Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tips for Improving AdSense Performance
Tear Down the Borders
Remove borders on your AdSense ads. Web visitors eyes wander around the screen; borders stop them from wandering.
Removing borders from your AdSense ads can lead to a significant boost in CTR.
Use Matching Fonts
Match the font of your site content to the fonts of your AdSense ads
Use Matching Colors
Match the colors of your AdSense ads to the colors of your site content. Make the ads look like content and more visitors will look at them.
One exception to the color matching rule is sites that are designed to appeal to scammers and spammers. Those sites sometimes perform better with highly contrasting colors.
Use Blue Links
Another exception to the color matching rule is to set the links in your AdSense ads to blue. Blue links tend to have a higher CTR than other link colors, because people have become used to clicking blue links.
Use Large Ads
Larger ads outperform smaller ads. Wider ads also outperform more narrow ads.
The Large Rectangle (336x280) is the best performing ad unit.
Use Lots of Ads
Google allows you to use three ad units and one link unit on each page.
Use them all. The more ads you have, the higher your Page CTR will be.
Place Ads Above the Fold
"The fold" is industry jargon for "the part of the page that the user sees without scrolling down". This will vary depending upon the resolution of the users screen and the size of their browser window.
Place as many ads as possible above the fold. Ads placed below the fold are seldom seen and seldom clicked.
Place Ads on the Left
Web users are accustomed to seeing menus on the left side of the web page. Move your menu to the right and place your AdSense ads on the left.
Use the Heat Map
Use the Google AdSense Heat Map to determine where to place ads. The darker spots are areas where users spend more time looking. Place your ads in the darker areas.
Integrate Ads with Content
Visitors will be reading your content. Keeps your ads as close to your content as possible to ensure that the visitors also look at your ads.
Use Custom Channels
Use AdSense's Custom Channels to test the performance of different ad sizes, placements, colors and fonts.
Don't use Low-Paying Competing Ads
Don't clutter your page with competing ads that don't pay. If a user clicks on an ad that pays you $.01, they are not clicking on an ad that pays you $.30.
Use URL Channels
Use AdSense URL Channels to determine which pages are making you the highest CTR, CPM, and earnings। Focus your efforts on building pages like those।
Article Source:http://www.articlecity.com/
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Website Content & Usability
Writing for the web is totally different to writing for printed matter. We tend to scan content on the web hunting for the information we're after, as opposed to reading word-for-word. As a result of this, there are certain guidelines you should be sure to follow when writing copy for your website:
1. Use clear and simple language
Reading from computer screens is tiring for the eyes and about 25% slower than reading from printed matter. As such, the easier the style of writing the easier it is for site visitors to absorb your words of wisdom.
Some techniques for using clear and simple language include:
- Avoid slang or jargon - Get your grandmother and ten year old nephew to read your site - if both can understand the page content you've done well!
- Use shorter words where possible - ‘Begin' rather than ‘commence', ‘used to' rather than ‘accustomed to' etc.
- Avoid complex sentence structures - Try to include just one idea or concept per sentence
- Use active ahead of passive words - ‘We won the award' is shorter and easier to comprehend than, ‘The award was won by us'
2. Limit each paragraph to one idea
If you assign just one idea to each paragraph site visitors can:
- Easily scan through each paragraph
- Get the general gist of what the paragraph is about
- Then move on to the next paragraph
All this and without fear that they'll be skipping over important information, because they will already know roughly what the paragraph is about.
Limiting each paragraph to just one idea is especially effective when combined with front-loading paragraph content.
3. Front-load content
Front-loading content means putting the conclusion first, followed by the what, how, where, when and why. The first line of each paragraph should contain the conclusion for that paragraph, so site visitors can:
- Quickly scan through the opening sentence
- Instantly understand what the paragraph is about
- Decide if they want to read the rest of the paragraph or not
Because each paragraph contains just one idea, users can do all this safe in the knowledge that if they jump to the next paragraph they won't be missing any new concepts.
Front-loading also applies to web pages, as well as paragraphs. The opening paragraph on every page should always contain the conclusion of that page. This way, site visitors can instantly gain an understanding of what the page is about and decide whether they want to read the page or not.
Unfortunately many websites don't adhere to this guideline and end up writing page content in a story-format. On each page there's an introduction, middle and conclusion, in that order. Unfortunately, when scanning through web content we don't tend to read all the text nor read all the way to the bottom of the screen. As such, you may easily miss the conclusion if it's left until the end.
So remember, conclusion first, everything else second! For a great example of front-loaded content, just read any newspaper article. The opening paragraph is always the conclusion of the article.
4. Use descriptive sub-headings
Breaking up text with descriptive sub-headings allows site visitors to easily see what each section of the page is about. The main heading on the page provides a brief overall view of what page is about, and the opening paragraph gives a brief conclusion of the page (because you've front-loaded the page content). Within the page though, there are various sub-themes which can be quickly put across with sub-headings.
There's no hard and fast rule for how frequently to use sub-headings, but you should probably be roughly aiming for one sub-heading every two to four paragraphs. More importantly though, the sub-headings should group on-page content into logical groups, to allow site visitors to easily access the information that they're after.
