Monetize Pro

Bigger is better, right?  Except when something’s too big, people view it as obnoxious, and the object in question gets shunned.  So if you’re waffling between using medium and large AdSense rectangles, some new info supplied by Google may help straighten things out.

A post on the Inside AdSense blog states, “We took this question to our Optimization Team, who gave us insight into the strengths of each ad format.”  Use these tips as a guide, although of course, you should test stuff out on your site to make sure the general rule holds true.

Anyway, the post stated, “The 300×250 medium rectangle is a widely supported format that advertisers often use when designing their branding and rich media campaigns. Using this ad format and opting in to both text and image ads may generate more placement targeting opportunities, which will help drive up competition for your ad space and should lead to higher earnings over time.”

It also noted, “The 336×280 large rectangle tends to have a higher clickthrough rate due to its larger size.  It often performs well on text-heavy pages where it’s integrated into the content.”

Good luck using this info to your advantage.

Today’s post won’t exactly look at the traditional ways in which people earn money online - you won’t find the Google gospel off the company’s latest blog post or anything of that sort.  Instead, this is the tale of how a guy who suffered through a bad vacation made about $892 off a blog.

Monetization is monetization, eh?  And Andrew Sharman used a blog, a Twitter account, and little else besides word of mouth to get a fair amount of both cash and attention.

Richard Savill wrote, “Mr Sharman told . . . how he and his girlfriend Taryn Capewell, 26, were misled when they booked their ‘first proper holiday together’ at a Thomson store in Leicester. . . .  But when they reached Tunisia they said they found beer was 3 a pint, twice the price quoted by Thomson; the Sahara was eight hours’ drive away; there was no scuba diving and their room had had two single beds instead of the requested double.”

So Sharman, instead of (or at least in addition to) wacking himself for not doing his own research, wrote a letter to the Thomson travel agency.  After he didn’t receive a response, he blogged about everything and promoted the blog on Twitter.  Before long, he then found that his blog, and not the Thomson site, ranked high for several “Thomson Tunisia”-related searches.

So Sharman relayed that fact to Thomson, at which point the company gave him a refund covering about two-thirds of the price of his vacation.

If a fool and his money are soon parted, this at least goes to show that blogs and Twitter have the power to mostly reunite them.

Google has upgraded AdSense in yet another important couple of ways this week.  After all, if something’s bad, you don’t want to deal with it for half of a workday, right?  And it’s bad regardless of how much other stuff you’ve previously deemed bad.  So have a gander at improvements to the Competitive Ad Filter.

First, a post on the Inside AdSense blog acknowledged, “In the past, the Competitive Ad Filter sometimes took up to several hours to block URLs you’d entered.”

It then continued, “Knowing you’ve wanted a faster filtering system, we’re excited to let you know that URLs added to your Competitive Ad Filter are now usually blocked within 30 minutes.  We hope that this will help you quickly make changes to maintain a positive user experience on your sites.”

The post also stated, “At the same time, a growing number of you have let us know that you’re running out of space in your Competitive Ad Filter.  Now, you can add up to 500 sites to your filter list, more than double the previous limit.”

Try not to shoot yourself in the figurative foot going wild with these upgrades; remember that advertisements contribute to your bank account.

Otherwise, well, have fun eliminating bad stuff with greater efficiency.

Google’s Keyword Tool seems like a potentially magical thing - after all, what better source of keyword ideas than the search giant through which 60+ percent of all queries are processed?  But it may be best if you don’t entirely bet your site’s success on the tool’s abilities.

Earlier today, Barry Schwartz asked his readers a simple question: “Do You Trust Google’s Keyword Tool?”  Exactly 169 people have responded so far, so the results are (although we won’t get into the exact mathematics of the statistical significance) quite noteworthy.

And as for how they responded, 22 percent of people said that, yes, they do trust Google’s Keyword Tool.  Which isn’t exactly overwhelming.  On the other hand, just 11 percent of folks said they didn’t trust the tool.

A full 64 percent of people landed somewhere in the middle with the response “Not Fully.”  Whether that sounds like a vote of confidence or not may depend on whether you tend to see glasses as half full or half empty.

So use the Keyword Tool as a go-to idea generator, perhaps . . . just don’t accept every term it spits out simply because the Google logo is visible on the same page.

