Written on March 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 10:03 pm by Darren Rowse
Jason Calacanis Talks about the AOL Sale - Podcast
If you’ve been watching the rise of Weblogs Inc over the last couple of years and want to hear some of the behind the scenes story of the AOL sale then you might want to listen to an interview with Jason Calacanis recounting the story on a techcon TPN podcast. Jason talks about the highs and lows of the last couple of years, the sale itself, gives some entrepreneurship advice (resiliency is the word) and talks about the wider industry (it’s frothy - not a bubble). Well worth the listen.
Written on March 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 05:03 pm by Darren Rowse
Google Pays out $90 million to settle Click Fraud Case
There’s news on Reuters today on a $90 million pay-out from Google over a click fraud case. While that kind of money isn’t massive in the scheme of things at Google it’s the precedent that is worrying. As the article says - some believe that click fraud is the ’single greatest risk to Google’s advertising-dependent business model’.
This is the reason why Google have continued to crack down on those breaking their TOS over the last year - their business depends upon it.
Thanks to Aaress for the email tip.
update: More on the story at Search Engine Watch.
Written on March 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 03:03 pm by Darren Rowse
AdWords Launches Reader Demographic Targeting
Google’s AdWords have just allowed advertisers to start targeting sites with certain demographics as readers.
You’ll see below on the screen capture from my AdWords campaign some of the options for targeting that Advertisers now have according to gender, age, income, race etc.
This means that Google are now tracking the demographics of AdSense publisher’s readership using comScore data. They are only tracking this data on US readers from what they say on their AdWords site.
This is a good deal for Advertisers but how do you feel about them gathering this information on your site’s readers?
It’d be interesting to see how this information impacts advertisers targeting sites but also to see whether publishers will work out a way to find out what their own site’s demographics are by using AdWords. I can’t yet see an easy way to do it - but I’m sure it’d be possible.
Written on March 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 10:03 am by Darren Rowse
Performancing Metrics - Statistics Package for Bloggers
Nick Wilson over at Performancing has just announced the coming of a new ‘metrics’ tool which they have been alpha testing over the past few months.
I’ve been lucky enough to be one of the alpha testers of it and while I don’t think I’m allowed to say too much about the details of what it can do I will say that it is VERY good.
I need to clarify with Nick what I can and cannot say about it - but will say it is a statistics package that is specifically designed with blogs and bloggers in mind and that (as Nick says in a comment on his post) can partially track AdSense performance.
I’m looking forward to sharing more about it in the coming weeks as it goes towards a public beta.
Written on March 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 07:03 am by Darren Rowse
endo - News Aggregator for Mac users
Adriaan Tijsseling, the guy behind the critically acclaimed ecto (the Apple version of the blog publishing tool) has today announced his latest product - a news aggregator for Mac users called endo.
I’ve just downloaded it to try it for the 21 day trial period and so far I’m really impressed with it.
I’ve always been a user of Bloglines and it will be hard to get me to move on from it as I like it’s browser based nature - but as far as non browser based aggregators go this one seems to have a lot going for it.
For starters it synchs very well with blogging via ecto but it also seems pretty customizable and integrated with the OSX interface (including spotlight).
I’ll give it a bit of a run over the coming days but am pretty sure I’ll get a copy of it - partly because I think it’ll make a great back up to Bloglines, especially when I’m on the road and want to read my news offline and partly simply because Adriaan’s produced some great software for Mac users and I’d like to show him my support in the hope he’ll make more!
Written on March 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 07:03 am by Darren Rowse
Is Submitting Free Articles a Good Strategy for Blog Growth
Yaro has been doing an experiment to see whether writing article to submit to ‘free articles’ directories is a worthwhile way to build your blog (a strategy that quite a few bloggers use) His post is at The Verdict: Is Article Marketing Worth Your Time? The results don’t seem conclusive but I’m sure others would have experiences to add to Yaro’s so head over and have your say.
Written on March 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 12:03 am by Darren Rowse
12 Tips for Increased AdSense Ad Relevancy
Pay per click advertising programs like AdSense, YPN and Chitika do rely heavily upon the positioning and design of their ads when it comes to performance - but another crucial aspect of them is ad relevancy. The principle is simple really - readers come to your blog in search of content on a particular topic - if they see an ad that relates to that topic they are more likely to both notice it and respond to it.
Irrelevant ads will almost always convert poorly so in the same way that publisher work on the design and positioning of ads they should also consider making sure ads are as relevant to the content they are positioned near as possible.
Each ad system will have different methods of getting ads more relevant. With a system like Chitika it takes some work and you need to choose keywords carefully (read a little more on how I recommend optimizing their ads here) where as with AdSense and YPN it has more to do with what you write than anything else as the ads are contextual. The following 12 tips for getting relevant ads are largely aimed at AdSense ads - but some will convert well also with YPN.
- Section Targeting - AdSense brought in a feature called Section Targeting last year that I know has helped some bloggers quite a bit. The idea is simple - you place tags around the parts of your content that you want ads to relate to and other tags around content that you want their ads to ignore. You can learn more about this directly from Google here. My own experience with section targeting has been that I’ve not noticed it really to have much of an impact. In fact at one point after adding it I noticed a downward relevancy of ads so I removed it and relied upon the following strategies more.
- Keywords in Content - Without stuffing your posts with keywords and thereby making them read poorly - it’s worth considering what words appear in your posts more than others because it is these words that are likely to be triggering your ads. To help AdSense out you might want to consider finding ways to use the keywords that you want to target more than once or twice in each post.
- Keywords in Titles - I find that if a keyword is in my post’s title it seems to have a real impact upon the type of ads showing on a post. This is particularly true if your post’s titles actually are your page’s titles (learn more about this here). Of course the extra benefit of thinking about keywords in these ways is that it will also help you with SEO. Similarly using keywords in <h> tags also seems to impact relevancy.
- Metatags - I’ve never seen the AdSense team talk about metatags but do know of a number of AdSense publishers who believe that AdSense does look at them in determining what a page is about. I’d recommend that you make sure your blog’s overall keywords are in your metatags in case this is a factor (it can’t hurt).
- Check your sidebars, header, footer and menus - If you’re not using Section Targetting (and blocking your sidebars from being read by AdSense as a basis for your ads) you’ll want to consider the words you have in your sidebars and menus. One common problem that some bloggers have is that they get ads for blogging related products even though they are writing on other topics. One of the common reasons for this is that they have the word ‘blog’ or ‘blogging’ in their sidebar in numerous places. Unless your blog is about blogging you might want to avoid the ‘b word’ as much as you can. Also scan what other words are being repeated in your sidebars that might impact your keyword density.
- Keep Posts to One Topic - The more focussed your posts are the more hints you’ll be giving AdSense about what you’ve written about. Posts that cover numerous topics tend to lead to unfocussed ads. This explains why sometimes front pages of blogs can be more difficult to get ad relevancy on than single posts. Front pages can be difficult and you’ll probably want to work on keyword density there.
- Keep your Blog/URL to One Topic - Some AdSense publishers believe that AdSense looks not only at the page that the ad is on itself but the whole site that it is on. I’m not convinced that you can’t get relevant ads if you write on multiple topics on the one URL (I have done it with some success myself) - but it does seem to help to have a URL all on the one topic (ie it’s not essential - but worth factoring into your blogging strategy).
- Check to see if Ads Exist - This rarely happens with AdSense as their inventory for ads is pretty wide (YPN has a smaller inventory so this might be more useful for those publishers), but occasionally I’ve done consulting for publishers who have struggled to get relevant ads and have found that there just are not too many ads in their niche at all because it is too specialized. It’s a little difficult to check this but one basic way to do so is to head to Google.com and do a search for the keyword that you’d like to see ads on. If the results page has ads on it that are relevant there is a fair chance that there are ads in the AdSense inventory on the topic. If not - they could be scarce and you might need to widen your niche topic.
- Check what Ads others See - The ads you see on your blog are more than likely to be different ads than your readers are seeing. This is largely due to the fact that ads are geo targeted to your readers. Advertisers are able to choose which countries or regions that they want to expose their advertisements to. As a result sometimes your region might have fewer relevant ads than other regions and it can be worth asking someone else in another part of the world to tell you what kinds of ads they are seeing on your blog.