5. Bolden important words
Another way to help users locate information quickly and easily is to bolden important words in some paragraphs. When site visitors scan through the screen this text stands out to them, so do make sure the text makes sense out of context.
Bolden two to three words which describe the main point of the paragraph, and not words on which you're placing emphasis. By seeing these boldened words site visitors can instantly gain an understanding of what the paragraph is about and decide whether or not they want to read it.
6. Use descriptive link text
In the same way that bold text stands out to screen-scanning web users, so does link text. Link text such as ‘click here' makes no sense whatsoever out of context so is useless to site visitors scanning web pages. To find out the destination of the link, site visitors have to hunt through the text both before and after the link text.
7. Use lists
Lists are preferable to long paragraphs because they:
- Allow users to read the information vertically rather than horizontally
- Are easier to scan
- Are less intimidating
- Are usually more succinct
8. Left-align text
Left-aligned text is easier to read than justified text, which in turn is easier to read than centre- or right-aligned text.
When reading through justified text the spacing between each word is different so our eyes have to search for the next word. This slows down our reading speed. Right- and centre-aligned paragraphs slow down reading speed even more because each time you finish reading one line your eye has to search for the beginning of the next line.
Conclusion
These eight guidelines are nothing revolutionary nor are they difficult to implement. Yet so many websites structure their content so poorly to the detriment of their site visitors. Have a quick look over your website now - how does it do with regards to these content guidelines?
Article Source:http://www.articlecity.com/
How To Find Hot Niche Markets
Look to 3 sources for ideas:
* A hobby you love: You won't find many hobbies from which you can't build a business. And since you enjoy doing it, it won't be tedious to "go to work" every day. When you pick something for your business that you sincerely like, you will have fun at doing it.
* Your experiences: In life we go though many experiences and you can use these to build a business. For example if you have raised children you can then put all your parenting experience together and start a business related to parenting.
* Your talents: Everyone has one or more talents within them. Dig down and see what yours are. You can start a freelance business using your talents.
Defining your niche market:
1. List out some ideas then put them in the order of what you like the best.
2. Go to the site listed here and put a key word into the overture suggestion tool box: This will bring up the amount of searches that have been done for your keyword and will represent demand.
3. If you search out that same key word on Google search engine http://google.com then you will see websites supplying that item and you will know how many competitors are out there that will be competing with you when you start a home business.
4. If you find a topic that is demanded in quantity but low in the suppliers, you will then make money. This should be your special market for which you do your niche marketing. You will make more money with a niche market as you will reduce and sometimes even eliminate competition. Go through your list of ideas until you narrow it down to about
5. Then go through them again and see which one will fit into a niche market.
Establishing your USP:
Once you have found the concept that fits into a specialized or niche market it is time to establish your USP, Unique, Selling, Point. This is when you will take your idea, and see how you will make your business uniquely different from your competitors. Often neglected, finding the USP is something that new business owners need to do to set their item above the competition. Online businesses are very competitive and you have to stay ahead of the game.
There are two reasons you need to set yourself up as different from others:
1. Get ahead of your competitors
2. To clearly define to your potential customers why your product and service is better than your competitors.
Deciding on your business model:
Part of your business concept will not only be consolidating your ideas but also choosing your business model. There are a few that you can choose from:
* Affiliate marketing-Getting involved with affiliate programs will target your efforts
* Network marketing (MLM)- again this will target your market and idea.
* Marketing-taking the product and selling it
* Service- you should use your talents, which includes freelancing.
You can see there are a number of things you will have to do to get your business concept into operation. But it's worth it to plan and take care in developing it. It will be your foundation, after all.
Article Source:http://www.articlecity.com/
Project Black Mask - Scam?
Project Black Mask is not for the fainthearted, as it employs some notorious "black hat" strategies to suck traffic from the search engines. Essentially, PBM teaches exactly how some of the biggest search-engine spammers pull off getting thousands of pages and websites indexed in order to earn money from Google Adsense.
Unfortunately, there are some serious issues with this whole search-engine game - the first of which is that this type of behavior, considered highly unethical in some quarters, has caused Google and other search engines to tighten their algorithms so much that white or gray hat sites are getting penalized as well, e.g., for "duplicate content."
Furthermore, as I read Project Black Mask, I kept asking, "How do you keep your Adsense account from being canceled?" PBM provides no real answer to this problem - yet, the chances of losing your account appear to be pretty good if you're uploading thousands and thousands of pages of spammy content that include your Adsense ID in them. In PBM, Goad refers to "Adsense accounts" in the plural, but, unless you are opening up accounts in the name of several shell companies, for example, I don't see how you could have more than one account.
Most of the techniques are not for me, but there was some really good information regarding building large keyword lists, as well as other very useful information concerning internet marketing strategies in general.
In any event, if you like living on the edge and dangerously, you may like Project Black Mask. Even if you don't want to implement the black-hat methods, you will likely gain some useful insights into how money is made online.
Article Source:http://www.articlecity.com/