Made Moon Blog

I took a look at a new Website recently in response to a request for a site review on one of my favorite forums. And, while the appearance was pleasing, there wasn’t really much there. Too often, new folks to the Internet marketing world make this crucial mistake. They think that if they build a stay at home job website, customers will automaically show up and start buying stuff. When those customers don’t materialize, the site owner often gives up and quits.

In order for any stay at home jobsite to attract quality visitors, there are some things that need to be done. In this article, I will give you a small list of objectives, along with brief hints on how to go about meeting them. If you follow through, your site will advance in the search engine rankings, and before you know it the visitors will be showing up faster than you can count them.

Search Engines Love Content

Involve yourself in an ongoing process of collecting and/or producing articles for inclusion on your site. There are many sources of articles on the Internet. Some of them charge a small fee, while others are free. Look for articles that are relevant to the subject of your site, and add them. If these articles are rich with the keywords that you wish to target, so much the better.

You can also write your own articles. This allows you to concentrate on the keywords that you wish to target, and establishes you as an expert in your field.

By adding your resource box, with your URL, to the end of your articles and then submitting them to other sites and Ezines, you can generate additional traffic to your site. More about this later.

Invite your visitors to submit articles to your site for publication. This helps to build visitor loyalty, because eveybody likes to see their name in print;)

Search Engines Love Links.

The second thing that you need to do is exchange links with other websites. Search Engines look to see how many links point to your site and use this information to gauge the importance of your site. The more links you have, the better, but look for links that add value for your visitors. Make sure that you link to quality sites that are somehow related to what your visitors are looking for. In this way, you will get traffic that is targeted to what you are trying to sell. This will increase your chances of making sales or signing up affiliates who have a good chance of being successful in your business.

There are two basic types of links; reciprocal links and one way links. Reciprocal links occur when you trade links with another website. These are important because not only do they help in your rankings, they also generate traffic from the sites that you link to. One way links are a bit different. These are links that point people to your site, but do not point your visitors away from your site. As a result, they are more valuable. Not too many webmasters are willing to give away one way links, but there are a couple of good techniques that you can use to get them.

1. Write articles and offer them for publication. You will be pleasantly surprised by the number of sites and Ezines that are looking for quality articles to use for content. By placing your resource box at the end of the article, and including a link to your site, you can generate dozens, if not hundreds of one way links to your site. To find sites that accept articles, simply do a search for ‘Free Website Content.’ You will find several good sites. Also think about joining the Directory of Ezines. Many of the publications listed there accept articles, and some of them will even invite you to write for them on a regular basis.

2. Visit several forums and bulletin boards that deal with stay at home jobs. Especially, those that are directly related to your field of expertise. Many of these allow you to include your URL in your signature block. By participating in these forums, you will be able to create many more one way links to your site. Just make sure that you offer sound advice, and make relevant posts. If you don’t, you could be considered a nuisance or worse, a spammer.

The addition of content in the form of articles and links to your site should be an ongoing process. If you concentrate on these two things and continually add to your site, you will not only move up in the search engine rankings, but you will end up with a site that has great value to your visitors. Add to your site every day. Remember, you are in competition with a lot of other related websites, and chances are,they are already be doing this.

About The Author

(c)Nov 2004 by Robert Thompson

Robert Thompson is retired from the United States Air Force. Since his retirement, he has operated several successful businesses. He is a proud Team Leader with SFI and operates http://www.stayathomejobs.net Stay at Home Jobs offers a wide variety of informative articles and features for the home business entrepreneur. Membership is free. For a free copy of the Stay at Home Jobs Newsletter, send a blank Email to News@badbobrst.par32.com

badbobrst@aol.com

You may have created and established the best Web site in
the world, however if the world does not know it is there,
it will not do your business any good. As a result, knowing
how to market your site and getting your site noticed is
incredibly important to the success of your business and
something you will want to concentrate your efforts on.

Fortunately, getting your site noticed is not expensive so
marketing on a tight budget does not mean you can’t get
quality exposure.

One of the first things you will want to do is pack your
Web page full of keywords that people might use when
searching for information contained in your site. The more
keywords you have, or keyword phrases someone might use,
the more often your site will be returned as a result for
the person searching. You want to be in the top 5 results
posted as often as possible,
so being diligent about keywords and keyword phrases will
help direct more traffic to your web site.

