Guidelines for new web publishers
Imagine this. Mr. Big Google Advertiser is surfing the net, looking up some traderelated keywords. He clicks through lazily to land on a strange website. The logo looks amateurish. The content is full of typos. Heck, some of the links don't even work. And then, he sees something he least expects to find. He seems to freeze for a second. His eyes pop wide open and you can see a muscle going in his cheek. He picks up his phone and dials a number. "I can't believe it!" He booms, "I can't believe you put MY ad on THAT website!" Uh oh. Google has a reputation to live up to. A reputation for providing quality content, targeted traffic and good value for money to their advertisers. The way to meet these requirements is to provide content that meets their requirements and goes one step further to add something unique, which other websites might not offer.
Before you apply to Google AdSense, make sure you haven't cut corners on the layout and the quality of content. Google is quick to reject websites that are built specifically to attract search spiders or that trick people into clicking AdSense Ads. To make a sizable income from AdSense, you need unique content, a true commitment to your visitors and focused content which makes it easy for advertisers to target their audience. To sum up, here are a few quick Do's and Don'ts before you Apply:
16.1 Don't Build A Website That Specifically Targets Search Spiders, With Nothing Unique To Offer Human Visitors.
I’ve already discussed the importance of creating content that your users are genuinely going to find interesting. If you have interesting content, you’ll have higher CTR and higher revenues. With so many legitimate ways of creating revenuegenerating content, you’re only cheating yourself when you take a shortcut. You reduce your CTR and you increase the odds of being banned by Google.
16.2 Don't Build A Website Just To Make Money From AdSense
The easiest way to produce genuinely interesting content is to produce content that genuinely interests you! You might feel that the more pages that you can throw up, the more money you’ll make but if you can’t produce the sort of content that can compete with companies who produce genuinely good material, you’re not going to get the traffic or the revenues. But there is plenty of topics that you know about and enjoy. That’s the kind of material that can give you money. It will also make earning that money a lot more fun.
16.3 Provide Targeted Content That Will Help Google Advertisers To Capitalize Your Traffic
But writing about what you enjoy rather than what can help you earn doesn’t mean you should forget about using your content to bring you targeted ads. If you know that there are certain keywords in your topic that are worth more, then you can certainly write about those. You can also make sure that you toss in plenty of keywords and headings to keep those ads targeted.
16.4 DON'T Build A Website Specifically To Target
HighValue Keywords Unless You Plan On Developing Quality Content! Not all advertisers bid high on the same keywords. Just as it’s a bad idea to create more content simply to create more money, so it’s a mistake to focus on particular keywords to create lots of money! If you are prepared to produce good content and want that content to include high value keywords, one VERY useful service provides more detailed info than any other I have found. It is called The AdSense Accelerator, and it is an impressive service.
Fig. 16.1 Sample report revealing highvalue keywords.
If you want to aggressively build sites, another very useful tool you might want to look at is Top Keyword Lists. This is a 'plug and play' monthly membership service offering twentyfive highpaying AdSense markets each and every week. With a simple page generating application, you can turn out twentyfive sites quickly and easily from each week's updates. If you prefer to spend a little more time building your site with articles, they offer a unique keyword research tool that allows you to pinpoint the key phrases you should concentrate your articles on for maximum payout through AdSense. Read more about it at www.adsense secrets.com/topkeywords.html
16.5 Websites That Rank Higher In A Google Search (SERPS) Will Get A Better PerClick Payout Than Websites Which Rank Lower For The Same Search Term
I don’t know if that’s because Google just wants to reward sites who meet their criteria for high search listings or because they assume that sites that rank higher are going to have better users for advertisers than lowerranked sites. Most likely though, is that it’s all about content relevance. A top ranking website is considered more relevant than a lowerranking one. So keep an eye on your Google Search Ranking for your targeted search terms and work continuously to optimize your website. The upshot is that when you’ve created your site, you need to pay attention to search engine optimization. That won’t only win you free traffic, it will also get you more money for the traffic you receive. You can learn more about search engine optimization in chapter 21.
16.6 Increase 'Readiness to Buy' Advertisers prefer websites that qualify visitors for the purchase.
Allow me to explain with this simple example: A search for "cell phones" can throw up a page about the perils of cell phone radiation, a university professor's treatise about messaging technologies and a buyer's guide that compares features and prices of topselling cell phone models. For an advertiser looking to target cell phone buyers, the buyer's guide offers the most relevant (and therefore valuable) advertising space. This is part of targeting your content. You want people to click on your ads. So do your advertisers. If you can keep your content focused on the products your advertisers are selling then you should be able to increase your CTR. Of course, it’s also Google’s job to make sure that your ads match your content, but if you’re writing about DVD’s it makes sense to produce content that encourages people to buy DVD’s because those are the sort of ads you know you’re going to be served!
If you were writing about homebuying, you can be sure that you’d get ads about mortgages and real estate agents. Put up pages about finding the right mortgage or how to pick a real estate agent and not only do the ads look even more relevant, they’ll also appear more attractive.
Tim Carter is a living example of how content relevance builds loyalty. As an expert in his field, he adds relevance and credibility to the ads appearing on his pages. Check out this example at: http://www.askthebuilder.com/535InstallingLarge CeramicTiles.shtml
16.7 Don't Cut Corners!
Watch out for typos, amateurish layouts, malfunctioning links, poorquality or plagiarized content. Users expect to reach professional websites. Those are the ones they spend the most time on and pay the most attention to. Those are also the ones that Google rewards the most. It pays to put effort into improving your website. It pays to have a good design and a site that’s attractive and well maintained.
