12. Response Tracking: Your Hidden Pot 0f AdSense GoId!
In the last chapter, we talked about content. Google won’t let you ask visitors to click on your ads, or use other deceptive ways to make them click. But good content is an endorsement in itself. Some of its charm rubs off on the ads, making the ads more believable — and interesting!
If you have a website with impartial product reviews, for instance, visitors are more likely to click the ads to learn more about a product, check out the latest prices or order online.
lt’s crucial to create content that’s genuinely interesting. But your work doesn’t stop there.
After setting up your AdSense Account, the first thing you want to do is play with your ad formats and placement to make the ads blend in. That’s where the bulk of the “easy-money” is hiding.
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But once you’ve got that right, what next? You start tweaking the text and making ail sorts of other changes to improve your CTR.
But every time you make any sort of change to your ads, you must track the resuits.
Consider this exam pie:
Joe Drinker has a great website about “How to make Beer at Home”. lt’s doing well on AdSense, but not well enough. His week’s stats look something like this:
Joe is pretty happy with his CTR but wonders if he can raise his CPM and in the process, lift his earnings. So he looks up high-priced keywords related to his subject, and works the term “beer cans” into his content.
A few days later he logs into the stats on his AdSense account and finds that that change has actually HURT his income:
Joe has not only disappointed a lot of collectors who come looking for beer cans — his site contains lots of keywords but little in the way of good content
— he has also discouraged visits from people who want to make beer at home.
His search ranking has gone down, making his website harder for people to
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Date Page
Imressions -
Clicks Page CTR Page eCPM
Your
earnin
3/2/07
40930 -
1516
3.7%
5.62
229.92
3/3/07
40358
1574
3.9%
6.59
265.99
3/4/07
38962
1517
3.9%
6.11
238.01
3/5/07
33563 -
1381
4.1%
6.38
214.21
3/6/07
32978 -
1325
4.0%
6.76
223.81
3/7/07
28207 -
1294
4.6%
7.52
212.01
3/8/07
27322
1251
4.6%
7.47
204.20
Date Page Clicks
Im[ressions
Page CTR Page eCPM Your earninL.
3/9/07
32744
985
3.0%
4.21
137.95
3/10/07
32286
1023
3.2%
4.94
159.59
3/11/07
30954
986
3.2%
4.59
142.08
3/12/07
26850
898
3.3%
4.78
128.52
3/13/07
26382
861
3.3%
5.08
134.28
3/14/07
22566
841
3.7%
5.63
127.20
3/15/07
21858
813
3.7%
5.60
122.52
find him and Iowering his impressions. It’s also hurt his earnings per click as the people who visit the site leave faster. What’s worse is that he’s also risked his AdSense standing!
Now, does that make it a bad idea to optimize your website for AdSense?
Not at ail. It is actually a good idea, if you do it right. And by that I mean... No Shortcuts!
There is a simple, step-by-step process to optimize your website for highpaying search terms. And this method is almost fool-proof! So why isn’t everybody doing this?
Simply because very few web publishers know how to use Tracking to their advantage.
Tracking will not only help you minimize your mistakes, it will also reveal hidden pockets of money that you would have neyer found otherwise.
Read on to find out how YOU can use Tracking to sky-rocket your CTRs and increase revenues per-click.
TI P: Click here to learn about FREE tools to optimize your website for high-paying search terms.
12.1 How To Track With Channels
Google has its own FREE tracking feature called “Channels”. Channels remind me of spy movies, where a smart chip is planted in the arm of a super sleuth, making it easier to track his activities or whereabouts.
AdSense now hands you 200 such chips. Use them to track ads on specific domain names or to group ads according to specific ad formats, keywords, their location on the page etc. You can use any other factor that might impact their effectiveness, based on the type ofwebsite you have.
Channel those clicks!
Google tells you many things about each Channel, such as the ad impressions, click-throughs and earnings data.
You can use the channel reports to find out which channels are making you the most money — and how to increase your earnings for other channels.
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12.2 How To Create A URLChanneI
Googie lets you create two kind of channeis: URL channeis and custom channeis.
With URL channels you can track clicks across your site’s pages. You can do this by entering four different kinds 0f URL in the “create new channel” box. Each type of channel gives you information of different accuracy:
example.com tracks ail the pages in your site and gives a generai picture of what your site is doing;
subdomain.example.com tracks ail the pages in one particular subdomain;
subdomain.example.com/ widgets tracks ail the pages in a specific directory;
and subdomain.example.com/ page.html tracks the clicks on one specific page.
That’s a huge range of choices, from an overview of a site that might have hundreds of pages through groups of pages that concern particular subjects to the clicks you’re getting on just one page.