Also, once you have packed your page full of useful
information and as many keywords as you and your thesaurus
can think of, you will want to upload your URL to various
search engines like Yahoo, Google, Excite, Alta Vista, and
any specialized search engines that focus on your
particular business or service. By including more keywords
on your web site, when the search engines are searching for
sites pertaining to the keywords entered in the search
engine, your page will be listed as a higher result than
others. This is very important because people generally
check the first few web sites results and skip the others
if they find the information they were looking. However,
make sure the information you provide on your site is
useful and you don’t just have a string of keywords to
attract people to your page. If you have useful information
about a product or service, people will look around. If all
you have is a bunch of keywords and nothing that actually
pertains to what the individual is looking for, they will
leave and never come back. So, be alert to what you are
offering potential customers and attentive to the way you
bring them to your page.

If you have done all of the above, and are still interested
in more traffic, then consider marketing your site on other
related or non related sites by banners and the like. This
is a way of letting individuals know about your product
that might not be aware of it to even search for it. By
advertising in this way you are reaching a sector of
individuals who want and need your product, but were never
aware of it.

There are multiple ways to market and of getting your web
site noticed, just make sure you do it in a responsible
way. Internet users are fed up with pop up ads, Spam e-mail
and other unsolicited information. For instance, many
people now have programs that block pop up ads, which means
you are not even marketing. Finally, you don’t want to
anger potential customers or have them close off their mind
to your product, so be creative when you are marketing,
aggressive and always respectful of current and future
clients.

Read additional marketing aticles at: http://www.webcoastline.com/blog

Article by Lars Hanning
http://www.webcoastline.com

All about an average guy who now earns an average
of $39 a DAY from adsense: http://www.optinlistbuilder.biz/adsense$39aday.pdf

Let me tell you a story about karma and how I made $250 by reporting an Adsense cheater!

It started when I came upon a web site where some kid was blatantly breaking the rules by asking his buddies to click on his Adsense ads.

This has got to be one of my biggest pet peeves! Why do people think they can break the rules at the expense of other peoples’ AdWords budgets?

So I did what a lot of people do… I contacted Google!

I figured Google would shut this punk down immediately. Boy was I wrong!

Every time I went back to this kid’s web site the message asking his friends to click the ads were still there! This went on for a few weeks and I really started to get ticked off at the lack of response on Google’s part.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I used this software I created called “Google Sponsor Lister” (You can get it at AdsenseSchool.com) to find every sponsor who was targeting this kid’s niche.

I contacted each sponsor directly and told them there was a chance their ads were being displayed on a cheater’s site. I figured if THEY complained to Google, something would happen!

Well I guess I was right! One of the sponsors emailed me back two days later and said:

“I want to thank you for pointing out the kids
clicking on my ads. I turned it over to my Google
rep, and he called today to let me know Google is
disabling their account. Also, he said Google is
crediting me a decent amount for fraudulent clicks
over the last quarter. What’s your address? I’d like
to send you a little thank you gift.”

How awesome is that? I was so excited! Not because he was going to send me a “thank you gift”… but because I figured out how to get that punk shut down!

It’s funny how Google shut this kid down in TWO DAYS because a sponsor contacted them but when I had been trying for weeks, nothing happened. Makes you think…

Anyway… I told him he didn’t have to thank me and he definitely didn’t need to send me a gift. I was just happy to know I saved him a couple bucks and this punk got his account canceled.

He replied with the following…

“Thanks again. I actually spend several hundred
thousand dollars a month on Google, so at least they
responded to me quickly. Also, the rebate they gave
me was fairly substantial (several thousand). I’d
really like to buy you an Amazon gift certificate or
an iPod or something if you’d like to tell me how to
send it to you, because I don’t think I would have
been proactive about this if you hadn’t contacted me.
Either way, it’s great that you’re being a good
samaritan.”

SEVERAL THOUSAND DOLLARS? I thought I saved him a couple bucks at most!

I was floored when I read that because I knew Adsense cheaters hurt sponsors but I never thought it was that bad!

So I told him if he REALLY wanted to send me an iPod or an Amazon gift certificate, I wouldn’t stop him!

He ended up sending me an Amazon.com gift certificate worth $250!

Long story short… I am now a true believer in Karma!

I think this teaches us a couple important lessons…

First, telling Google about Adsense cheaters is fruitless… but informing the sponsors, and asking them to contact Google, works immediately!

And second, ripping off AdWords sponsors is big business. Don’t think for a second it’s a victimless crime!

Oh and now I’m a true believer in Karma!

Maybe you won’t make $250… but at the very least you’ll help get rid of another Adsense thief and save a business owner some money!

For more information about Adsense, check out http://www.AdsenseSchool.com where you will find exclusive software, hard hitting lessons, in depth videos, daily tips, Adsense experiments, and more!

