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Mar 05 2009
Adsense Tips - The Basic Rules
How to Make Money with Adsense
Before I begin let’s clear something up right off the bat. For every thing I tell you to do there are exceptions to the rules depending on your niche/platform and your ability to modify and experiment. Nothing is set in stone but I am going to give you the basic guide to follow. Only you will know how your site is different and you will have to use some of your gray matter to figure out what works best in your situation. My tips will serve to get you started down the right path.
If you have questions - and I know you will - then please use the comments rather than emailing me. This will allow me to answer for everyone’s benefit and save me a lot of time. Also - please give me as much info as you can when asking questions. Don’t ask why your site is getting 2 cent clicks. I will need to know what the niche is, where your traffic is from, how much traffic, what your keywords are etc to make an informed opinion. Please try and include as much relevant info when asking for help.
Rule #1
If you are going to make money with Adsense then you build your site for that purpose. You don’t slap Adsense on an unoptimized site and expect to make much money with it.
Rule #2
Adsense works best when you drive targeted search engine traffic to your site and the visitor clicks an ad targeted to the term that the user found your site with. Or a related term.
ie. John is searching for “Adsense Tips” using a search on Google. He finds your site listed for that term. He visits and at some point he sees an Adsense ad on your site for “Adsense Tips” or “How to make money with Adsense” or “Adsense for beginners” and clicks one of the ads.
That is a targeted click. You will receive the best CPC. (cost per click or in simple terms this is the amount of money Google will pay you for the click) In this case let us say you get paid $0.50 for it.
Now Bob drops in on your site because someone (maybe you if you don’t know any better) stumbled your post on stumbleupon. Bob isn’t looking for anything - he’s just aimlessly surfing the stumble sites. He doesn’t see much that interests him but clicks on an Ad just out of curiosity. He doesn’t convert for the advertiser - why would he (but sometimes it can happen) as he is just checking things out. He spends two seconds on the advertiser’s landing page and leaves.
Bob is an untargeted click. Google will pay you $0.01 for the click.
Do not get hung up on all the variables at work here. Just understand that you want to drive as much targeted traffic to your site and avoid as much untargeted traffic as you can. You want to rank well in the search engines for as many keywords as you can that are related to your niche and you want to avoid driving traffic to your site from untargeted sources. No stumbling, digging, reddit, etc. If others do it you have no control so don’t get in a flap - it happens. Just don’t chase that traffic yourself.
Overall you will get both kinds of traffic - as long as the majority of your clicks come from targeted sources you will average a decent CPC. They will never all be perfect clicks. If the majority of your clicks end up coming from untargeted sources of traffic then eventually you will be smart priced and all you will see will be the 2 cent CPC. If that happens then pull Adsense off the site and leave it off until you can change the traffic source to more targeted visitors.
Now, before you all ask, yes you can get direct traffic from other blogs linking to you or from people bookmarking you. In general these people are interested in your site’s niche and probably have related niches. Whether they are targeted or not is usually not a concern as they will be readers and are not likely to click your ads anyway. You can have a million stumblers show up too as long as they don’t click your ads you will be fine. I am not telling you that you can’t have untargeted traffic - you can - you just don’t want them clicking ads. There are programs available that allow you the option to only show ads to search visitors. If your site has a lot of untargeted visitors then use them. I am too lazy to go find the links but I am sure some of my readers will supply them in the comments. If you are new here then you may as well learn this now - I yak a lot and my friends roll in to do the leg work. 
I encourage it because it gives them a chance to introduce themselves and they are people you should get to know - they help me, I help them and they will help you. If you have no online friends then make friends with some of mine as they will be your best resource. Just be sure to give as much as you get.
(Don’t be shy - get involved. You will notice by the abundance of comments that I belong to a growing community of like minded folks who all help each other and are far more knowledgable than any other group you will meet online. We were all beginners at one time and we don’t mind passing along our knowledge to others - take advantage of it and pay it forward when you can.)
Rule #3
Do not click your friends ads and discourage them from clicking yours. You will get banned. Google can tell when multiple clicks come from the same IP. It is un-natural and sticks out like a sore thumb. Never ever get involved with click fraud. It is not worth it and yes - you will get caught! Yes you will… you beginners had better listen to me as you are all going to try and think of a way to inflate your clicks. DON”T!!!
Rule #4
A successful Adsense site is a site that doesn’t look like an Adsense site. No splogs. It must contain legit information and serve some purpose other than simply displaying Adsense. It is against the Adsense Terms of Service to create a site for the sole purpose of slapping Adsense on it.
How you create an Adsense site for the purpose of making money with Adsense without looking like you have just created an Adsense site for the sole purpose of making money with Adsense will be discussed in the next post. (say that 5 times fast)
Rule # 5
Everything you think you know about Adsense and SEO that you read about elsewhere is crap - even if it isn’t crap. Just because some dude wrote an ebook on either subject doesn’t mean they know jack. It just means they wrote an ebook. The people you want to listen to rank on top of the search engines and don’t write books about making money online.
They make money online.
They don’t need to make money writing an ebook.
And why should you listen to me?
Because I rank on top of the search engines for just about every “make money online” keyword you can think of. Go look.
and… I’m not selling you anything.
and… I’m just a swell guy!
Why am I telling you this for free? Because I need content in order to rank on top of the search engines for even more terms and It is easy for me to write about stuff I know a lot about. I also know that only 1 in 10 of you will follow my instructions. Only 1 in 100 of you will become adept enough to knock me off my perch and when you can you won’t. You will become an ally and together we will kick more ass in more niches and make even more money. In short I want and need more friends who do what I do so that we can all help each other.
Rule # 6
The best business model I know online is to provide free information for any niche that is dominated by sites that sell the info. By providing free and legit info you will bury the competition - the traffic will come to you. And you pay for it all with… yup - Adsense.
Next post I will talk about how to set up a site, how to structure your posts, how to use adsense on the site and how to get people to click on your ads without violating Google’s terms of service.
