Archive for the 'Ad networks' Category

Success with AdWords

I’ve been building AdSense sites for years now, but have never done much from the other side, in other words participating in the AdWords programme as an advertiser. But I’ve been getting into this over the last few days to promote a product on a client site.

As pretty much of a noob at this side of things, it appears to me to all hinge on the so-called Quality Score, which is basically a measure of the relevance of your landing page to the keyword you’re targeting. The higher your score for the keyword, the less you’re liable to pay for a good ad placement and subsequent click than an equivalent ad with a lower score. This is obviously desirable as your advertising budget then stretches further and you end up achieving a higher return on investment.

Quality Score

The obvious question, then, is how to increase your quality score. Seems it’s doing the same kind of stuff that makes you successful in organic search: choosing good keywords, paying attention to on-page and off-page optimisation, and even targetting your ads very specifically at the keyword you’re bidding for.

For example, say the target keyword is Bible stories for children, you should:

  • use the keyword in the page, if possible in the title, meta description, heading tags, page body, alt tags, etc
  • get some links pointing to the page with the keyword as anchor text, and
  • use the keyword within the AdWords ad itself

I’m sure there are other finer points / black arts to be considered, but these appear to be the most obvious factors for now. Feel free to comment below if you think I’ve overlooked anything.

PerformancingAds Pecking Order

Earn money with PerformancingAdsA common complaint about PerformancingAds is that the site navigation is very confusing, and the documentation isn’t much good either. The end result is that it’s quite hard to tell what the best way is to set up and manage your ads. So I thought I’d run through what I know in the hope that it’ll help a fellow blogger (and if I’ve got it all wrong, you all can correct me!).

Apart from paid advertisements, there are several other ways in which ads can be displayed on your site, which is kind of nice as it gives you the option of promoting your own or affiliate products in empty slots, or even on other sites in the network. But the trade-off is increased complexity, which is compounded by the confusing manner in which the PerformancingAds site is laid out.
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No thank you, I don’t need penis enlargement

PerformancingAdsOne of my hosting clients was recently shocked to discover an advertisement for penis enlargement on her blog (I won’t show it to you, because I don’t want to give them any more exposure)! Considering most of her readers are women, she didn’t think it an appropriate use of her screen real-estate (’nuff said). The offensive ad was being displayed in one of the 125×125 blocks in her sidebar (similar to the blocks in my own sidebar), which is governed by an ad network called PerformancingAds. But before you jump to any conclusions, read on…
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