Setting up a pay-per-click campaign is simple, right? Practically all paid search engines especially the top-tiered ones like Google Adwords and Overture provide extensive training materials. It is advertised that in less than three hours, you can select your keywords, write your ads and have a campaign either submitted for an editorial review at Overture or active on Google.

It sounds so unbelievably simple! But have you heard the saying “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is?”

Effective marketing strategies take experience, time and effort to achieve worth-while performance. Anyone can write a direct mail letter, buy a list of business addresses, add postage stamps and drop the letters in the mail. The actions involved in direct mail marketing are relatively ordinary. Yet highly experienced direct marketers who send and test millions of direct mail pieces each year achieve about a 1% – 2% average response rate. So what type of response rate would you expect an ordinary person to achieve? Likewise, the ordinary efforts setting up pay-per-click campaigns doesn’t equate to website performance.

The start of a pay-per-click campaign initiates a process similar to those used in traditional marketing. The process involves strategic planning, creative development, measurable tracking and articulate execution. The success of your pay-per-click campaign is dependent on the thought that precedes the efforts and the continual re-assessment of the results following each set of efforts. Let me explain.

Strategic Planning – Knowing Your Target

Before setting up an account in Overture or Google Adwords, consider your target market relative to your product or service being offered on your website.

• What benefits does your product or service satisfy for your customer?

• What are the demographics and psychographics of you primary target market?

• What customer circumstances does your product or service support?

By intimately understanding your target market, you are able to start the keyword selection process. Your objective is selecting relevant keywords that connect your customer’s preconceived expectation with your product or service.

Search behavior (consumer behavior in general) is difficult to predict. Start by reviewing your traditional marketing literature, listen to your sales people perform a client presentation or sales call, research your competitions’ keywords (your competition includes all alternatives to your product or service) and review existing web log files to determine what product or service terms, customer circumstances, or common language your customers react to or attach to your product or service. Don’t be surprised if these terms are different than what you logically expected.

Your goal is to generate a keyword list that tests the bounds of Overture’s and Google Adword’s relevancy standards. A longer keyword list is preferable at the start since you will ultimately filter it down based on performance.

Keywords Open Doors to “Wanting” Customers

Know that the keywords you select are doors that open you to new visitor opportunities – if you miss a door than you miss the potentially huge opportunity waiting behind it.

Do not rely on broad, advanced or phrase matches to catch additional keywords. It’s true that these matching options increase traffic but they can devastate performance if you do not have a sophisticated keyword-level tracking system. One keyword under a broad matching option could represent 80% of your cost and deliver only 20% of the return.

Your Ad Serves as a Magnate Attracting Qualified Visitors to Your Website

By intimately understanding your customer you maximize your ability to write specific ads that attract qualified visitors and reduce click waste. Words are your magnets for attracting your target market to your website. Even one, single word can have an immense affect on your click-through rate.

For example, while working for a client, I ran two identical keyword ads on Adwords except one used the word, “tested” the other “proven”. The “tested” ad pulled a 7% click-through rate while the “proven” one barely reached 1.5%. More so, the “tested’ ad converted at a higher sales rate than the “proven”.

Choosing the most compelling words and associating the strongest customer benefits is essential because the ad space allocated is so limited in Google Adwords and not much better in Overture. Although conventional wisdom dictates how to write a performance-driven ad like include free shipping, pricing or guarantees in the ad copy, it is difficult to know exactly what attracts the highest number of qualified visitors. The solution is testing all variables.

The Pay-per-Click Campaign Structure Sets the Stage for Individual Keyword-level Tracking

Setting up your pay-per-click campaign requires a hierarchical structure that is instrumental to individual keyword-level tracking. The natural structure in Overture enables individual keyword-level tracking under the standard matching option. Google Adwords’ recommended structure however either throws off the ability to track at the individual keyword-level or disables the opportunity to use A/B split-testing per individual keyword.

Unfortunately, pay-per-click search engine’s supply training materials focused on “driving traffic” and not on “driving performance”. The difference between traffic and performance is economically significant. For Google Adwords, an incorrect campaign structure is one of the most common obstacles I have experienced while working with new clients to turnaround their poor to mediocre performing pay-per-click campaigns.

After your keywords are selected, your initial ads strategically written and your campaign structure setup, you have to add a tracking system. Overture’s and Google Adword’s conversion tracking tools are not recommended by most pay-per-click experts but if it’s your only option than it is better than no tracking at all. It is more effective to have some insight to your keyword performance than operating in the virtual dark.