In the meantime you should re-read rule number 6 and find a niche that meets that requirement. You can also observe how I structured this post. It is perfectly optimized for the keywords I want traffic for.
Cheers,
Griz
Oh btw - read the comments - all the comments. I know it is a pain but there is more valuable info in the comments than the posts and you won’t ask me the same question that was asked three times before. 
Hey, Griz, I’m new here. Thanks for all the good info you’re putting up. You make it very clear.
Hi there Griz, got a quick question for you that I’m sure will benefit your readers as well.
If you use Yahoo site explorer and go through your links and find some of the decent ones that come from relevant pages that also use your keyword as the anchor text, is it worth using your resources to link to those pages?
I’m assuming in this case that those pages do not outrank you and are in no danger of doing so. Given that, you could build links to your site, or you could build links to the site that links to you, or you could do both. Which is the best strategy in most cases?
And, when would you want to focus heavily on boosting the pages that link to your site? Is it ever a good idea?
Thanks for all your wisdom!
Hey Griz,
I started a new blog on Today.com at the beginning of the week. I made a few posts and linked them to my main site. Yesterday the new site ranked on Page 2 for a specific 3-word phrase and on Page 3 for the same three keywords but not searched by the phrase. Today they are on page 4 and 7 respectively. Is this the Google dance?
Hey Griz,
I have a couple of questions about linking between the money site and support sites.
You have links pointing to this site from your MMOfB site and links pointing from this site to the MMOfB site. Is there a benefit to that rank-wise or is it just to drive traffic to each site?
Does the juice flow differently when linking to and from posts rather than links to the main page from say a blogroll? I’m guessing that linking to a post benefits that particular post and that the juice adds to the blog as a whole. Or am I off here?
One last question, should you link your money site to the homepage of the support sites and link support sites to posts of the money site or does it matter how the links are set up?
Cheers
Phil
Hi Griz,
Another fabulous post. Every time I read one of your blogs, I just can’t believe you’re putting all this time and effort into giving this information away for free. I’ve been following your advice for about 6 months now and I’m really seeing progress. Thank you!
I have a question I haven’t seen answered anywhere on your blogs. When you’re setting up an adsense block, it always gives you an option of text and images, or text only. I usually choose text only, but I’m wondering if you have any words of wisdom on this.
@ Steward
I use the Google Adwords tool to start my keyword research, but if I think the AdSense bot might get confused by a term, I’ll type the phrase into a google search and see what kind of ads come up on the results page. If they’re on mixed topics, I work on ranking for other phrases. My favorite was when I searched on an obscure pet care term and got medical ads for PET scans–FAIL. The AdSense ‘bot is a quicker, more nimble robot than the big, lumbering search ‘bot, but neither of them are geniuses.
Griz also likes to look at his site stats and add long tail keywords that people found his site with that might not have shown up in the AdWords tool. I’ll be doing that too as soon as I get some traffic to my sites.
Oh and let me be the first to vote for casting George Clooney in the Griz movie
janetra - you gotta read the inc.com article on plentyoffish.com - I found this through the MMOFB blog, and it’s a great read, if it doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will, lol
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling-in.html
myln - I started a website (my first one) in November and I was approved for AdSense in a few days - I think the one thing that may have helped was that I built the custom design myself, and bought my own domain and web hosting. Not sure if they just automate this process or have someone review each website that is submitted. Unfortunately I did this before reading the MMO stuff from Griz, and I’ve come to realize that my niche for that site is not very compatible with AdSense (it’s a sports blog, and I actually am aiming for more social traffic… I know that probably makes people cringe!)
Steward - To my (basic) understanding, Google has begun to use what is known as LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing. Essentially they can abstract generic niches from groups of related keywords, so they may be able to determine that Garmin and Magellon are both GPS systems and hence related. I really don’t know how that would relate to AdSense - I would assume they are considered related but feel free to chime in Griz!
Ray
Is it part of the keyword process to choose a keyword that has good selling potential?
For example, “facts about hawks” might have good traffic, might have a CPC of $1.50, but is it the type of keyword that people will actually click on the ads when they are there, or is it simply going to be an info site with no real potential for people buying anything.
Is this even a consideration, or is it only whether a keyword has good traffic, a solid CPC, and low competition?
Adsense tips #2 has been on my money making mind lately. The majority of my traffic (70% is my best guess) is search engine traffic with targeted keywords, so I’ve been trying to decide if I should use the Who Sees Ads wordpress plugin to hide Adsence from regular readers or allow the adsence ads to show up for everyone.
Learning these Adsense tips about how to make money with Adsense is making you a very popular guy Griz! George Clooney vote coming from me too!
Oops, I didn’t realize I was still signed onto my today.com blog. My comment above about making money online with adsense ads was actually in reference to my main blog rather than the today blog since we all know by now that the adsence ads on a today.com blog belongs to today.com.
You are such a tease.
Any news on your friend’s networking blog?
“I wear the skin off my fingers answering all of them!”
I figured that the skin on your fingertips are hardened by now lol
Hi Griz
I have been “doing what you do” for a year now and I can’t believe I didn’t come across your sites until now! Probably could have saved myself a bit of time and effort if I had! Without a doubt you have the best information out there for those using adesnse.
I have myself a growing network, but don’t have a network of people (guess I am a bit shy). At the moment I am learning to dig potatoes (farm). I would love to be a part of something where I could give something back and get a few links in return. I am always worried about people stealing my niches if I ask for links though (is this a bit over the top?). What would you suggest for someone like me?
I have sites about all sorts of stuff so hit me up if you would like some links (hopefully you can see my email address).
I also hear that you like fishing and it has been quite successful for you. I am from tropical Australia and spend too much of my time fishing, but can’t get enough of it.
Cheers
Tim
This is kind of an obscure question, but do you think Google could figure out if my Blogger accounts (which have blogs that link to each other and are setup with unique identities) are related if you forward your Gmail from one Blogger address to the other? What about putting up ads on blogs spread across multiple blogger accounts from a single AdSense account - set off any flags by Google or are they happy as long as each site is legit (I mean they are getting paid along with us publishers)?
