Do you Adsense?
Google has build the strongest business model available on
the net...for the pleasure and profit of thousands of Internet
Marketers. But do we really understand the issues related to
Adsense marketing?
There is a terrible trend in the Adsense world these last months
: - Some marketers just want to make you believe that you can
throw hundreds of poorly computer generated sites on your erver
to make 1000's of $. They sell terrific packages for a low
price...(I've seen that one of these package : 150 sites for $97
is amongst the bestseller on clickbank). You then find these
sites on ebay, and finally you've just bought useless sites
shared by at least 1000 of "webmasters") - This makes this
market an attractive market for every one : with all the tools
on the market you can easily produce your own sites and resell
them. There's nothing wrong with that, as we are all here to
make some profit from our activities.
We all know that Google is getting smarter, BUT in the same
time we just add some easy food to Google : are they really
getting smarter, or are we just giving Google easy stuff to
de-index?!
Of course there's a myth about Google willingness to ban sites
for duplicate content : dup content is not good...but it's not
really bad too. What Google want is to produce relevant search
results. How do you want to be seen as an expert in your field,
from the SE point of view and Visitors point of view, if no one
publishes your articles? How will Google estimate the popularity
of a site without backlinks. Articles are a way to do that, and
one of the most important in the Adsense business models.
What if there was just 1 site (could be 10) in each topic : no
advertisement. Google needs a lot of sites, with a lot of
traffic to catch advertisers and motivate publishers.
Nevertheless, search engines and visitors are expecting high
quality as their Internet experience grow, and this trend is not
seriously dealt by marketers (even John Reese said that crappy
sites are more converting that good ones!).
Finally, if we mix these issues and these trends, we see that
Search Engine will select the sites that really enhance the
visitor's experience. Those with an added value : this added
value can be build and should be thought and build from the
beginning of an Adsense project :
- Market selection : niche selection based on SE
researches, competitors (yes, for Adsense, competition brings
adverstiser and high bid...), typical consumer behaviour (is
this a market where people are looking for free information, are
zapping, are they looking for general, specific...), mulitple
sources for the content.
- Business model selection : we're talking about Adsense,
but in fact, if you jut target Adsense, you loose a lot of your
market potential. Some visitors are just looking for free
information, some are looking for specific information, some are
looking for products / services / ezines...Your site should
include some of these business models (then you have to test to
better fine tune your model) : contextual advertisement with
Adsense, Affiliate with Clickbank, Amazon, CJ, Linkshare...,
Ezine (add a subscription form offering a free report, and you
will be amazed by the return, and by the cash potential), or
your own product!
- Keyword selection : this is critical and a key success
factor. Those keywords have to be high paying keywords (not
necesseraly the highes bid on the net). You won't get them with
the free tools that will make a poor mix between keywords /
phrases (Overture give "credit card visa" when we look for
Credit Card keyword : for this keyword advertiser pay $6 ; BUT
for "visa credit card" advertisers pay $20...this exercise must
be done with every keyword). You have to choose 100 to 300 topic
related keywords to cover a part of the market. These keywords
should be also lateral keyword... This is the most important
task, and the worst in all the pre made Adsense sites you can
buy in packages : they are all made with Overture keywords
(because it's free and you can have 100's of them)
- Content selection : can you fill your site with
articles, news from different sources ; can you write your own
articles, can you add somePLR articles. This is less critical if
your site is well designed
- Site creation : this is where you can use automation
tools! But then again, you have to design / use a good template
to enjoy your visitors
- SEO : you may have the right keywords, with the right
content, you have to be sure that your keywords will be found by
SE where they want them to be (headers, beginning of the page,
bold, within H tags, within alt images, closing of the page,
within the body with a given density : 3 to 10%)
- Promotion : you have designed and build the perfect
Adsense site but you don't have any traffic, so no $. This is
also the weak point of Adsense packages (if you can find another
webmaster willing to link to your newly bought 150 Adsense
sites, let me know, I will interview him). Build some links with
related sites, write some articles to promote your sites, start
a blog, submit it to Directories (not SE), make some PPC (miva,
overture) to play the arbitrage level...
So, do you Adsense?