Once your campaigns are submitted to Google Adwords, Overture or any other pay-per-click search engine, your work has really just started. But we’ll leave that for round two.

Kevin Gold is a Partner and Co-founder of Enhanced Concepts, Inc. which specializes in turning website visitors into leads or sales through tested website conversion strategies and performance-focused search engine marketing. To learn how to generate greater performance from your search engine marketing and to turn more website visitors into leads and sales go to http://www.enhancedconcepts.com.

In last week’s comment, I talked about the power of AdSense forums. I could have said the same thing about all of the blogs dealing with AdSense too. There are plenty of those and they’re stuffed with great information from people on the cutting edge of AdSense techniques.

The most important of these is probably AdSense’s own blog.

That’s always worth keeping an eye on. It’s where any changes are likely to be announced, it’s where you can pick up a few tips straight from the horse’s mouth… and it’s where you can sometimes get a behind the scenes view of how Google chooses the ads you get on your site.

That’s really the big mystery of AdSense. Sure, we can play around with the keywords on the page and we can block ads that we don’t want to display but that’s about it. When we open our own web pages, we’ve really got no idea whether we’re going to see ads for dried mangoes or for air tickets to Burkina Faso.

The latest entry at the AdSense Blog reveals a little about how ads are ranked and mentions a term that I doubt many people are family with: an ad’s Quality Score.

According to Google, “Quality Score is determined by your [the AdWords advertiser's] keyword’s clickthrough rate (CTR), relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, the quality of your ad’s landing page, and other relevancy factors.”

That’s a whole bunch of different factors and like many of the things considered by Google, we don’t know any of them as they relate to a particular ad (and neither do the AdWords advertisers).

What strikes me about this definition though isn’t the relevance of ad text or historical keyword performance. If an ad isn’t relevant or is dedicated to a poor-performing keyword, I don’t want it.

It’s the fact that Google also rates the quality of the ad’s landing page.

I’ve got no idea how they measure that. What Google might consider a poor landing page someone else might think of as a good one.

As a publisher, I can pretty much let that ride. But I also have to drive traffic to my sites and if I’m using AdWords, it’s just one more reason to make sure that my site looks the part.

Maybe that’s Google’s bonus contribution to the Internet: an incentive to increase the quality of Web pages. I just wish I knew Google’s idea of quality.

Joel Comm is The Internet Revenue Expert. Online for over 20 years, Joel teaches people how to make money in the digital age. The recognized authority on Google AdSense, Joel teaches how to multiply your AdSense income at The AdSense Code. To ask Joel Comm a question about making money online, visit http://www.AskJoelComm.com Joel invites you to download a free copy of The Internet Money Tree at http://www.internetmoneytree.net

The success of ad campaigns are not easy to gauge since you don’t have any formula to help you in computing just how much of your postcards for example, has been converted into dollars. However, you may always apply trial and error methods but even this will not provide you with the exact figure of how much you have earned from your ad campaign. The trial and error method will only provide you with a rough estimate of how much returns in terms of sales your ad campaign has brought your business.

Some may tell you that you can assess or monitor your sales by the number of new customers that your business is getting everyday. But just how many business owners really do this? Probably very few and only those with very small businesses wherein their customers are composed of a couple of number of friends, relatives, neighbors that the business owner really gets in contact with most of the time. So just how would a business owner knew that the customers are new? There really is no way of telling unless of course the business owner religiously checks on her surveillance camera and take note of not so familiar faces that enters his establishment. Let’s face it; it’s very hard to remember every single customer that enters a store.

And so just how are you to gauge whether your ad campaign did work or not? Here’s how: In every ad campaign you have a certain product or service that you wish to promote and so obviously an increase in the sales of that certain product or service will tell you that your ad campaign was successful. Now if the opposite happens, it only signifies that you ought to think of other ad campaign alternative to help you in promoting your products and services.

Another way is to compare your sales before, during and after your ad campaign. However, don’t expect that you have an outright result because there are some ad drives that really take quite sometime before result can be achieved. One way of an effective ad campaign is one where a business offers discounted items attached to some of their highly saleable products are great in enticing customers to take hold of products and services a business is offering.

There are also some businesses that held raffle promos wherein they give away cars for prices. What they usually do is to place a bracket on every purchase of their customers. Telling customers that the higher the amount of purchase the more the quantity of raffle tickets given. And since most customers want to win the price they tend to purchase more to earn more tickets. This kind of ad campaign is generally employed by malls and other big businesses.