PotatoChef,
I agree - this is my take…
It isn’t as complicated as people think, but it IS time consuming. Most people that look for money making schemes online want to get rich quick - you and I both know this is highly unlikely to impossible.
Most people don’t know anything about keyword research, link building, SEO, etc.
Most people can’t do it full-time because they have a job and need to pay bills, so they spend an hour or two a day, do it the wrong way and see no results in the first couple months and give up.
But then there are those couple hundred (or thousand) that religiously read Griz’s stuff and a light bulb goes on… we will succeed. We know it can be done, we won’t get discouraged.
Onward!
Ray
Hey Griz,
I have been trying to sort out a few details on calculating the R/S ratio manually as I narrow down my niche. I don’t really want to invest in the tools yet, so I am doing it manually.
From what I have found , it is the ratio between the search results and the keyword tool monthly searches for that keyword.
But what I cannot determine is if the broad or exact match applies.
Lets look at ” dog food “as a keyword. I am using 2 words in the example.
To get an accurate R/S ratio do I search in google with quotes or no quotes? for broad and exact match. Then to get the monthly search numbers, do I use exact or broad match?
My guess is that I do a search with quotes ” dog food ” with a current result of 8,430,000 and an exact match in the keyword tool of 90,500 avg, which gives an R/S of 93. Not a keyword to pursue, but is my understanding of the R/S right ?
thanks
Ryna
Also, I am a fellow Canadian, I am in the Edmonton area. A little south of you, but we had a damn good winter storm role through last night.
Windy, cold and snowing… made for an interesting ride into work this morning… usual winter day here.
later
Ryna
Hi Griz,
Because of your advice, I’ve had my first $60 dollar day yesterday. From one site. I’ve targeted numerous other keywords in that niche and expect to rank very well for these in the near future. I’m hoping to hit a $100 day before the 15th.
A few sites are really taking off now and making money. I’m considering putting Adsense on three more sites and I expect them to make about $20 a day each.
My question is: I’m worried about Google banning my account for some kind of obscure reason. I don’t click my own ads, I don’t tell other people to click my ads and I don’t have any bad stuff on my Adsense sites. I stick to TOS. But you see a lot of people online saying that they’ve done nothing wrong and still got banned. Has it happened to you or anyone you know? Any tips on preventing it?
Thanks!
pdaas
Griz,
After reading your posts and the comments, I’m still a little confused on something. When you say we should be working on multiple sites, do you mean for one niche, ie. pick a niche, start several sites using longtail keywords related to the main keyword and see which ones look promising?
Or do you mean pick several niches, start sites based on each, see which niches look promising, and then concentrate on those?
How many niches should a beginner take on at once?
Thanks for all of the tips and info. I’m currently starting my first site. Can’t wait for the next article.
Chris
Wow, it’s amazing how incredibly knowledgeable the commenters on this blog are.
Also found this great post that lists 10 WP Adsense plugins at:
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2006/11/10-best-wordpress-plugins-for-google-adsense/
Griz,
Another great post. Keep up the good work! Noticed #6 was related to the article you wrote about the guy who took his dating site to the top of Google and made all his money with Adsense while providing a free service. Tried looking for the article to post a link for your readers, but haven’t had any luck finding it.
B.M. Garrett
Ok, since everyone else has a “MMO” blog I decided to join the club and make one myself. Its more of a stupid noob blog than a MMO blog but what the hell. Its here, www.beginners.today.com Stop by and make fun of my noobness.
Griz,
Dumb question for ya. When doing backlink research I have noticed sites with a lot of backlinks for the same site. Do each of those backlinks count equally? Also a while back I left a comment on a no follow blog that was anchored. When I did the backlink check there were 44 backlinks from that web site from that one comment post AND they came in as do follow.
What do you make of that?
Okay, I’m a lurker usually, but I don’t think my particular question will ever get answered since I’m in a unique situation.
Anyway, I recently decided to put my first novel online because I’m nice - and the first novel is always the worst one anyway.
But I would like to make something off it since my nice-ness only goes so far…and I’d prefer not to start selling bookmarks, mousepads and coffee mugs…
The thing is, Adsense basically only throws bankruptcy ads on there because it’s clinging to the “chapter” keyword. I know other authors have adsense on their sites; I just can’t figure out what to do.
Thoughts?
Oh…I should probably mention that it’s not my Today blog, which is what my name links to…
Not cringing, per se, just not understanding how to make that work when it’s an eFiction site that will eventually have multiple books on it. I don’t do cutesy (blech!) chapter titles so it’s just a straight forward: book name - chapter #.
Though it would certainly be interesting to see what sort of ads “terrorist suspense” would generate…
B.M. Garrett,
I posted the link already for the online dating site - check out my earlier comment.
Ray
“write content that is useful but not complete - leading the visitor to find the answer in the ads. Usually I can Frankensite the blog (full credit to Splork for coining that description of my Ugly blog technique - read his article in the link.) enough to keep people above the fold and the content doesn’t come into play much. People click or leave.”
-Griz
I can’t believe that I don’t need great content! I’ve been sweating content since I first started my blogs- I was wondering how the hell I was going to keep up with all of that writing. I just got back from from the “crap is still king” post and I think a light just went on!
Thanks for more great info
My vote is for George Clooney
Hi Griz. Great stuff!
I’ve been reading and following along for a couple of months and I love this stuff. I wish I had found your sites a couple thousand dollars ago though. I apologize in advance for the long comment. I understand your “most links wins” message, but I think I may be over-thinking some of the details or just missing something obvious.
