I’m running an experiment based on an article by Eric Giguere linked to by Darren. It was one of those ideas that simply smacked me in the face and demanded why I never thought of it.
The idea is simple. Put up a quality piece that does not go into tremendous length or depth. The idea is to tantalize the reader into wanting more. The second step is to have no outgoing links on the page. This prevents escaping traffic (not entirely) but it causes a funnel effect for readers. The idea is to get them to click on ads.
Tangent: Now for those of my readers who don’t “get” the whole ad thing, this is not obnoxious in your face advertising such as popups or spyware. This is contextual advertising by Google where ads placed on a site generally reflect the content of the site.
Finally, I optimized the site to take advantage of keywords. Since the topic of the page is Tagging Your Blog, I do search engine optimization based around those keywords - specifically, tagging.
- First I chose a domain with the keywords in the domain - taggingyourblog.com.
- Then I make sure I included a
<meta type="keywords">in my header. This has little value but still helps maximize the impact of the keywords. - Then I made efficient use of the keyword in my headers
- Finally, I used boldface on keywords to emphasize them through the page.
Now it will take some time to see the results of this experiment, but I’m going to be watching.
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Dimitris 03.07.06 at 6:23 am
You forgot one large part of the equation, to check how many people search for your keywords. In this case noone according to overture and wordtracker.
The most common process that a lot of people use is.
1)Find a keyword with xxx number of searches per day
2)Check the competition (see how many results a google search returns and the strength of the sites in the first page)
3)You could also check how much that keyword pays
And then find a good domain, create content optimize create inbound links etc.
Dimitris 03.07.06 at 6:23 am
You forgot one large part of the equation, to check how many people search for your keywords. In this case noone according to overture and wordtracker.
The most common process that a lot of people use is.
1)Find a keyword with xxx number of searches per day
2)Check the competition (see how many results a google search returns and the strength of the sites in the first page)
3)You could also check how much that keyword pays
And then find a good domain, create content optimize create inbound links etc.
Mike 03.07.06 at 8:12 am
Aaron,
The only thing I see that might hurt you is that there may be too many ads.
I have a ‘ not released to the public ‘ book that tells me that the max number to have is four, as the price paid for the top four ads is normally a lot higher than the 7,8 or 9th ad.
With only four, there’s a good possibility that the click will pay well and there’s more of a chance that the reader will click.
Test it with only the large rectangle, for a while and see if that does better.
Also, get rid of the advertise on this site tag, it’s there by default, you can turn it off…makes it look like an ad, rather than further navigation, which is your goal.
The more it looks like navigation, the more likely to get clicked.
Hope this helps.
Mike 03.07.06 at 8:12 am
Aaron,
The only thing I see that might hurt you is that there may be too many ads.
I have a ‘ not released to the public ‘ book that tells me that the max number to have is four, as the price paid for the top four ads is normally a lot higher than the 7,8 or 9th ad.
With only four, there’s a good possibility that the click will pay well and there’s more of a chance that the reader will click.
Test it with only the large rectangle, for a while and see if that does better.
Also, get rid of the advertise on this site tag, it’s there by default, you can turn it off…makes it look like an ad, rather than further navigation, which is your goal.
The more it looks like navigation, the more likely to get clicked.
Hope this helps.
Aaron Brazell 03.07.06 at 9:07 am
@Dimitrius- Thanks.
@Mike- You may be right. I was merely going by the suggestion in the article. Something you say sounds right though.
Aaron Brazell 03.07.06 at 9:07 am
@Dimitrius- Thanks.
@Mike- You may be right. I was merely going by the suggestion in the article. Something you say sounds right though.
Eric Giguere 03.07.06 at 9:44 am
AdSense ads are indeed ordered by payout value, although the payout value is not just the price but also depends on the clickthrough rate of the ad. The AdSense algorithms try to arrange it so that the most-paying ads show up first.
Note that in my article I did say not to overdo it with the ads. However, you have to experiment to find what’s right for you. I know someone who has a page that has 3 ad units on it as well as Chitika ads… and it has done extremely well for him. There are no hard-and-fast rules, it really depends on what the site’s about. If there are only a few advertisers paying good money, show less ads.
Eric Giguere 03.07.06 at 9:44 am
AdSense ads are indeed ordered by payout value, although the payout value is not just the price but also depends on the clickthrough rate of the ad. The AdSense algorithms try to arrange it so that the most-paying ads show up first.
Note that in my article I did say not to overdo it with the ads. However, you have to experiment to find what’s right for you. I know someone who has a page that has 3 ad units on it as well as Chitika ads… and it has done extremely well for him. There are no hard-and-fast rules, it really depends on what the site’s about. If there are only a few advertisers paying good money, show less ads.
Aaron 03.07.06 at 9:50 am
Thanks for stopping by, Eric. I figure this experiment will give me a chance to try out several different approaches in a relatively low-risk environment. Not sure if I really overdid it on ads or not. My feeling is that I didn’t but I can understand how someone could say that I did.
Aaron 03.07.06 at 9:50 am
Thanks for stopping by, Eric. I figure this experiment will give me a chance to try out several different approaches in a relatively low-risk environment. Not sure if I really overdid it on ads or not. My feeling is that I didn’t but I can understand how someone could say that I did.
Fabio 03.09.06 at 8:55 am
Aaron, have you any news about your “one page” experiment. ?
I’m curious to see how efficient this technique could be.
Thanks
Fabio 03.09.06 at 8:55 am
Aaron, have you any news about your “one page” experiment. ?
I’m curious to see how efficient this technique could be.
Thanks
Aaron 03.09.06 at 8:59 am
Not yet, Fabio. It will take several months before I have an idea of how successful it is. For one, I need Google to tweak its SERPs. It would have been nice to do this before the last Google dance, but oh well.
Aaron 03.09.06 at 8:59 am
Not yet, Fabio. It will take several months before I have an idea of how successful it is. For one, I need Google to tweak its SERPs. It would have been nice to do this before the last Google dance, but oh well.
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