Lastly, before setting on any advertising or promotional expedition try to have a concrete and concise goal of what you want to achieve. It is important so that you will be guided not only in your choice of ad campaign but also to direct all your endeavors towards your goal.

Jinky C. Mesias is a lover of simple things and of nature. She spends most of her time reading and writing poetry.

For comments and suggestions kindly visit Los Angeles Digital Printing Services

ant to get the most media attention and spotlight for your business? Then the first place to start is with a GREAT press release. Now I can almost see half of you leaving now, dreading the thought of having to write one of these. But wait!! I’m going to show you easy methods to make your press release work for you and get the attention it deserves. Ready? Let’s go.

We’ll briefly go over the basics because of their importance. Editors want to see things done the RIGHT way. I would bet that a lot of good releases simply get tossed out just because they aren’t set up properly. To a busy editor, that all too familiar “10 second glance” says a lot for you and your business; it let’s them know if you’ve done your research enough to warrant that release to be placed in their newspaper or magazine.

Here are your essentials:

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” on the top left of the page.

Your contact name, phone number, e-mail address, and website follows.

Headline is next, normally in bold and centered on the page. Summarize what the release is about and capture their attention. Spend almost as much time on your headline as you do writing the release. It’s that important.

The press release body starts with the location of the release and the date (Margate, Florida, May 5, 2005.)

Most press releases are between 200-500 words, and no more than a page. The first paragraph has the most important information. Don’t save the best for last, it won’t get read. In this paragraph answer the questions, who, what, when, where and why?

It is recommended that you write press releases in the 3rd person and use short sentences and paragraphs. Do not go over board, trying to dazzle the editor, it won’t work.

Target your release. You will be sending your release to a specific audience so make sure that in your release you keep to what would appeal to that audience. What don’t they know that you can add? Nothing works better than getting an “AAH HAA” when an editor is reviewing your release.

Provide statistics. Do some research and find some relevant information that applies. You can easily do this through Google. Once you find your quote, do a Google search or Yahoo quote on that particular topic. However, don’t stop on the first Google link and take that for gospel. Research it a bit further. Have it come from a respectable company or magazine.

Include relevant quotes from experts in your field that will reinforce what you are saying. Approach authors, leaders in your Industry, and other experts that back up the facts you are stating in your release. They will normally appreciate the added publicity and you get the quote you’re looking for. For example, as an author I’ll often get asked to provide a quote for an article on home-based businesses or the virtual assistant industry. I welcome the opportunity as it provides me more publicity.

Also, if you have a satisfied client that you feel will add credibility to your Release, add a quote from them as well. The first time you mention the expert, write out their full name. Then list them by last name or Mr. and Mrs. Smith only. I normally prefer the last name.

The last paragraph should be your call to action. You’ve talked the whole release about your business or product, now tell them what to do with the knowledge they just acquired.

At the bottom of the release include ### to indicate you are done, followed by a short bio. Make sure if you include your website that you include http:// in front of it for search engine recognition.
Your bio should include your information, any books authored, etc. Double check this for accuracy. At this point, you’re tired and done with the Release. But if it goes out to the world with the wrong web address, the valuable time spent even writing the Release has been wasted.

That’s it! The basics for writing a press release. Now one other thing I’d like to add in, they work! They truly work. I’ve had a recent release get accepted by PRWeb (and yes they do reject bad ones!), and then go on to hit several other major newspapers and media outlets and the Google alert, which resulted in our paper in the area contacting me. You want to set up a Google news alert for your name so that you can follow the path and see when you make the news so you can follow up. Also, PRWeb at http://www.prweb.com has complete guidelines for setting up a good press release. Go with the extra money and spend $20.00. It’s worth it to get the additional exposure.

Diana Ennen is the author of numerous books including Virtual Assistant: the Series, Become a Highly Successful, Sought After VA and Words From Home, Start, Run and Profit from a Home-Based Word Processing Business. She specializes in publicity and book marketing and is president of Virtual Word Publishing www.virtualwordpublishing.com and www.Publicity-VA.com. Articles are free to be reprinted as long as the author’s bio remains intact.

Market my website? Why should I have to spend time and money marketing my website? It’s supposed to be marketing my business!!!

That’s how so many business owners feel, they spend a bit of money on their website design and then sit, doing nothing, waiting in vain for it to start paying dividends and bringing in the customers.

It’s very simple really, nobody is going to come to your new site if they don’t know about it – if they don’t see mention of it, a link to it or aren’t recommended it.