It’s been a challenge to find the reading time, but I’ve been doing my best to read all I can from both you and Court/Mark. You guys have a lot of great ideas and I am trying to find a way to resolve a couple of details as I implement what I’ve learned. I hope you will help out a bit. Maybe some other people following both of you have the same questions, or maybe I just need to step away from the computer for a bit! Here we go…
One of the products that Court endorses is UAW for building up links to sites in a relative hurry. My take on the software from Court’s site and the UAW site was that it is OK to use for promoting your main site. After I paid for that and starting writing some articles, I read in one of your replies that you never use automation on money sites. At what level is it “safe” to use UAW? Would it be appropriate to use UAW submissions to link to legit, smaller blogs which then point to my money site or should I just save the monthly fee? I also picked up BCW but now I’m not sure where exactly it would be worth using and I don’t want to mess up all of the work I’ve done building lenses, free blogs, ezine articles and the like with legit content.
I’m also wondering just how great the secondary sites need to be. I don’t ask this out of laziness, it is more that writing several blogs on the same topic (working my way through your list of 70 starter sites) can be a bit of a creative stretch without throwing in some content that is on topic but not exactly thrilling. As long as they are on topic and built to get indexed for the right keywords, can the content of these secondary sites be more of a “Check out my great widget collection” site and still hold value for throwing links to your money site?
Just one more thing…I’ve read people on here mentioning a third tier of sites which would point to level two (to give them authority) which then point to your number one site. Is this correct? If I work my way through the list of 70 as tier two sites, do I then work my way back through the 70 again to point at level two, or is doing all 70 too ambitious? I anticipate the answer to be you only have to have enough incoming tier two links to beat out the top dog in the SERPS, but I will await your answer.
Sorry about the explosion of questions. This stuff has been spinning in my head and I’ve gotten to the point of almost freezing up because I don’t want to mess up what I’ve done so far. When that happens, I just go an write another ezine article!
Thanks for all of the great info!
Thanks Robyn. I just took it off. It doesn’t make sense to completely rewrite the book to optimize adsense. I have enough niche sites in the works that it won’t matter anyway.
Ray,
Thanks for posting that link. Saves me the trouble of trying to hunt it down.
B.M. Garrett
Griz, all the talk you’ve been doing about keyword anchored backlinks is finally starting to sink in with me. I happened upon a new experiment and I wanted to run it by you to see what you thought:
1. Go to Freshdrop and choose a pre-owned domain name that’s at least 3 years old, .com or .net only, with a minimum of 500 Yahoo backlinks (use the Filter feature to do all of this). Preferably choose a domain with some type of decent potential niche keyword in the URL, if at all possible.
2. Analyze the backlinks of that domain with Yahoo Site Explorer, and check on the anchors with the SEO tool of your choice. Look for a consistency in what type of anchor text is being used.
3. Whatever keywords the majority of the links are anchored with, build a site around THAT topic. Hopefully it’s an “Adsense-able” or “affiliate product-able” keyword. You will run into a lot of duds before you find a domain with a decent amount of anchored links that actually have potentially monetizable keywords.
4. Build the site focusing on that keyword, adding your keyword-optimized content to go with it, and now you have a site that will rank rather quickly due to the anchored links already being present from the previous domain owner’s link-building efforts.
That’s pretty much it…I’m doing this right now with a site in the sports niche, and things are looking very promising. I’ll keep you posted. Your thoughts?
Griz,
I want to bring up the ranking for multiple (like 25-30) longtail keywords on my money site.
For my intermediate sites, should I setup a separate blogger blog for each longtail keyword (with a link pointing to the money site) ?
Or can I setup just one blogger blog, put up 5 posts (each targeting 1 longtail) with a link back from each to the money site?
What’s a good rule of thumb to follow when wanting to increase rankings for many longtails and using the link farm approach?
Thanks,
Sal
Quick question regarding backlinks…
Does it matter if your backlinks are do-follow or no-follow?
I noticed Hubpages requires you to have a high “hub score” to allow your links in your hub be a do-follow link.
My understanding is that if your keyword anchor link is a no-follow, it won’t pass the targeted “keyword” to your money site.
Would you still recommend placing keyword anchor links on “sites” that label outgoing links as no-follow?
Thanks in advance!
I started my first today.com site and also started a HubPage. What do people think?
I can attest to the Niche Support site being awesome. I’ve worked with quite a few people now and for many keywords it only takes a few good links and those people are gold. Be kind to each other and good things happen.
Blackhatters may be able to make more money, but eventually they get caught or justice is served through another channel. I would rather make much less, but know I did it right, with integrity, and helped some others along the way.
I’ve found some success with article writing (my own). I would recommend that for beginners. It is a great way to build some backlinks while you are working on building content.
I have also found that for long-tail phrases MSN may rank you fairly highly if you get the Title, page name, H1 Tags to match. MSN seems to rely more on related content than backlinks. You can get some good traffic that converts early whie working on the backlins for Google ranking.
Frankly, Yahoo remains a mystery to me, but with MSN and Google traffic I’m doing okay.
My first goal is $1000 a month. About 10% of the way there.
“Niche On”.
BankMan
Hi Griz- I love the new site and really appreciate what you do.
Question: Is there anyway to tell which adsense ads are being clicked? I just spent the last 2 days re-optimizing my site because I finally realized I was being smartpriced, and some of the clicks I’ve gotten today have made me as much money as I’ve gotten in an entire week before, and I’m curious to know which ads I’m making the most from.
Thanks again!
kblogs
AdSense doesn’t allow you to see which individual ads are being clicked, but they do allow you to use channels to see which ad block is performing the best.
I’m pretty sure Griz will be writing about that more in depth soon…
limecomet….,,,It is good to hear your story and very encouraging for me who is just starting out.I have been reading MMO tips of Griz for about a month only.I did some tweaking to my existing blog and the result is spectacular.I have a full time job and I spend all my free time on working and learning blogging.So my family is a bit upset too.But once I test success like yours which is my aim everything will be OK.
Sorry limecomet my message is for janetra.
Hi Griz,
Another great post and just wanted to let you know that I ranked in the top ten for more keywords today.
It’s my understanding that a person using adsense would want to rank in the top three for all the keywords in their niche. I’m wondering do you work on a couple of keywords for the month and then move onto another set of keywords?
