Small Buisness Web Sites

Every day I learn a little bit more about the online advertising business. Today was one of those days were I attended a Google Adsense in your city Optimize Your Site forum sponsored by who else, Google. This was specifically sponsored by the Adsense team and not the search team. Over the years many of us have focused on SEO or search engine optimization. I really did not think about the major differences. Optimize your site from a google Adsense perspective as well as Google Search perspective. My definition of the difference between these two activities can be defined as follows:

SEO – are specific steps that a web owner takes to try to make sure that his or her site will rank well in the search engine results delivered to people who are searching for something. If you rank well then you might end up on the top page of the search results and someone might visit your web page, particularly if you are in the top 3 of 10 or so results that are on the first page.

Optimize Your Site – Adsense Optimization

is something totally different. This is the process of making sure that your advertising on your web page is noticed by your users, it is relevant and that you maximize your click rate once a user ends up on your site. It has nothing to do with getting them to come to your site. It has everything to do with ensuring that the content of the ads relate to what the user is looking for when they arrive on your site.

We are going to spend a lot of time talking about what we learned from this forum so that we can share this information with readers. If you have a web site and have put Adsense ad’s on it you will want to read this. If you are thinking about putting Google Adsense on your web site you will want to read this, otherwise don’t waste your time.

NOTE: This information does not in any way replace what Google has on its site and it does not in any way try to circumvent what Google is doing.

Here is a summary of what we learned at this seminar in no particular order:

Optimize Your Site

Opinions Expressed by other publishers

• The location of you host can affect the source of your traffic e.g. host in the USA may decrease traffic for a Canadian web site
• Use Meta tags with the address of your business included
• Place the address of your business at the top or in the footer

Adsense Information

• Set up search on your site to search your site and not the Internet
• Adsense crawler looks at keywords, word frequency, font size, and link structure
• Content above the fold is a higher priority than content below the fold
• Pictures and image ads impact the amount of content above the fold and hence the type of ad that is served
• Ad’s should be above the fold
• Advertisements should be near navigational aids on your site
• Ad’s should be easily distinguished from your content
• Some color blending is acceptable
• If you receive an email from Google telling you that you have a policy infraction on your site, you have 3 days to fix it and then they will check back to confirm that it is fixed.
• There is a policy team to provide support in a situation that is not clear
• Text/image ad’s are the most profitable as are
• 160*600; 728*90; 300*250; and 468*60
• Ad’s are displayed based on user surfing history. If you have been surfing sites on bananas and then switch to a site on apples, you will probably still see ad’s for bananas on the apple site.
• Use Google analytics to decide which pages to optimize, especially with hard coded pages.
• Content is king, always make sure your users experience great content
• Use Google Chrome – open an incognito page to see how a fresh user will see your page; shows the performance of your ad’’s

Mobile

• By 2015 there will be more mobile users than desktop users
• 50% increase in mobile-focused advertising this year
• Expect 30% of traffic to be from mobile
• Recommended ad size is 320*50 and 300* 250
• Note that the iPhone has an option to auto-remove all advertising
• Use gomo.com to test your site

Double click for Small business

• Allows publishers to deliver the highest paying ad regardless of whether it is served from Google or a competing network
• First 90 million impressions per month are free
• Schedule ads by location, time of day, start and end dates etc
• Assists in reporting requirements of 3^rd party advertisers
• Can target down to postal code or zip code
• This is really for a publisher who has Google Adsense, plus private advertising business they wish to place on their site and manage

I was a bit disappointed with the optimizing section of this session. We each had ten minutes and it felt rushed. However, we did get some good points such as ad sizing, color, positioning, search, etc.

Overall I thought it was time well spent. However, the real advantage will depend on the results of the changes that I plan to make and if there is any impact on the revenue I earn from my sites. Will let you know in a few months.

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