Google AdSense and Blogs

If you have a blog, or are thinking about starting a blog, then you are definitely going to want to read this article. It’s all about how to line your pockets with money that’s just waiting to be made without working much harder than you already are.

No only are blogs the hottest thing on the ‘net right now, but they are custom-made for Google’s AdSense program. Why? It’s simple. Blogs represent constantly changing and fresh content to Google’s search engine spiders. Feeding fresh content to those little spiders is just like tossing raw meat to a tiger. They just gobble it up. The more pages of your blog that get indexed, the more traffic you get. And the more traffic you get, the more exposure your AdSense ads get. Are you beginning to see where I’m heading here?

It’s not just Google that loves new content, all of the major engines do. In fact, some web-savvy bloggers are testing Google ads on one page and Overture ads on the other. It doesn’t take too long to see which ads are doing the best when you have nearly side-by-side comparison statistics to look at. Just don’t make the mistake of putting Google and Overture ads on the same page together. While they won’t kill each other like a pair of Siamese fighting fish in the same bowel will, you will be violating both sites’ Terms of Service, and it isn’t worth killing the goose (geese) that laid the golden egg.

It’s a snap to set up Google AdSense ads on your blog. Everything you need to know is right inside of the Google control panel. What’s not so easy is figuring out what ads are going to appear on each page. Since Google targets your key words, and your blog articles could possible wander towards any subject, you never know what you’re going to get.

Well, “never” is a strong word because there actually IS a way to pre-test your blog’s ads before you post your newest edition. Here’s what you do:

• Write your blog article like you normally would
• Plug in your AdSense code and then post your newest page to a sub directory that’s not part of your blog.
• Click refresh a few times until Google wakes up and starts sending ads.
• If you don’t like what you see then fine-tune the article until you see the types of ads that you’re looking for.

With some ads paying as much as $5 per click or more, I’d certainly spend an extra 30 minutes or so tweaking my blog. That’s for sure.

If you’re working hard to get your blog in front of visiting eyeballs, then it doesn’t make any sense at NOT to be using Google AdSense to draw every penny out of your site that’s possible. OK, that’s the end of the article. Now get busy tweaking your blog and checking your ads. You’ve got money waiting to be made!

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Business Needs Drive Search Engine Updates

The Business Reasons Behind The Major Updates

All major search engines claim that they strive to present search results to users with the highest quality. But the business of search engine is business. What they won't tell us is that there're many business reasons for every major search engine updates. Search engine traffic is hot commodity - it's free and has higher conversion rate since the searchers are very close to make their buying decisions. The downside of the search traffic for webmasters is that they don't have control at all. Your sites may be ranked #1 today, but nowhere next day.

Search engine companies will, no doubt, use the search engine traffic to maximize the values for their stakeholders. Google's Feb. 2 update (allegra update or Superbowl update) once again shocked the webmaster community like last Florida update. The noticeable change in Superbowl update is that well-established sites rank well even for specific keywords that aren't even highly relevant to their pages. You may think the move is to fight spams and improve the quality of SERPs. That's only part of the story. The results of the update is that the websites of well-established corporations (with never ending press releases) will get a major traffic boost from Google. Google does this by algorithm changes, not manual manipulations.

If we think search engine traffic from Google is really an incentive to try it free before you buy. This time, Google decides to lure the major corporations to test the benefits of search traffic. Major corporations will likely increase their spending in online advertising and those news agencies may even drop their law sues against Google if they see the traffic from Google justifies that their sites benefit from including in Google index database.

Is this the real driving force behind last update? Only Google knows. If you own Google, however, you will do the exactly the same.

Will this negatively impact the user experience? - maybe and maybe not. What is the real difference between the #1 spot and the site that ranks #100? - the backlinks. Backlinks don't alter the quality of a page at all.

When they say technology, they mean business. Major technology changes are always driven by business needs. It has nothing to do with "good" or "bad".


Strategies to Cope with search Engine Updates


The Internet and the Web was once hailed as the new medium and the new opportunity for small business and site owners. They will be disappointed as big three peek into fortune 500 companies's deep packets. There're strategies they can use to cope with the search engine updates, however.

1. Create a portfolio of website using different SEO techniques. If some of your sites get hammered in a update the rest may benefit
from the update.
2. Generate traffic from all major search engines.
3. Use the search traffic to build loyal user bases.
4. Build sites similar to the sites of well-established companies. The tags, on-page, off page optimization techniques will become less and less important as major corporations aren't interested in those types of things that geek webmasters are interested.

READ MORE - Business Needs Drive Search Engine Updates

The Evolution of Google AdSense

The web has evolved into a complex "organism" which, to some, appears to have a life of its own. As the Internet has evolved, so too have online marketers and publishers. The dot-com balloon is said to have burst but savvy publishers have grabbed the coat tails of the Google search monster and employ Google AdSense on content-rich websites. Google AdSense, a pioneer for providing content-sensitive advertisements, has been a boon to webmasters looking for alternatives to amortize their web trafffic.

How Does Google AdSense Work?
The concept is simple: The publisher or webmaster inserts a java script into a website. Each time the page is accessed, the java script pulls advertisements from Google's AdSense program. The ads are targeted and related to the content contained on the web page serving the ad. If a web surfer clicks on an advertisement served from Google, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying Google for the click.

Google handles all the tracking and payments, ultimately providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive, targeted ads, without the headache of having to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor clicks or track statistics, any of which could easily become a full-time job.