Veraz, Court, Griz, you three are insperations. Hopefully with a lot of hard work, I’ll be able to rank in the top three of my keywords. Yup, I’m after celebrity puke who has an average reader base of 149k visitors a day.
@ Veraz
You are right, there is a lot to learn and it can be overwhelming. The best way to learn effectively is to dump all the blogs out of your rss reader and only stick to Grizz’s blogs and Court & Mark’s. The information is more than enough to get you a head start on 99% of the people out there.
Friends tend to say those kind of things because they don’t understand it. They don’t understand how it is possible that you might get a fulltime income just by blogging. My friends didn’t. Once you make money, you will see, they will ask : “ok, but how does it work? how are you doing that?”. You have to be careful though. In a way your friend is right. Don’t get your whole life caught in this blogging thing. Give yourself enough spare time and spend time with friends and family. It does take a lot of hard work and the beginning is always the hardest. But the best use of your time is to read and apply what you learn in the mentioned blogs. That’s how you get the best return for your time. Don’t wait for Grizz to put up another post and wait for another. Apply what he already learned you and than go further. With your passion for writing and the knowledge you’ve been given here, I can’t see why you should be successful. You will see results!
@Neil
For you too, applying what you learn here is the key to success. The success stories you read are all from people who started applying the methods Griz, Court and Mark teach you. Not long ago I too had a fulltime job. Especially in that period your free time is very costly, so use it well! Waste no time on reading other blogs. It took me 9 months from first buck online to quiting my job. For some people that is a long time, some people are trying to reach that for years now. How I reached it? Apply what I learn from Griz, Court and Mark and taking my time serious. Work smart
Hey Griz,
I have a blog that everytime I add a new post It gets ranked on the first page for my targeted keyword, but it only last for a week at most then it drops completely off.
Then if I add another new post it gets ranked back on the first page usually in minutes. Do you know what I can do to get it to stay on the first page. Also do you have any Idea why I keep getting booted of the first page when I dont update?
Hey Grizz,
I have a couple of questions I’m just curios and I guess you know the answer:
1. Does the age of the domain count very much? I was experimenting and testing a niche when I saw on the first page of G results a site with PR 2 and all the others were 7,8 or 6. The Pr 2 site was having 12 year old domain and the rest were just young. The interesting thing about this is that the 12 year old domain had a few backlinks, the majority from web directories (I guess not so much juice) and the big Pr ones have many anchored backlinks from blogs and everywhere. May the age the a factor of putting a Pr 2 with a few backlinks in the first page race?
2. this one is tricky for me. Let’s say I have “keyword a keyword b” which I want to promote. Does it help me if I have many anchored backlinks with backLink A:”bla bla keyword a..” and backLink B:”.. bla bla keyword b” or some thing like that? I mean, they are not both in a phrase or something in the backlink. Do backLink A and B count as well as it was keywords a and keyword both in the anchor text?
griz,
Thanks for all the info. Ever since I found your sites I have been working 16 hours a day to get my websites ranking better.
Ok ,Since G dilutes multiple links from the same website, than some of the sites I have seen with hundreds of links from the same site have kind of wasted their time.
And no, I won’t be giving hacking tips, I do like playing around with some BH stuff. Its a bad idea for a Noob, but I can’t help it
I will try not to break the internet.
Thx for the link, I now have 1 link. lol
Bk
@Shon:
All your bouncing in the SERPs is normal for a new site. Just about everyone here has experienced it. In a few months (depending on how many backlinks you can get) things will become more predictable.
Here’s a related question I want to throw out to Griz and some of the folks here who have been around a while. I’ve been dinking around with tech support all day for a piece of software I use that will go unnamed (for now). The support guy pointed out that one of my sites is sandboxed (it had been on page 1 #7 a few weeks ago) and said:
I already knew the site is sandboxed, but the part about G testing the site’s relevancy intrigued me. There’s a lot of BS circulating about how the G does things, but I thought this might worth a few seconds of semi-educated guessing. Fire away.
Hey Grizz. Thanks for your help. I really appreciated the help that you’ve given me a few months ago. You even answered a couple of my emails and took at look at a niche site and offered some suggestions. It’s good to see a fellow Canadian help out the world like you are. Hurray for a Cannuck like yourself (I’m from Vancouver, and we always refer to Canadians as Cannucks, lol) doing such good deeds!
Ok, enough flattery, let’s get down to the business of asking questions!
I have one website that makes probably an average of 130-170 a month. It’s peanuts I guess, but it’s really gives me confidence when I stare at those checks that come in the mail. It’s pretty much go a certain keyword dominated and it’s moving up in shorter tails too. But, I feel it’s never going to really earn lots of money. At best, I can only probably hope for 200-300 a month.
So, I need to get on with my blogging empire. I know I really need to have a couple hundred niche blogs – If I do, I’ll probably stumble on a couple that will do well if this is the case (and I can dominate the SERPS for each of them). I also need to get some powerful farms going on too.
So, I have started a new niche idea this weekend. My goal is to utterly dominate it. Now, I did some research on the niche I’m going after, bought a domain for it, and put a self –hosted wordpress blog up. This is going to be my main money site. I chose to actually buy the domain cause I can treat it like real-estate if I ever want to sell it.
I want to go with your 3 tier approach. Here is what I am planning:
1) the main money site (my own domain and a self hosted wordpress blog) which will have about 20 or so posts on it, each post targeting a long tail keyword. The information will be original stuff, the ideas borrowed from ezinearticles and the ranking SERP sites in the niche.
2) 10 or so supporting blogs (using blogger, blogspot, today, etc) each containing 3-5 posts. All of this content will be legit, rewritten stuff taken from exinearticles. The blog web addresses, names, and post titles’ keywords will target the Money Site’s main keyword or long tails.
3) The third tier will be stuff like squidoo pages, articlehub, goarticle, and some blogger accounts. I’m going to use something like Blog Content Wizard to spin this information. My goal is to make about 10 articles or 1-post blogs for each supporting blog; for each of these 10 articles, I will anchor the long tail keywords of the blog it supports.