So how can you get your website noticed? Here’s a list of the common methods you can use:

• Traditional Ads & Marketing
• Search Engines
• Online Directories
• Links Development Campaign
• Participation in Online Discussion Forums
• Article Submission
• Pay Per Click
• Banner Ads

Traditional Marketing

Magazine & newspaper ads, Yellow Pages, PR articles, leaflets & door drops, business cards, email signatures, company stationary, company vehicles, the front of your store. These and many more are places you can and should advertise your website’s URL.

Search Engines

Getting to the top of a keyword search on the major search engines – Google, Yahoo etc. – is high on the wish list of most website owners. Unfortunately it’s not something that will happen straightaway. It can take many months of adding content, getting links from other sites and optimising your content for keywords to get a high listing.

Online Directories

Directories are collections of website addresses that are collated by human beings. Most will charge a fee for inclusion, DMOZ/ODP is the one
everyone wants to get listed in – it’s free and will have a great effect on your search engine ranking, but expect to wait months if not years for a listing.

Links Development

This is one of the most powerful ways of promoting your site. It means getting other (hopefully related) sites to include links to yours. To get a link simply email the site owners and ask for one. Often you’ll have to reciprocate the kindness i.e. link to their site as well but some will be happy to list your URL for nothing.

If you’re a member of local business groups then don’t forget to include your web address on their sites. What about all your suppliers, can you get a listing on theirs?

Not only will you get people visiting your site via all these links, you’ll also improve your position on search engine listings (search engines algorithms take the number of links to
your site to be an indication of its importance).

Discussion Forums

Another way you can attract attention is by participating in online discussion forums (to do with your area of expertise of course!). Most will allow you to include a website link in your
signature, i.e. a link to your site in every post you make.

Article Submission

This is a brilliant way of getting noticed. If you don’t have any problems writing essays then get your pen out! There are many sites that allow you to submit your articles for free and
they should all allow you to include a resource section on yourself or company with a link back to your site.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a very good way of driving traffic to a site in the short term. Google’s Adwords is one of the best known PPC systems around, Overture provide another.

When somebody searches for keywords in Google you get a list of ’sponsored links’ on the right hand column (go to Google and search for ‘catering work’ and see the sponsored links on the right). The owners of the sites don’t pay anything unless the person browsing clicks through to their site.

Banner Ads

It might be worth putting up a Banner Ads on sites you know your prospective clients are likely to visit. The ads, which will be made to click through to your website, come in GIF format or, increasingly, are created in Flash for a more striking and memorable ad.

Pricing is often Cost Per Click (CPC) but most common is Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM). CPM is related to how many people see your ad.

As you can see, there are many ways of building up traffic to your site. If you’ve got products, services or content that people want and you’re willing to put some effort into some of these methods then you will soon start to see a rise in
visitors.

Trevor Lewis has over 10 years in the Software Industry. He is currently a Senior Consultant at EMNM. EMNM offer a range of new media design services including multimedia presentations and website design.

It’s worthwhile to examine Google’s definition of Google AdSense and Click Fraud, before delving deeper into “AdSense Fraud”.

Google AdSense fraud is one of the diseases that plague the Ad Words advertisers. The AdSense program essentially allows website publishers/owners to sign up with Google, enabling them to display Google Ads on their sites. These publishers essentially act as “Google Partners”. The ads chosen by the Google bot for display are contextual and the ads are related to the contents of the publisher’s website, more specifically that particular web page. The intent for Google is to capitalize on the traffic to these (in practice) niche sites and provide highly direct targeted traffic to the advertiser. A subset of the users of the Google Partner website, click on those ads and Google charges the advertiser per click. Google shares the booty with the website publisher but the revenue sharing ratio falls under Google’s “undisclosed “criteria. While the exact amount can be reverse engineered, the take home lesson is that the filans a course of action. He “invests” in a clickbot software( a simple google search reveals many) and gets a list of anonymous proxy addresses. He then goes to register a few domains and hires someone off of elance to create a “network of sites”and ” click bot ” . He hopes that the interlinked sites will provide each some “link popularity” and increase his page rank. If only it were that simple! He then proceeds to use the $30 clickbot to start clicking on the sites. Or he could click on them himself manually using the proxies. We don’t call him click monkey for nothing. He clicks and clicks all the way to see his account getting banned. No banana for this monkey! His calls of despair to google fall on deaf ears. This person is likely to quit, but sometimes retries to get up the food chain, the Wanna -Be-Fraudster.

Wanna -Be Fraudster ( aka BOZO):

This girl searches for high paying keywords like “home loan equity” (current ad words rate: $45), or “web hosting” (ad words costing $20). She correctly guesses that the AdSense payout is proportional to what Google earns and therefore homes in on such words. Her strategy is to make a page with contents that are appropriate for the targeted high payout keyword. She moves ahead by clicking on the link multiple times and recruits friends and family to give them a click. Or ten!