While Google AdSense, like many pay-per-click programs, is plagued by claims of click-fraud, it is clearly an effective revenue source for many reputable web businesses. There seems to be no shortage of advertisers in the AdWords program from which Google pulls the AdSense ads. Webmasters seem less concerned by the lack of information provided by Google and more interested in cashing their monthly checks from Google.

The Evolution of AdSense
While Google's initial system was fairly rudimentary, only providing publishers the option of displaying a handful of advertising formats, the technology behind even the first ads was anything but simplistic. The technology used to employ Google AdSense goes far beyond simple keyword or category matching. A complex algorithm is used to determine the content contained on the web page serving the ad. Once the content is assessed, and appropriate ads that contain related content are served.

Early on, Google implemented a system that allows publishers to filter advertisements from competitors or sites which they deemed inappropriate. Google also allows vendors to specify an alternative advertisement, in the unlikely event that Google is unable to provide related content ads.

The Progression of Google
Google has come a long way in understanding the needs of publishers and webmasters. Google now offers a system that allows full ad customization. Webmasters can choose from twelve text ad formats and can customize Google advertisements to complement their website and fit into existing webpage layout. The options provided allow webmasters to select and create custom color palettes that match an existing website's color scheme, making the ads a much more natural fit.

Many sites have been able to integrate ads into their site design using different ad formats.

Sample sites with integrated ads:

Investing Partners - http://www.investing-partners.com
Podcasting Tools - http://www.podcasting-tools.com .
RSS Network - http://www.rss-network.com


Online Reports
Google recently took a huge step forward, providing publishers the ability to track their earnings based on webmaster-defined channels. Recent improvements to the Google AdSense reporting have resulted in webmasters having the capability to monitor an ad's performance with customizable online reports that can detail page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters now have the ability to track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website. Webmasters can quickly spot and track trends. The new flexible reporting tools allows webmasters to group web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category, providing webmasters insight into what pages, ads and domains are performing the best.

Reporting is real-time, allowing webmasters to quickly assess the effectiveness of any changes. The new reporting makes it significantly easier for webmasters to optimize and increase click-through rates. Optional reporting allows webmasters to monitor traffic, viewing both ad impressions and page impressions.

Advertisers realize the benefits associated with having their ads served on targeted websites, increasing the likelihood that a prospective web surfer will have an interest in their product or service.

Truth Still Not Revealed
Google still does not reveal what percentage of the advertising revenue earned is paid to the webmaster serving the ads, but they have made strides related to disclosure, recently lifting the ban preventing webmasters from disclosing the amount they earn through serving Google ads.

READ MORE - The Evolution of Google AdSense

10 Minutes to Your Google Sitemap

This article has a free corresponding online video tutorial that shows you how to summons the magic Googlebot to spider and index every page on your website, and it will only take about 10 minutes of your time.

Go here now to watch exactly what to do, step-by-easy-step...

http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm

What you have access to with the new Google Sitemaps program is truly a gift from the Google gods. They've offering you a tool that you can use to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in the search engine database. With Google Sitemaps, webmasters can now take charge and make sure that their entire site is crawled and indexed.

One important note to make is that the Google Sitemaps program will not necessarily improve the ranking of your site's pages. It only ensures that Google knows what you've got online for them to look at.

Before reading the following statement, promise yourself that you won't stop reading if you see a term that seems a little scary. OK? Promise? Good. Go ahead and keep reading then.

The format specified by Google for "their" sitemap is XML (extensible markup language). Did I loose you yet? No? Good again.

You do not need to understand how to code XML to participate in the Google Sitemap program. There are plenty of free online tools that will create your XML sitemap for you with no XML knowledge required on your part. More on this in a second.

What information is including in this XML sitemap?

1) The URL for every file on your website.

2) A relative priority rank that you can assign telling Google which pages on your site are most important for them to look at.

3) The date last modified for each page.

4) Anticipated change frequency per URL. This again is a variable that you control.

According to Google, your XML sitemap can include up to 50,000 URL's. If your site is a real monster and has in excess of 50,000 URL's, then you'll need to create a hierarchy of sitemaps with one leading to the next. This way you'll be able to lead Google to all of your pages.

The options for generating and maintaining your Google Sitemap range from complex systems that are highly automated to very simple systems using online sitemap generators that require nothing more than clicking a few buttons.

Google now keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them here: http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

The program that's demonstrated in our free video tutorial (http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm) is found here: http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

In a nutshell, here are the steps involved with using online generators:

1) Start the program.
2) Enter your site's URL
3) Click the "Start Crawling" button
4) Customize URL priorities and change frequencies
5) Save the site map to your local hard drive
6) Upload your new Google XML sitemap to your website in the root directory (where your home page resides)
7) Validate your new sitemap
(can be done here: http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/submit-validate-sitemap/)
8) Submit your XML sitemap to Google.

You can access the pages for the Google Sitemap program here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

8 steps in about 10 minutes. That's all there is to it.

One question that you might ask is whether or not you still need an HTML sitemap, and the answer is "Yes, you still need your conventional sitemap". XML sitemaps are not intended for human visitors. To see what I mean, take a look at the two following sitemaps:

HTML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.html

XML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.xml

Which version do you prefer? Your visitors will like the HTML and Google prefers XML.

When you add pages or new content to your site and you want Google to go back to have a fresh look, just log in to your Google Sitemaps control panel, select the sitemap to revisit, and click "Resubmit". It's never been easier to get Google to spider and index a website. Don't miss your opportunity to use this tool to your advantage.

READ MORE - 10 Minutes to Your Google Sitemap