- Block Irrelevant Ads - This tip is one of last resort and may not actually have much impact at all but I know of a few bloggers who do it. AdSense lets publishers block a ads via their Competitive Ad Filter. If you’re seeing ads that are irrelevant to your blog’s topic you can block them using this method. Of course you should keep in mind that the ads you see on your blog are specific to your location and your readers are probably seeing others - so blocking ads can be a somewhat pointless exercise.
- Ad Relevancy takes Time - If your blog is a new one and you’re getting irrelevant ads then it could simply be that your blog is not old enough. I find that some blogs seem to get good ads straight away while others can take a week or two to settle down. So give it a little time to see if they right themselves.
- When in Doubt - Ask AdSense - There have been a number of times when I’ve not been able to figure out why relevant ads are not being served to a blog that I own. In each case I’ve sent an email to AdSense via their feedback mechanisms and have politely asked them to take a look at the pages/blog I’m struggling with. I find that their responses can often be quite helpful. You might get a fairly automated response at first but if you persist and reply to that you tend to get a ‘real person’ responding.
Written on March 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 09:03 pm by Darren Rowse
Google Analyst Day AdSense Slides
Derrick from Absolute Value has posted the content from slides from Google’s Eric Schmidt’s Analyst Day presentation which seemingly were posted by mistake on the web and that contained a load of information about many aspects of Google including a couple of slides on AdSense which I’ve included below.
They particularly talk about the coming of MSN and Yahoo’s ad systems and what they will do to develop AdSense. There’s not loads of information that we wouldn’t have guessed or suspected. New ad formats, other types of media etc are all things we’re seeing rolled out - although more options are always going to be welcomed by publishers.
Here are the contents of those slides:
Slide #9 - More Complete Ads System
Now let’s look at another core element of our business: advertising. Consider that today, 1 in 4 retail dollars is spent online, and you’ll immediately understand the tremendous opportunity before us.
Our ads business for the moment is healthy and growing and we’re on a strong trajectory
• projected to grow from $6bn this year to $9.5bn next year based purely on trends in traffic and monetization growth
But strong competitors are attempting to aggregate traffic
• AdSense margins will be squeezed in surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.and beyond
• Y! and MSN will do un-economic things to grow share
• The ad network will be commoditized over time
So, we need to build a more complete ads system that is characterized by two words: wider and deeper. That is, cast the net wider to attract new customer types) and deeper to enhance our relationship with existing customers.’
Slide #11 - More Complete Ads System (continued)
By Wider, we mean:
• Simplifying the experience and streamline advertiser acquisition for small and medium-sized businesses
• Developing a great branding product for large online advertisers and for offline advertisers of all sizes
• Expanding offerings to include print, radio, TV, and direct mails
By Deeper, we mean:
• Providing Advanced Tools & Reporting for sophisticated advertisers (e.g., API, bid management, ad scheduling)
• Expanding AdWords from clicks to conversions (e.g., Landing Page Optimization, Google Analytics integration)
• Tightening integration with other Google products (e.g., SiteMaps, GoogleBase, Local)
To really get down to brass tacks, we’re going to:
• Execute well on our core ads projects to help us exceed the $9.5bn target (and backfill any AdSense partner loss) and drive advertiser satisfaction
• Simplification
• Quality initiatives (e.g. landing page quality)
• Fight hard to maintain share in the AdSense network
• Aggressive guarantees
• Increased monetization on existing pages
• Expand inventory rapidly through:
• Support for new ad formats
• Targeting other types of media
• Developing market-leading/”hit” Google properties and consumer applications
• Extend into adjacent SMB services (CBG is only a first step)
• Treat advertisers as full-fledged businesses with a broad set of needs (not just advertising)
• Ensure that we are not supplanted in the consumer buying cycle by eBay, AMZN, Yahoo in their effort to become one-stop shops in the full buying cycle
• By bringing more product information to Google (e.g. via Base)
• By providing users with a richer search experience (e.g. attribute search, vertical search, and richer product information and reviews)
• By leveraging CCC apps to provide users with the product/service information they care about when they want it
Read more at Absolute Value: Analyst Day Slide Comments
Written on March 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 04:03 pm by Darren Rowse
Do Ugly Blogs Convert Better?
