astaga.com lifestyle on the net | Astaga-com-lifestyle-on-the-net | Asbak Putih Blog's

astaga.com lifestyle on the net | Astaga-com-lifestyle-on-the-net | Asbak Putih Blog's

Astaga.com lifestyle on the net | Asbak Putih Blog's

Astaga.com lifestyle on the net | Asbak Putih Blog's

What’s your favorite SEO “trick” ?

Was talking to a fellow blogger last day and this topic came up.

Bloggers and SEO – Does it really help ?

“Being a blogger, what are the things that I can do as a quick SEO tweak ? I don’t want to go digging the code and calculating the density and all that..that’s kinda.. for you geeks”

That’s a nice question I guess. I mean…yea we all know the tips…tricks and all that..but how many bloggers do actually implement them ? How many of you try the basic tweaks at least..hmm that would be interesting to know.

What SEO tweak have you done on your blog ?

What do you think is the best SEO tweak for bloggers ?

I’m all ears.

Funny Google “Mistakes” Video

I stumbled across this video on YouTube, featuring several Google “Mistakes” put to the classic Ludacris ballad “Money Maker”. It’s fun to watch, but not exactly accurate. Now I will break down exactly what these “mistakes” are.

1. Worst Band in the World search results bring up the Christian rock band Creed. This is attributed to the common SEO tactic “GoogleBombing” in which lots of incoming links are marked with the specific keyphrase in the anchor text. While I find it to be funny (and oh so very true), it isn’t a “mistake” at all. Check the Wikipedia entry for more GoogleBombs.

2. The Answer to Life The Universe and Everything brings up the Google Calculator answer as 42. This is an intentional reference to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Read more in the Wikipedia entry. Those Google folk sure do have a quirky sense of humor.

3. Heidi Klum’s Butt and Boobs St New York brings up a map of New York City with an apparent location of Heidi Klum’s special parts. The determining factor is the “St” and “New York”, which returns the result. The link to Google Maps doesn’t display an exact location of the search nor does it return a sexy photo of Heidi Klum in a bikini. (Sorry!) Rather, it returns locations that match some of the words in the search string. This technology will be tweaked with time. No rational human being would ever search for this, but apparently somebody stumbled across it by accident. I wouldn’t exactly call this Google’s mistake, but rather a mistake by the searcher.

4. French Military Victories search string and clicking the “I’m Feeling Lucky!” button returns an apparent “mistake” results page that shows no results and the “Did you mean ‘French Military Defeats?’” query correction. At first it appears Google is hatin’ on the French’s impressive military track record by deleting all results for their victories. However, that is far from the case. The “I’m Feeling Lucky!” button automatically returns the very first page in the results, which so happens to be a “fake” SERPs page hosted on the popular entertainment website Albino Blacksheep. While comical for all of us non-Frenchies, it’s definitely not a Google “mistake!”

5. Waffles brings up the homepage for Democrat Senator and former Presidential candidate John Kerry. This is simply Googlebombing in the political realm.

6. Miserable Failure plus the “I’m Feeling Lucky!” button takes you to the White House homepage of President George W. Bush. This is perhaps the first major Googlebomb to grab the attention of the media. And that’s simply all it is, political Googlebombing at it’s finest!

7. Elgoog plus the “I’m Feeling Lucky!” button takes you to the “Google Mirror Mirror” hosted at what appears to be a Belgian webhost at www.rb-hosting.de. Once again, just another clever trick down by somebody else, not a Google “mistake.”

So there you have it, all the Google “mistakes” debunked! All hail the Mighty G!

Adsense Alternatives When Google Bans Your Account

Google recently disabled the Adsense account of John Q. Public for generating invalid or fraudulent clicks.

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers. [from adsense-adclicks@google.com]

His subsequent appeals to Adsense Support were also turned down.

John Q. Public is now looking for alternate revenue streams to monetize his blog and sends us the following questions:

Q 1: Can I get back my Adsense Account ?

There are few cases when previously banned Adsense publishers managed to reinstate their Google account successfully with Google only deducting some amount related to invalid clicks.

Thank you for clarifying your situation. We have reviewed your circumstances and have reinstated your account, effective immediately. Based on the findings of our investigation, we have deducted $30.82 from your account. [from adsense-adclicks-appeal@google.com]

While it is not a bad idea to follow your case with Google, not everyone may be so lucky as Stas or Jason. Generally, the chances of resurrecting your Adsense account are less.

Q 2: If the answer is No, then what's best alternate for adsense.

While Adsense still rules in terms of Ad inventory, there are tons of other advertising programs that can you consider for your blog depending on your niche and demographics. Here are some popular alternatives:

» Yahoo YPN - If you are located in the US, this is probably the best alternative to Adsense. Yahoo Panama is launching on February 5^th.

» FeedBurner Ads - Feedburner is probably performing quite very well for a lot of publishers. The ads are CPM in nature and they have decent reporting engine.

» Text Link Ads, Adbrite - You can sell text links on your blog pages using any of these programs. They also let you add advertising in your RSS feeds.

» Kontera, IntelliTXT - These are inline contextual advertising programs that double-underline the keywords. Some users may however find this annyoying since the ad appears in a pop-up window.

» Chitika, Amazon Affiliates - If you are writing a product blog, Chitika may result in good conversion rates - people read the product review on your website and then proceed to these sites for buying the links. Amazon is good for blog that enjoy a fan following and readers buy what you recommend.