So, in total, I will have the money site of 20 posts, supported by 10 separate blogs, each with 5 or so real posts, and each of these 10 blogs will be supported by 10 crappy, search engine orientated articles/blogs. In total, there will be about 100 blogs and probably a total of 150 or so separate posts.
What do you think of this? I expect this is going to take me about 2 weeks of 5-7 hour days to get this all down (and the use of something like Blog Content Wizard for the lowest tier stuff).
I feel, when I get this done, I will have a pretty good chance to dominate the niche, especially with the help of your niche support.
Now, there are currently, on the main keyword, about 18k a month. But there are a decent number of long and mid tail keywords that probably could bring in another 10-40k searches a month.
My main question is, for the supporting sites, should I use the “main” keyword as the blog addresses, name, and title posts, or should I go after the long tail keywords instead. Or a mix? And what about the 3rd tier articles? Should they be geared around the main keyword while providing anchored links to the supporting blogs, which in turn are geared around the long tail keyword? A bit confused here. Or maybe it doesn’t matter in the end.
I think, at the very least, this blog network could evolve into a pretty good farm site if the niche fails to make money.
Thanks so much Grizz!
I found myself on the first page of G for my main niche keyword .
It has about 8250000 results.I was elated.But now I realize it is G dance and I may end up in the last page very soon.I am prepared not to be disappointed.
@ Roadking,did you submit to any article directory to get your site indexed?If so did you rewrite your post as Grizz had advised before submitting?Or did you submit a fresh post to article directory?
Which article directory you used?
Hi Griz,
I am a new follower and have learned so much from you in the last couple of days.
My question right now: I started IM last Oct. I have fallen into many distractions along the way and felt like was conquering the learning curve until I realized I had put Adsense up on my sites from the very beginning.
I have 10 or so sites, with some having a lot more attention than others and some looking more promising than others.
Anyway, I went in today and took Adsense off all my sites for now as I feel like I don’t have decent traffic on any. (Kinda painful because I was hoping for my first G check this month….real close!) I also went into my Adsense account and made these URLs inactive.
Is this the right thing to do until I start receiving decent traffic?
The hardest thing for me is feeling like I have to “wait” even longer until I start seeing monetary benefit. I have a 90 day plan (10 days into it) to work on 4 blogs and build as many backlinks and traffic as I can in the next 3 months.
One more question: When you talk about your 2000 word post, is that something you do on a supporting site in the beginning? Or do I do it on my money site? I was taught to schedule 6 months worth of content in 350 word articles that post every 3-4 days using related keywords to my main niche phrase.
Thank you so much for your wisdom and help!
April
I also typed out a pretty long comment and now it is gone?
Griz, couple of questions…How does social network traffic viewed in terms of the serps, etc…? Does this have the same effect as backlink placement and article posting or no?
How long does it take for an article to appear on EzineArticles? I submitted a few articles about 7-10 days ago and not seeing them yet. Do all of the article posting sites operate this way?
@Road King,It seems your long post has disappeared.
@Griz,I have a question.I need to use my different key words as anchored link to rank well in G for that key word……….In the first three search results.
But do I need to show different pages instead of the main page ie the home page in those anchored back links used with my long tail key words?
Can any one tell me exactly what helps in improving page rank even though it is not of much importance.What ultimately counts is traffic that converts.But it makes one feel good to get good page rank.
Hey Griz,
Thanks to you I’m now blogging with Today.com as well. LOL. Looks like i have to set aside two hours a day just to keep up with your comment sections everywhere.
BTW, you now rank number one on the home page for traffic and action - you go my friend.
I’m happy to report that my Adsense revenue is growing and it is a lovely sight indeed.
Grizz congrats you got the $50 for the 3rd place in the bloggers who are “less about popularity and more about progress” LMAO! Well done! http://blog.today.com/blog/2009/03/10/february-blog-awards-rewards/
@Road king,thanks for the reply.You really inspired me.
@Steward
Your site is so ugly when I clicked on it and gave me the same chills as when I get letters from the IRS. In fact it looks like an IRS page. Is your real job a gubment web master? lol
Griz,
I hate to be such a Noobsticle but could you look at 2 websites.
Serp #1 and #2 for the search PET URNS. #2 has way more backlinks than #1. I see this a lot in different niches and it drives me crazy. It makes me wonder WTF is going on.
Maybe I’m looking at these sites in the middle of a G dance or maybe a site is climbing fast and just hasn’t won the top spot yet. Is G that illusive?
BK
You are right that most people will not do what you tell them to do…I try explaining to people and then I just give up because they just don’t get it or don’t actually do what I suggested to help them make more $$$ online…you must be one heck of a patient person
Hi this is absolutely the best site on make money with adsense ever! Without boring the pants of you – I have been out of work due to the credit crunch and tried to build a few sites mostly as an ebay affiliate partner. My earnings just cover my cost, but the most important part is that I learnt how to set a site up etc which for me is completely new. I also started to dabble with adsense and for the last two weeks I have been reading tons of adsense articles and getting totally lost. Then today I found your site and everything at last makes sense – a million thanks
I have a kind of popular today.com bog. How do I put adsnes on it. when I try and authenticate it, it never authenticates to google adsense. Does blogger do better at this?
I finally opened up an easier to use blog, on blogger. Today.com is fine,but there’s not anywhere to put anything like Adsense. I kept my today.com blog, though.
@rhonds - the adsense on today is not your’s its todays - thats how they pay you for posting/traffic! Blogger you can add your own Adsense code - if you are approved into the program
@grizz - guess you got the email from Google re the new “interest based advertising” - I’d like to hear your thoughts…
Griz:
For the past 10 days I have read, and read, and read your prolific information. I’ve even printed relevant information so I could study it away from my computer… lol (Even when I’m away I’m there in mind)
So I’ve created Nine (9) blogs so far — the latest implementing a niche which includes adsense content: “How To Make Money With Adsense In Home Pet Care” Now in some other post you reiterated that adsense topics generate good serps, and aside from back links, that is what I am in need of at this point — if I’m understanding you correctly I should point (backlink) all my other (8) blogs to this primary blog? … And once I get some traffic implement adsense ads? Am I getting it?
