Web Marketing Strategy Update

Good thread over at Webmasterworld to help publishers get the most from Adsense. I’ve pasted the initial post below, but visit the site for more discussion and plenty of links to more information.

Low CTR: Blend, put ads to heatzone, test colors, decrease # of ad units

Low EPC: Block MFA, decrease # of ad units, improve content topics, lookup SmartPricing

Earnings High Fluctuation: Try removing ads from low performance pages

Low Earnings: Build more content, get more visitors, see Low EPC, test AdLinks, test Referrals

Bad Targeting: Find & zap the offending keywords in your pages, lookup section targeting

Low # of Visitors: Lookup SEO

Sudden surge in Traffic: Study stats, don’t panic it’s good news

Sudden surge in Clicks: Study stats, don’t panic but inform Google if CTR is to the roof and all from few IPs

Clicked my own AD: Just don’t do it again, if repeated inform Google

Can’t Login: Check connection, wait 1 hour see if its reported already on WW, contact support

Low sense of security: Join the club, diversify with other networks, use alternate ads

The post Preventing leaky filters on the Adsense blog brought something to my attention about the effect of using Competitive Ad Filters that I hadn’t considered.

It may be just because I don’t use the feature myself, but I’m betting more than a few users are unaware that filtering out ads from being displayed on their site can potentially reduce their Adsense income:

Tip 2: Don’t believe the myth about blocking ‘low-paying advertisers’

Our auction system automatically selects the best performing ads for each page to help you earn the most possible money. This is especially true with our new expanded text ads. By filtering ads you think are low paying, you could actually be cutting out the most optimized ads and decreasing your revenue potential. Each ad that is filtered is one less bid in the auction, lowering the price for the winning ad on your site. You benefit most when there is a larger pool of advertisers competing for a place on your site. Additionally, when we calculate the auction, we take ad clickthrough rates (CTR) into account - an ad with a $0.25 cost-per-click (CPC) with a 5% CTR is more valuable than an ad with a $1.00 CPC but a 0.1% CTR.