Little does she knlans a course of action. He “invests” in a clickbot software( a simple google search reveals many) and gets a list of anonymous proxy addresses. He then goes to register a few domains and hires someone off of elance to create a “network of sites”and ” click bot ” . He hopes that the interlinked sites will provide each some “link popularity” and increase his page rank. If only it were that simple! He then proceeds to use the $30 clickbot to start clicking on the sites. Or he could click on them himself manually using the proxies. We don’t call him click monkey for nothing. He clicks and clicks all the way to see his account getting banned. No banana for this monkey! His calls of despair to google fall on deaf ears. This person is likely to quit, but sometimes retries to get up the food chain, the Wanna -Be-Fraudster.

Wanna -Be Fraudster ( aka BOZO):

This girl searches for high paying keywords like “home loan equity” (current ad words rate: $45), or “web hosting” (ad words costing $20). She correctly guesses that the AdSense payout is proportional to what Google earns and therefore homes in on such words. Her strategy is to make a page with contents that are appropriate for the targeted high payout keyword. She moves ahead by clicking on the link multiple times and recruits friends and family to give them a click. Or ten!

Little does she know that Google has a 45 day inspection period before she get her nubby little fingers on that cash. With little to no knowledge of Click through Ratio , her greed couples with her ignorance. Seeing her ill-gotten paper wealth multiplying in her AdSense interface, she increases the clicks. Google however inspects the CTR and throws a fit when they see a CTR exceeding 20%. Furthermore, Google notices clicks mostly originating from a few IP addresses and that essentially seals her fate (or rather docks her earnings). That virtual cash is now just some deleted bytes on a hard disk on Google’s servers. She moans, nay she rail against the cruelty of Google’s policy. Some of these people wisely cease and desist such activities, perhaps philosophizing about the NFL (no free lunch) theorem. Others however see it as ground school for the next stage of nefarious behavior. The Almost-There Fraudster.

Almost-There Fraudster ( aka SmartAlec ):

The archetypical ATF is supremely confident in his ability to fool Google. Like the BOZO, he looks for high paying keywords and makes appropriate website(s). Let’s assume that he is in a third world country, just to make the case more interesting. The case described here is 1 year old news. He has read this article and taken the learnt the subsequent lesson . He knows that that the clicks from the IP Addresses of USA, UK & Canada are worth much more than the clicks from the IP Addresses from the third world countries. He therefore seeks to befriend people from such IP addresses by logging onto messenger services.

This way, he gets the unique, unrelated IP clicks and (he hopes) that Google is fooled. Remember “creature of the night”. Well, these people typically are more than a few time zone removed from the US or Canada and therefore are up at odd hours whenever they feel that their targets are most likely to be active. Plus they sometimes have to deal with “inconveniences” like a day job.

AT fraud thinks that the clicks he obtained by trolling on these sites is a job well done. He has got clicks from the IP address of his choice .. An interesting factoid is that for AdSense, state also matters. Clicks from Washington and New York State have the highest payout for AdSense Fraud.

He has just one problem. His tragic flaw. While he worked so hard to get the unique IP and high earnings, he is not able to maintain a good CTR. He is likely to cross the limit of 30-40% of daily CTR and 10-20% of overall CTR. He ends up in the same purgatory as the BOZO. The account is banned, and he gets the abominated email. Yes, the “AdSense account closure”. Almost-There is never good enough in this nether world of AdSense gaming. Although it is possible that he would have made a few thousand dollars before the punishment catches up to his crime. Crime doesn’t quite pay, now does it? Well, gentle reader, unfortunately crime _is_ paying to the next category. Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan’s Spawn).

Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan’s Spawn):

This category of fraudsters is the most sophisticated and rarely gets caught by google . She has researched the high paying keywords as well as the CTR issues well. She has the smoothest lines in the business of soliciting clicks. She can flirt online, and ask to click the “link” for her picture. Or she may claim that clicking the link causes the hungry child to be fed in Ethiopia . Let’s follow a typical “simple” chat session:

AT Fraud: hi

US User : hello

AT Fraud: what are your coordinates, handsome?

US User : NY , NY

AT Fraud: Oh! Wish I could be there. Can you help out a damsel in distress?

US User : sure

AT Fraud: I have made a site and want to see if all the links on this page are working or not. Can you please click on the links and see if the other page loads?

US User: Sure. Link?