I ask questions, my friend.
And I direct my questions to those who have experience.
Thank you for sharing yours….
Griz:
Please provide me with a simple favor and criticism if applicable.
Please Google “Make money in home pet care” and not that my today.com blog is #1 — at this point. Is everything in proper order, links, etc.
I am inviting constructive criticism from all!
-Kristine
I don’t like the “interest based advertising”.
Mary is interested in Dogs, then Mary goes searching for fine dining restaurants…is it really appropriate for restaurant/restaurant review sites to get dog food ads? hahaha
Thankyou. I had no idea that’s how today.com pays you, but I figured there was something there. Still waiting on Adsense to approve my Gadget Girl blog on Blogger.
# Tracey
Hi Tracey:
Thanks for your feedback. Griz’s teaching really works! Not that I didn’t believe, but this is my first crack at it…
Just for the record, I am looking to dominate the “How To” category of home pet care and my blogs cover a wide range of pet care subcategories.
Now I feel pretty stupid for asking this, but I am new and want to learn..
How do I utilize the Google Adwords tool? I will look around, but I would appreciate any assistance so I do it right?
Thank again.
-Kristine
-Kristine:
I’ve done the same thing you did. Rank well for terms nobody looks for.
To use the adwords tool you:
1. log in to adwords as if you were paying for advertising.
2. Click “Tools”
3. Click “Keyword Tool”
4. Enter the keywords/phrases you are interested in
5. Click “Get Key word ideas”
You’ll see a bunch of keywords and phrases come up. They will show the amount advertisers are paying for the phrase, the number of searches for last month, and the average number of searches per month.
In theory, the more searches and the higher bid per click, the more money that is available.
Remember that the bid amount is what the advertiser pays, not what you get. I usually get 20-25% of that amount.
Your term doesn’t get any searches. Look at something like “Insurance.” It gets 65,000 searches a months at $12.76. Big money potential. If you look at “snakes care” you see 46 searches a month for a nickel. Little money potential.
Now, the big money potential terms will have stiffer competition then the little money terms. I like to look for a middle money term that I can take over. I’ve been looking for items that charge $4-10/click and have 4,000-25,000 seaches a month. That’s what’s worked for me. Your results may vary.
sorry, I should have said “PET Insurance” not just “Insurance.”
Also, remember to select “Exact” match on the results.
YUP, I rank #1 for “make money with brain surgery” moohoohahaaaw… I have conquered the internet!
Hi, I first want to thank Griz for all that he does. Griz, it may sound cheesy but I honestly think if I can successfully apply what you teach, it will change my life. I appreciate what you do more than you will ever know!
This question is for anyone here who can answer! I have set up a bloglicio.us blog (thanks to janetra for recommending it–I really like it so far). For those who don’t know, bloglicio.us provides free Wordpress blog hosting. The only catch is that 10% of the Adsense ads shown on your blog will belong to bloglicio.us, which I am fine with.
My question is this: I know we are not supposed to add Adsense to our blogs until we have some traffic. However, my blog already has Adsense on it automatically because bloglicio.us uses it to show their own ads. Will I be sandboxed because my site is already monetized, even though I did not add the Adsense myself? Should I go ahead and add my own Adsense code since my site is already monetized anyway, or is it still better to wait?
Thanks for any help
Thanks Janetra, much appreciated
Great blog, Griz. And just like your other ones - the comment sections are absolutely loaded with knowledge!
Hey Griz!
I recently stumbled across your sites, and let me just say I’m floored. I had no clue all of this was going on! After I picked myself up though and read more, I’m realizing I can do this too. So thanks for inspiring me!
I’ll be around to read more, and hopefully I’ll be up in my own niches soon!
Can anyone give me some free ways to build backlinks? The methods I am currently aware of are submitting articles (EzineArticles, GoArticles), Squidoo, Hubpages, Griz’s Niche Support.
Hi Griz, I really enjoy yor Sites, Im a complete nobz on make money online, Been reading your sites for many days now (seen simple steps to implement) my native language is SPANISH and I really like to build niches blogs for spanish people so my question is can I implement all you are teaching here? can I submit all my spanish articles on those sites you said (english articles sites) may they work the same way as if were written in english? Can I automate the hole process with software even know my sites and articles are in spanish?
Or do you recommend stay with english sites and articles?
Sorry for all of this “off topic” questions, but I really want to know what do you think about it.
Thank you and keep up feeding us with such great inf….
A question for Griz or anyone else,
According to statcounter, this morning a visitor from Austria did a search on a Gibson EDS 1275 guitar and came to my Blogger page on the Gibson EDS 1275 and left via a google ad. Six hours later that click has not been registered with Adsense. Anyone have any idea why?
GRIZ:
Just my humble thanks and appreciation for all the info and advise, and a CONGRATULATIONS on winning the recognition award here at Today.com
Rock On!
Scott
Read my answer to roadking, jeff.
Thanks, Booboo. So many comments I missed the question and your answer.
Hi Grizzly,
thanks for your posts that have given me the courage to go ahead. I have some questions, may be very basic but i need to ask them
1) What is the best tool to check the back links with a particular anchor text for a website or webpage?
2) I have a website with more than 100 pages. I am trying to target a keyword per page. Is it right strategy? I want to create the back links for every page with the keyword as the anchor text. Or should i make other websites for targetting the all keywords?
3) To create the back links, there are many free platforms like blogger, hubpages, wordpress and many others. Suppose i want to create the 10 back links to one of my web page. Then should I:
a) Create one blog on blogger or wordpress and create 10 posts, each post pointing to the webpage of the main site?
b) Create 10 blogs on a single server like blogger, with a single post and each pointing to the page of the main site with given anchor text as keyword?
c) Create one blog on each platform. Means one blog on blogger, another on wordpress, another page on hubpages, one article on articles base, one article on ezine articles and …… Mean creating 10 posts on 10 different servers each pointing to one main webpage for a given keyword?