I’ve been meaning to link to and comment on Robert Scoble’s post on The role of anti-marketing design (or how ‘ugly’ designs often do better - especially with AdSense). He refers to ‘plentyofffish.com‘ as an example of one site that is reportedly making some big dollars from AdSense despite it’s fairly humble design.
My reaction to Robert’s post is twofold:
1. I don’t want to agree - I appreciate good design in all aspects of life. I like blogs and websites that have obviously had some time put into the way that they look. I also find myself reacting against ‘ugly’ on some levels (yep I’m a bit of a snob - but it’s the way I’m wired). That doesn’t mean I ignore or avoid poorly designed sites - I just am not drawn to them as much and they have to have something really worthwhile in terms of content to get me past their look.
I do believe that well designed blogs have some distinct advantages in terms of branding, marketing, creating first impressions, being stickable and with advertising optimization.
2. There’s some truth in the idea that ‘ugly converts well’ with some forms of advertising - I’ve seen many examples of sites that will never win design awards that are very profitable. I’ve also owned a couple of blogs that have proved it to me also.
However - I wouldn’t quite put it in the words that Robert does. I’m not so sure that we should aspire to ‘ugly’ blogs - but rather would call many of the blogs that I’m talking about that work well ’simple’ or ‘humble’. For example the site that Robert uses as his example, PlentyofFish, is not what I’d call ugly. It’s not brilliant but it is uncluttered, simple, reasonably clean and useable for readers. It’s ads are also in prime position and do stand out from the rest of the page (although do blend in in terms of background/border). It’s also a site that seems pretty simple to use and is fast to load.
So what do I recommend with blog design?
Hmmm - even as I write this I’m going back and forth a little on it in my mind. Here’s a few random take home points (and they will conflict each other):
- Bloggers without design skills should take heart - there are some great blogs out there that are quite average to look at which do very well in terms of traffic and earnings
- Well Designed blogs can work for you in terms of creating a brand, giving good first impressions and adding credibility to your blog
- Some bloggers get so sidetracked on getting their design working that they never actually develop good content (design should support your content - the main player on a blog)
- Simple, uncluttered and clean designs tend to work best with AdSense (in my experience) if you place the ads well
One last theory:
Source of traffic might come into play on this - it seems that PentyofFish does pretty well because it is ranked highly in Google for some pretty popular search terms. Robert mentions that it’s owner studies SEO theories and that this is perhaps the main reason for it’s success. I wonder whether it’s less crucial for site’s which rely more heavily upon SE traffic to have amazing design or not. Perhaps (untested) sites that rely upon referral traffic from other sites or repeat users need to be more aware of creating an appealing environment.
Of course even as I write this last paragraph examples of many ‘humbly’ designed sites that have loads of loyal readers are coming to mind - so perhaps my theory is dodgy! Perhaps design is irrelevant! :-)
I can hear the comments now - I don’t really believe this - but I’ve seen such a variety of results when it comes to design that I’m just not sure what I think any more.
Interested to hear what others think about the impact that a blog’s design has upon readership levels, ad performance etc
Written on March 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 09:03 am by Darren Rowse
Adsense Secrets Version 3 Released
Joel Comm has released yet another version of his AdSense Secrets e-book (aff).
This latest version (v3) is 199 pages of content and has new pages that look at the latest updates released by AdSense since version 2.
I’m yet to review this version but did review version 1 last year which will give you an indication of what it was like before being updated.
My advice in the review was that if you’re new to AdSense then this is a good overview of the system with good solid tips all in the one place. If you’re a more experienced user or have a few days (or weeks) so up your sleeve to do your own research on AdSense in forums and other sites (like enternetusers) you will probably find that you know most of what is in the book already
I personally won’t be buying the updated version - mainly because I feel my own experience with AdSense is at a level where I wouldn’t learn too much that is new from it - however know of quite a few bloggers who’ve found it to be a helpful purchase in the early days of their blogging.
As a bonus to buying the e-book at the moment you also get 2 months in Joel’s AdSense Coaching Club as well as a variety of other bonuses including some statistics trackers.
If you get this latest version and would like to write a short review of it feel free to leave a comment below.
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