AT Fraud: www.fraudstersite.com/high-value-keyword-page.html

US User : wait! Yes I checked all the links and they are working fine.

AT Fraud: Thanks

US User : so can we talk about you now? ( Message Not Delivered as the fraudster has blocked the User and is busy looking for a new victim)

And she has lots of tricks up her repertoire besides chatting up strangers. She knows about opt in lists, usenet and blogs where she can snare the victims. Technically savvy and able to empathize with her victims she doesn’t let arrogance get in her way to success. Since she is very mindful of the CTR issues she has a secret weapon. She has optimized her site for some low paying keywords which are really not competitive. She organically gets lots of traffic (but for things unrelated to those competitive high paying keywords). In her website, she may be giving away free greeting cards Or free screensavers. End result is a fabulous impression count. The second step for her is to makes unrelated pages on the same site and these pages pertain to the high paying keywords. These keywords are used to attract the victims of chat sessions. The process of getting the clicks is different but the results due to CTR are very lucrative.

So, how does all this geek talk affect the PPC advertiser? It’s a $5 billion+ dollar market(for exact projections onto the future, please check out our FAQ, and with a 20% + fraud rate, we are talking about a 1 BILLION dollars fraud per year. Even Dr. Evil may be impressed by such a number. It’s greater than the cumulative GNP of a few banana republics. And a fair chunk is ending up in the coffers of these fraudsters. We know from anecdotal evidence, how people are clearing up to 20 grand a month. All, courtesy of the hapless PPC advertiser.

We want to emphasize that there are lots of authentic sites serving genuine content. But unfortunately the existence of these people (as discussed above) reduces the ROI of many advertisers to the extent that they rethink their interest in PPC. In the word of one of our organic SEO customers, with PPC “you always get a little less back than you put in”. It needn’t be that way, if you watch carefully where your ad words traffic is coming from and take some steps (such as traffic analysis or at the very least a log file analysis) to protect arm yourself with data for a refund claim for google. Another thing to keep in mind is to stay nimble. Convincing search engines to refund money is a lot tougher and a lot more work than proactively watching for problem visitors and warning them of the repeated clicks and how they are being monitored. Our experience shows that all but the hardened criminals are deterred(reducing the adwords wasted burden). Remember, an ounce of prevention…

Aamir Farrukh Works with an Experienced Web Analytics Company http://www.sofizar.com Sofizar that is working on a Artificial Intelligence enabled Click Fraud Detection Service

Pay-per-click search engines allow you to bid for keyword placement within the search engines. For example, if one of your pages focuses on the topic of “Digital Cameras,” you can bid for the #1 (or any other #) placement on the first page of search results.

What a nice time saver! But there’s a catch, of course. The most popular keywords are very expensive.

So your best strategy is to work the niches. Bid on hundreds of less popular keywords related to your content. And keep in mind: You do not always have to bid for the #1 placement. Slightly lower placement is usually much more cost effective.

Submitting to PPC engines (pay per click search engines) is a quick way to get visitors to your site. However, make sure you know how much each visitor is worth to you before you submit.
If you are using any of the PPC search engines like Overture (GoTo.Com), FindWhat , Ah-ha.com or Kanoodle you can save a considerable amount of money by monitoring your bids.

Example: Your bid for “your keyword” is $0.65 and you hold position 3 with that amount. Your next competitor bids $0.33 for position 4. That means that you still would be listed under position 3 if your bid were $0.34 (i.e. you are paying $0.31 too much for your listing).

You can save a lot of money by finding pricing gaps and lower your bids while still maintaining the same position. A very useful tool for monitoring your bids and making sure you do not pay too much for PPC visitors is available through Calgary, Alberta based www.msseo.com.

In addition to monitoring your placement and bids you should be aware that there is a significant amount of fraud going on in the PPC business. Many PPC search engines have affiliate programs and partnership programs. These search partners often generate bogus clicks to inflate their commission. Popular keywords with high bids are the most popular targets for this, but anyone can be a victim of fraud. This is mainly a problem with the smaller pay per click search engines. The leading PPC search engines mentioned previously on this page has safeguards in place to protect you from dishonest affiliates but it never hurts to track and verify all clicks on your own so you can spot fraudulent activity.

About the Author

Carmen is the VP Client Relations of Ms. SEO Inc., a Calgary based Search Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing Company. Ms. Seo Inc. works with their sister company Ms. Hype Inc., a Calgary Web Design Company, and their parent company Cre8 Hype Solutions Inc., a Calgary based Internet Marketing Company, to offer their clients a powerful online presence.