4) Another question. If i have a blog with 10 or more posts. Is it OK to llink every post to a different pages of a website for some keywords. OR should i create another blog for the new keyword for another page of the main site?
i m sorry if i am asking the very basic things
Imran.
Just to confirm what Grizz says about Social Traffic.
A couple days ago, one of my websites was included in someone’s stumble upon campaign. Now, this website in question normally gets about 250 visits from Google search traffic, 100 direct type ins, and 100 from other.
So that’s about 450 a day, on average. The site makes about 4-5 bucks a day in affiliate sales, and about 1 buck a day via adsense.
The past three days, because of someone’s stumble upon campaign, I’ve been getting between 1500-2000 people a day, instead of 450.
Do you think my revenue would go up? nope, in fact, it’s gone down. Thanks to stumble upon, I’ve been smartpriced. Now, I did see a couple more affiliate sales (16, when about 5-10 is average), and the first day, i had 1 or 2 more ad clicks. However, this could be just part of the search traffic–my sales fluctuate sometimes.
The other two days have seen no increase in add clicks and no more affiliate sales, despite having 4 times the traffic. In fact, instead of my normal 20 cents a click, i am now getting .05 a click. Thanks stumbleupon. Next time, stumble somewhere else…
ajtyne:
Get ready for a heck of a long post…
All you need at this stage is Google Keyword Tool.
#1: Put a niche idea into the search box of the Google keyword tool. You then want to analyze the traffic. The ideal is to aim for a niche keyword that brings in about 30k a month. However, if you are first cutting your teeth in the world of internet marketing, you may want to try something with less competition, around 3-5k a month. 30k is doable for sure, especially if there is not much competition. If there is competition though, you will need lots of backlinks. Make sure you are selecting the US (or ALL English speaking countries) in the Google keyword tool. Then from the scroll down menu, make sure you select the “Show ALL” — this will let you see the CPC (how much money per ad click).
#2. Now, you have a couple choices here. You can pick a niche keyword with a a lot of traffic (20k+) a month. You need to consider the CPC as well. if the niche has 20k a month and the CPC is say around a 1.00. You can count on getting the bulk of that traffic if you can get #1 Google spot. CPC, depending on the niche, can be 1% to 10%. Let’s be very generous and say 10 percent of the people will click on your ad. With say 30k people a month, that’s about 1k a day visiting your site and 100 a day clicking on your ad. Google usually pays about 20% of the CPC you see, so that’s about $20 bucks a day you can get from that site if you dominate the single keyword.
Now, it’s important not to only focus on the single keyword phrase, but look at the ‘niche’ as a whole. Maybe the main keyword only gets 5k a month, but there are a dozen other long tail keywords (e.g. keyword = pet care, long tail = how to car for your pets), each getting 1k a month…If you can dominate all of them, you could get that 30k a month in total.
You can still go after niches that only have 1000 people a month, but the CPC needs to be 5+ bucks or so to make it worth it. More money per click means you need less people to make the same amount.
#3 After you select the niche, you need to find out the competition. You can throw down some money for keyword elite, which will help find the backlinks. You can also download SEO Firefox extension (type in Google, it’s the first page that comes up) which will give you the Google page rank and yahoo backlinks next to each search item in Google. You want to make sure that the niche you are selecting does not have that much competition. Now, a lot of people get caught up in Page Rank. As a rule of thumb, type the keyword you are targeting in Google and look at the comp that shows up. The top 3 results will be your main benchmark for how hard it will be. If you see a bunch of high PR sites come up (4+), it could take some work. Note, you can still beat high PR sites if their backlinks ar crappy and/or their anchor tags are not optimized for the keyword. However, if you see a lot of PR 0-2 sites with few backlinks (<50), well it will be easy to dominate the niche. You can get the number of backlinks from the SEO Firefox extension. You should of course to a analysis of their backlink anchor tags. Keyword elite will do this for you.
SO that’s how you pick out a niche and decide.
Now, regarding your question: It sounds like you have a general site (non-pet related topics). This is very good. You can use this site to provide powerful links to specific niche sites. Focus on getting the PR of your general site up. Don’t worry about trying to make money with it. This site should be used to support niche sites. Simply write a post on your general site about a specific topic, say raising dogs. Make sure you use SEO titles and the keyword or long tail phrase you want to target (this is the post that you want to eventually link to your pet niche site). Now, for that specific post you need to get some good backlinks. Create a dozen hubs/squidoo pages about pet-raising. Create a dozen blogger blogs about pets and dog-raising. Various topics related to pets. Don’t link them yet. Then for those hubs/supporting blogs, focus on getting lots of crappy backlinks (forum links, guestbook links, etc). You can also get good quality links from other people to your general site’s post about dogs. In a couple months (2-3), your dozen or so blogs and 10 hubs may have some PR ranking now. Then, slowly start to link each of those supporting blogs to the general site’s post about dogs. Now you are transferring all the link juice and PR from those 20 or so sites to a single, targeted post about dogs. NOW you link that post directly to your niche site. Watch that niche website skyrocket up the serps…
That’s how you can make your general site work for your niche sites.
Phew, in true grizzly fashion, I’ve rambled on forever. He must be a bad influence…
Big question from a fellow Canadian.
I am setting up a review site for reviewing a major service. Two major audiences for the site: those who come to post reviews, and those who come to read reviews.
The first audience, review posters, will largely be social traffic. But the second audience, review readers, will be search traffic.
How do I manage these two audiences while making money? When I start the site, I will mostly be targeting social traffic as to feed the site with reviews, but I don’t want this to damage my site for when bringing in search traffic.
One thought I had: set up two sites, and bring the reviews over.
Thoughts?
Hi fellows,
How easy is it to beat the ranking for PR2 sites which come up top in the serp with around 500-1000 backlinks each?
In cases like this, should we be looking somewhere else to find a better keyword phrase?
Thanks,
B