Other popular advertising options include Tribal Fusion, Adify, Pheedo and BlogAds depending on your site traffic. [Picture from Flickr]

Q 3: Does Google block the account or the website itself ? Actually I was planning to sell my blog so can the new owner use his own Adsense Account to insert ads in my blog ?

Google generally bans the Adsense account, not the website showing the Google ads. It is however recommended that the "prospective buyer" checks this with Google Adsense Support himself before closing the deal with you. It is very likely that Google will permit him to show ads on your site using his own Adsense account.

Important: Just take care that you don't open another Adsense account with Google using different credentials (like an abbreviated name or a different address) - Google is very likely to discover this activity and they'll will probably ban you again. [Name changed to protect identity]

Google Zero Tolerance Policy Against Adsense Click Fraud

Forbes - Some critics have also accused Google of unfairly banning innocent publishers accused of click fraud. Does that happen?

Google - We do take it very seriously. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to click fraud from publishers.

But when it comes to accounts that have been wrongly terminated or sabotaged, we’re always monitoring that too, and it generally comes to a very low number. We never hear back from the vast majority of publishers terminated. When publishers say they weren’t engaged in click fraud, we have an appeals process.

Tips to Increase Google AdSense Earnings

a. Strictly follow the rules mentioned in Adsense policies. You will always earn more revenue from Adsense by playing it clean.

b. Never modify the Google Adsense HTML code. If have trouble embedding AdSense code in your WordPress or Blogger template, take help of the AdSense support forums or send an email to your AdSense account manager.

c. Never ask your friends or visitors to click on your Google ads. Google takes click fraud very seriously. Do not include incentives of any kind on your site for users to click on your ads. Don't label Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements.".

d. Don't click on your own ads - Google is much smarter than you think and can discover invalid clicks through IP addresses, site navigation patterns, etc. If you working on a new design for your site, avoid reloading your pages (with AdSense) excessively. You can turn off AdSense temporarily and avoid invalid CPM impressions. Or you can use the unofficial Google Adsense Sandbox Tool that is accessible from Firefox, IE and other browsers to see what kind of Google ads will be served based on content (website address URL) or keywords.

e. Don't place ads in pop-up windows, error pages or even empty pages. Update: With the new AdSense policy change, you can probably place ads on 404 pages. Check with the AdSense support team.

f. Don't start a "adsense asbestos" or "home equity loan rates" website merely to make money from accidental clicks. You will never make money out these Made for Adsense websites. Instead, write on topics what you are passionate about. Don't waste your money on high-paying adsense keywords lists. Stay away from AdSense Adwords arbitrage.

g. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content.

h. For long articles, CTR will improve if you place ads somewhere in middle of the content or just where the article ends - when visitors are done reading the article, they may be looking for related resources.

i. Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options and the payout is often higher. If you still want to display image ads (for CPM), consider ad formats like the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper as they support also support rich multimedia and the new gadget ads.

j. Google Ads with no background color and no borders will always perform better. Make the border color and background color same as your page background color.

k. Always put ads above the main fold. Make sure that the ad unit with the highest clickthrough rate is the first instance of the ad code that appears in your HTML source. Since the first ad unit is always filled before the rest, you want to make sure that ad unit is located in the best placement on your page.

l. Try setting the ad link URL color to a lighter shade. If your text is black, you may make the adlink as light gray or something like #666.

m. Go Wide - The large rectangle (336x280) is the best paying Adsense format especially for text ads. Try using the 336x280 large rectangle, 300x250 medium rectangle, or 160x600 wide skyscraper.

n. Don't places images next to Google ads as that will invite a permanent ban to your AdSense account.

o. Blend AdLinks with other navigation links or place horizontal adlinks at the top of your webpage. AdSense publishers are permitted to click on link unit topics on their web pages, provided that they do not click on any Google ads on the resulting page.

p. You should try adding a unit near the comments senction of your blog. See more AdSense tweaks.

q. You can put upto 3 adsense units on a page. Try putting a large skyscraper on the right navigation sidebar of your website. That area is close to the browser scrollbar. You can also add 2 AdSense for search boxes and 3 adlink units.

r. The first few lines of your content are an important factor for determining what Ads are served on your webpage. That's the right place to put keywords in bold (strong or &ltb> tags) or header tags (h1, h2, etc).

s. Always select the setting to open Google Adsense search box results in a new browser window, so you won't lose your visitors. Click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox and this add target="google_window" to your form tag.

t. Maximum people think the search box is on the top right corner. So you know where to put it.

u. Always syndicate full text RSS feeds and then monetize your feeds with a 468x60 ad in RSS feeds.

v. Monitor the AdSense performance of individual web pages with Google Analytics

w. For low CTR pages, try changing titles or adding more relevant content to get better focused ads. Alse see: Get relevant Google Ads

x. Block low paying advertisers with Filters. Why to loose a visitor for an ad that will only pay you a cent. Use Overture or Google Adwords Keywords tool to discover keywords that are less popular with advertisers.

y. Learn how to implement AdSense Revenue sharing if you run a site with multiple authors and need to pay your writers based on advertising revenue generated from their articles.

z. Experiment with color schemes and layouts using split testing. You are the best judge when it comes to choosing ad formats for your own website.

Even Google doesn't offer the best advise always. For instance, in the visual heat map, Google suggests that webmasters are best served by positioning ads on the upper left-hand side of a Web page but if you go to any search page on Google, the ads the mostly in the right.

Bonus Tip: Use the AdSense Preview tool to determine what ad campaigns are currently targeted for your site in different geographic regions of the world.

Enter any keywords or a website address (URL) and choose a geographic location of the visitors to see all the related related Google Ads.