Imagine this. Mr. Big Google Advertiser is surfing the net, looking up some traderelated keywords. He clicks through lazily to land on a strange website. The logo looks amateurish. The content is full of typos. Heck, some of the links don't even work. And then, he sees something he least expects to find. He seems to freeze for a second. His eyes pop wide open and you can see a muscle going in his cheek. He picks up his phone and dials a number. "I can't believe it!" He booms, "I can't believe you put MY ad on THAT website!" Uh oh. Google has a reputation to live up to. A reputation for providing quality content, targeted traffic and good value for money to their advertisers. The way to meet these requirements is to provide content that meets their requirements and goes one step further to add something unique, which other websites might not offer.
Before you apply to Google AdSense, make sure you haven't cut corners on the layout and the quality of content. Google is quick to reject websites that are built specifically to attract search spiders or that trick people into clicking AdSense Ads. To make a sizable income from AdSense, you need unique content, a true commitment to your visitors and focused content which makes it easy for advertisers to target their audience. To sum up, here are a few quick Do's and Don'ts before you Apply:
16.1 Don't Build A Website That Specifically Targets Search Spiders, With Nothing Unique To Offer Human Visitors.
I’ve already discussed the importance of creating content that your users are genuinely going to find interesting. If you have interesting content, you’ll have higher CTR and higher revenues. With so many legitimate ways of creating revenuegenerating content, you’re only cheating yourself when you take a shortcut. You reduce your CTR and you increase the odds of being banned by Google.
16.2 Don't Build A Website Just To Make Money From AdSense
The easiest way to produce genuinely interesting content is to produce content that genuinely interests you! You might feel that the more pages that you can throw up, the more money you’ll make but if you can’t produce the sort of content that can compete with companies who produce genuinely good material, you’re not going to get the traffic or the revenues. But there is plenty of topics that you know about and enjoy. That’s the kind of material that can give you money. It will also make earning that money a lot more fun.
16.3 Provide Targeted Content That Will Help Google Advertisers To Capitalize Your Traffic
But writing about what you enjoy rather than what can help you earn doesn’t mean you should forget about using your content to bring you targeted ads. If you know that there are certain keywords in your topic that are worth more, then you can certainly write about those. You can also make sure that you toss in plenty of keywords and headings to keep those ads targeted.
16.4 DON'T Build A Website Specifically To Target
HighValue Keywords Unless You Plan On Developing Quality Content! Not all advertisers bid high on the same keywords. Just as it’s a bad idea to create more content simply to create more money, so it’s a mistake to focus on particular keywords to create lots of money! If you are prepared to produce good content and want that content to include high value keywords, one VERY useful service provides more detailed info than any other I have found. It is called The AdSense Accelerator, and it is an impressive service.
Fig. 16.1 Sample report revealing highvalue keywords.
If you want to aggressively build sites, another very useful tool you might want to look at is Top Keyword Lists. This is a 'plug and play' monthly membership service offering twentyfive highpaying AdSense markets each and every week. With a simple page generating application, you can turn out twentyfive sites quickly and easily from each week's updates. If you prefer to spend a little more time building your site with articles, they offer a unique keyword research tool that allows you to pinpoint the key phrases you should concentrate your articles on for maximum payout through AdSense. Read more about it at www.adsense secrets.com/topkeywords.html
16.5 Websites That Rank Higher In A Google Search (SERPS) Will Get A Better PerClick Payout Than Websites Which Rank Lower For The Same Search Term
I don’t know if that’s because Google just wants to reward sites who meet their criteria for high search listings or because they assume that sites that rank higher are going to have better users for advertisers than lowerranked sites. Most likely though, is that it’s all about content relevance. A top ranking website is considered more relevant than a lowerranking one. So keep an eye on your Google Search Ranking for your targeted search terms and work continuously to optimize your website. The upshot is that when you’ve created your site, you need to pay attention to search engine optimization. That won’t only win you free traffic, it will also get you more money for the traffic you receive. You can learn more about search engine optimization in chapter 21.
16.6 Increase 'Readiness to Buy' Advertisers prefer websites that qualify visitors for the purchase.
Allow me to explain with this simple example: A search for "cell phones" can throw up a page about the perils of cell phone radiation, a university professor's treatise about messaging technologies and a buyer's guide that compares features and prices of topselling cell phone models. For an advertiser looking to target cell phone buyers, the buyer's guide offers the most relevant (and therefore valuable) advertising space. This is part of targeting your content. You want people to click on your ads. So do your advertisers. If you can keep your content focused on the products your advertisers are selling then you should be able to increase your CTR. Of course, it’s also Google’s job to make sure that your ads match your content, but if you’re writing about DVD’s it makes sense to produce content that encourages people to buy DVD’s because those are the sort of ads you know you’re going to be served!
If you were writing about homebuying, you can be sure that you’d get ads about mortgages and real estate agents. Put up pages about finding the right mortgage or how to pick a real estate agent and not only do the ads look even more relevant, they’ll also appear more attractive.
Fig. 16.2 What the advertiser wants!
Tim Carter is a living example of how content relevance builds loyalty. As an expert in his field, he adds relevance and credibility to the ads appearing on his pages. Check out this example at: http://www.askthebuilder.com/535InstallingLarge CeramicTiles.shtml
16.7 Don't Cut Corners!
Watch out for typos, amateurish layouts, malfunctioning links, poorquality or plagiarized content. Users expect to reach professional websites. Those are the ones they spend the most time on and pay the most attention to. Those are also the ones that Google rewards the most. It pays to put effort into improving your website. It pays to have a good design and a site that’s attractive and well maintained.