A repair company in the U.S. is turning its head to the skies and taking direction from Mother Nature as to where, and when, it should place its search ads.

Bad weather is good news for American Residential Services (ARS). The firm specializes in the repair of air-conditioning, heating units and plumbing systems across the U.S., often called out to towns that have experienced disasters on a major scale.

When ARS turned to TMP Directional Marketing for help with their search marketing strategy, the agency turned they eyes skywards - literally. By analyzing keywords, they made the connection between increases in keyword use and incidents of meteorological mayhem such as torrential flooding, ice storms, and heat waves.

“As we were ramping up the campaign and doing keyword expansions, we started to notice that often times if there was unseasonably cold weather in certain areas or flooding, there was an increase in traffic,” said Liz Serafin, senior director for SEM at TMP Directional Marketing, via ClickZ. “And in certain markets, depending on the duration of the triggers, they were running out of budget faster. So we took a step back and tried to get a little more strategic.”

Using Google alerts and a team of coordinators who kept tabs on meteorological sites such as Weather.com, the TMP Directional Marketing was able to divert ARS’ budget to areas that were far more likely to see an increase in need for their repair services.

Without the need for increased spending or exceeding cost per lead expectations, ARS increased leads nationally by 57%.

“For ARS, local search is growing significantly because you have the flexibility to define your audience, to define your geography and to move very quickly in the interactive environment — whether that is paid search, natural search or Internet Yellow Pages,” said Elizabeth Young, executive director of marketing and customer satisfaction at ARS.

Some years ago, it was enough to get many inbound links to get high rankings on Google. It didn’t matter from where these links came as long as there were many links that pointed to your website.

As Google and other search engines continually improve the way they rank web pages, getting the right links is crucial if you want to be listed on the first search result page.

Unnatural links can be bad for your Google rankings

Google is able to detect unnatural linking patterns. That is why the following type of links don’t work:

Link farms and automated linking systems

Some online services promise hundreds of links in a short time with no work involved. All you have to do is to put some code on your website or to join a system that will help you to get links from other sites quickly and easily.

These automated linking systems don’t work and Google can detect them. Actually, Google thinks that you’re spamming if you participate in such a system and they might penalize your website by lowering its position in the search results.

Paid links

Google’s anti-spam guru Matt Cutts has made clear that Google considers paid links spam. If you don’t want to lose your rankings on Google, you should be very careful when buying links.

Natural links have a positive effect on your Google rankings

Natural links are links that make sense to your website visitors. For example, if you have a website about Linux, a totally unrelated link to a car parts website would look strange.

100 percent natural

The links that point to your website should be from related websites and from sources that would “naturally” link to you, i.e. Internet directories, social bookmarking services, blogs, etc. The more related websites link to your site, the higher your website will rank on Google’s result pages.

How to get the best links to your website

There are a few things that you can do to get as many good links as possible to your website.

1. Create a linkworthy website

If your website is only a collection of affiliate links then you cannot expect that other webmasters will link to your site. Create a website with good content. You might also consider creating web pages whose sole purpose is to get inbound links. This could be “How to” articles, top 10 lists or even a controversial statement.

The more interesting your web pages are, the easier it is to get links from other websites.

2. Contact related websites and blogs

Contact related websites and point them to the interesting content on your site. Do you have an article on your website that solves a specific problem?

Contact websites that also deal with that topic or bloggers who have written about that topic and tell them about your article. Chances are that these websites will link to your site. Our link builder can help you to find and contact related websites and blogs.

3. Submit your website to related Internet directories

Internet directories are an easy way to get inbound links. However, only submit your website to Internet directories that are relevant to your website and only submit your website to the right category.

A link from the right directory and the right category to your website can have a positive impact on your Google rankings. The semi-automatic submitter can help you to submit your website to relevant directories.

4. Make it easy to add your website to social bookmark services

Add a bookmark link to your website so that it is easy for your website visitors to bookmark your site.

5. Get links to different pages of your website and vary your link texts

Most links go to the home page of a website. It usually helps to get direct links to the web page that you want to promote on search engines. The websites that link to your website should use different but related texts to link to your site. If all web pages use exactly the same text to link to your site, this will look unnatural.

Getting the right kind of backlinks is very important if you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines.