the
left side of the page, and users know that that’s where they can usually go
to find the link to the next page within the site. Links to other sites can be
included in the text or in combination with the navigational structure on the
sides of the page.
Once in a while, a page will have the main navigational structure on the right.
In fact, that’s a common structure in blogs, and there’s nothing wrong with
setting up your page that way. Web crawlers don’t give a hoot if your navigational
structure and other links are located on one side of the page or the
other. But it’s important that however you decide to do it on the main page
of your Web site, you maintain that structure across every other page on the
site. Users get frustrated if the navigation scheme changes on every single
page, and Web crawlers will notice the inconsistency and lower the usability
ranking of your site.
Keyword marketing is like watching the news. A big story could hit today, and
it might hang around for a few days until journalists have wrung all the interest
out of the story. Then something else happens, and those same journalists toss
that story aside in favor of the newer, more interesting piece of news.
With keyword marketing, marketers might be willing to fight hard to win
the bids on one keyword today, only to find that another keyword is much
more popular and worth more to them in advertisements tomorrow. These
changes affect the income that you make from each click through, as well as
affecting the click throughs themselves. When the higher-paying marketer
moves on, it opens a keyword for lower-paying advertisers. Sometimes,
though, those lower-paying advertisers aren’t writing ads that are as appealing
to your users.
Users’ moods change, too. What they’re interested in today will certainly not
be the same tomorrow or next week. So, to keep your CTR optimized, you
have to stay on top of your keywords. Watch the effectiveness of the keywords
around which your Web site is built. And don’t be afraid to test new
and different keywords, especially if your traffic statistics begin to fall. Your
AdSense income depends on you staying at the razor’s edge of the marketing
curve. And that requires attention from you.