So if you had three sites, one about custom cars, one about custom bikes and one about speedboats, the first thing you’d do is create a generai channel for each site.
You should aiways create a channel for each one of your sites.
That wiii let you see not just how much money you’re making overail, but how much money each site is making. You’re not going to get too far without that sort of information!
Now, lets say that the custom car site had tabs for American cars, European cars, Japanese cars and ciassic cars. Each tab is a subdomain and you couid create a channel for each subdomain too. Now you couid see which topic is making the most money.
And if you discussed one car on each page, you couid aiso create channeis for the individuai pages and see which cars are the most popular and deliver the highest earning clicks.
Sounds good, right?
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And it’s now very easy to do.
Back in the bad old days, Google required you to manually change AdSense tags for each ad block you wanted to track. Many AdSense partners complained about these pesky old channels until Google Iaunched the URL Channels to make life easier.
Now ail you have to do is sign in and click the tab marked “AdSense Setup” followed by the “Channels” link.
G_____
O ugie [ SearchAdSense HeIp j
Repoits MyAccount
1 ________
Channels
Define reporting channels ta track and improve your ad performance
What are Channels? I Guide ta Using Channels I Common Questions
AdSense for Content AdSense for Search Referrals
Custom channels I URL channels
Actions * Add new custom chnneIs [ Find Channels j
D Name
fl Homepage Banner
Homepage Leaderboard
Homepage Skyscraper
Fig. 12.1 Spot the Channels
And the next step is to use the link marked “URL Channels” and enter the
URLs you want to track.
That’s it! You dont have to do anything else. Google will start tracking the
URLs you’ve added automatically.
So apart from creating URL Channels for each of your sites, which of the other URL Channels should you create?
As far as 1m concerned, you can’t have toc much information. Major areas should certainly be covered and if you can go as far as tracking each page without going over the 200 channel limit, 50 much the better. lt’s certainly worth tracking a few individual pages to make sure that the revenues are spread out across different parts of the site.
If you find that one page is making lots of money and another is making none, you’ll want to know the reason why.
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ompite M Filter;0]
12.3 How To Create A Custom Channel
The URL Channels are especially useful if you have several websites, and have a general idea of the formats, colors, alignment etc. that works best for you.
Remember though, you stili need the original, Custom Channels if you want to track ads across different domain names, based on ad sizes, formats, colors etc.
For instance, if I want to track left-aligned ads across ail my websites (sites with different domain names), I need to group them together into a single channel and manually change the channel code for each page.
First, I name the new channel:
Fig. 12.2 Here cornes a new channel...
Then I choose the Ad Type, Layout and Color of the ads I want to track:
Finally, it’s simply a matter cf allocating an alternate URL if I don’t want public service ads, selecting the channel and copying and pasting the code onto each of the pages that contain these kinds of ad.
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Manage Custom Channels
Use this section to create custom channels or to deactivate reactivate. or rename existing channels. Then. select the appropriate channel from the Ad Iayout code page before copying and pasting the AdSense code to your site
Ieftaligned [ Createnewchannei
Select: Ail, Active, Inactive, None I Aivate J [ Deactiv] [ Remove J
Active Custom Channets:
Inactive Custom Channe$s:
AdType
Choose the ad unit type you would like to display on your page
0 M unit Use my default account settirlg_‘
(Default: text and image ads Change)
O Link unit [4linksperhnkunit
Learn more about image ads.
Learn more about Iink units
Ad Layout
Choose the ad format you would like ta display on your page View samples
F280 Large Rectangle
Color palettes opton&
Select a color palette for your ads. HoId down the Control or Command key to select multiple palettes that wilI rotate randomly an your web page Learn more
Mother Earth Example
Black and Blue
Fresh Mint Unked Titie
,dvrtier s text here
Cul Grass wvw.advertiser-ud.com
RaspberrySmoothie
Vanilla Cram
Green Taffy
Its a Girl1
Manaqe color palettes
Fig. 12.3 Defining the ads to track in my new channel.
0f course, I would then have to repeat the process if I wanted to track ads of
a particular color or size.
That’s very different to the process you use to create a URL Channel.
URL Channels are tracked automatically without the need for you to paste code. With Custom Channels, you’re going to have to go back to your own site, add the code in the appropriate pages and upload the changes to your server.
While that’s a bit of a headache, it’s a headache worth having.
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(,hannel optianal
Select the channel for this group of pages Learn more
r leftaligned
Manage channels.
j_Framed pages optional
Select this option if your page uses frames Learn more.
Li Ad will be piaced on a framed page
Your AdSense code
Click anywhere in this box to select ail code.
You may copy-and-paste the coie into any web page that complies with our program policies.