Content

What is the Panda update?

Why?

How To Avoid Panda Problems With Your AdSense

Don't Make The Page Useless

Place Content Before Ads

Avoid Overdoing The Ads

This article is part one of a three part series:

Part 1: Is AdSense Right For You?

Part 2: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (You Are Here!)

Part 3: Panda Problems: Laying Out Your Website To Avoid Panda Attack

Once you're set up with AdSense you'll soon want to get a firm grip on the reins of the beast. You're probably obsessively checking the ads on your site to see if they're working, and just what kind of ads Google think are appropriate to show on your site.

Before we begin we should point out the above approach isn't the most helpful way to work out just what's being shown. While we advocate a proactive stance on managing what ads appear on your site there's so many other factors (such as location and personalisation) which make this approach the least effective way to keep an eye on things. Better ways are to use the ad review centre or ask your community for their thoughts on the adverts.

Managing your ads through AdSense is easy and you're likely to want to do it for a number of reasons:

1. You want ads to fit your audience (The Good)

2. You want to avoid advertising competitors (The Bad)

3. You want to keep out low quality ads (The Ugly)

Why would you want to do any of these things? Well, you want ads which fit your audience because if the ads do fit your audience, they're more likely to click - meaning (some) cash for you!  The flip side of this is you want to keep out low quality ads to avoid reducing your CTR. You also want to keep your site free of crappy "One weird trick" or "One tip for a flat belly" ads which could bring your entire site into disrepute. Finally, and quite simply, you don't want to advertise competitors on your website.

Get Your Ads Audience Fit

To get a rough fit for ads and your audience, head over to the "Allow & Block ads" tab in Google AdSense and click "General Categories"

Here you will see a ton of categories which you can allow and block with the slider on the left hand-side.

If you already know your audience, you can make sure that only certain categories appear to your visitors - hopefully improving certain click through rates for your site. Don't underestimate the ability for a site to advertise across visitors’ interests however, it's not as simple as showing a tech ad because you run a tech site; these people drive, eat, insure and impulse purchase as much as the next person. 

If you're unsure about your audience we suggest you run all AdSense categories to begin with.

From the General Categories view you can see the % of ad impressions and earnings - by looking at these you can see what earns you the most, and what takes up the most impressions in your inventory.

To improve this in the future you could block underperforming categories - categories which serve a large number of ad impressions, but don't provide you with at least an equal percentage of your clicks. It's usually best to investigate any of these categories by looking at the sub categories and working out where the "drop" is. 

Ideally, by blocking (sub)categories which under-perform you will populate your site with more ads from better performing categories. Keep track month-to-month and see what improvements come from you actions. It's also worth noting that there is a limit of 50 blocked categories and sub-categories, so choose what you block wisely.

One Tip For Super Sensitive Categories 

In addition to the general categories you'll want to take a look at the "sensitive" categories. This includes sections which are more likely to produce offensive and, to be honest, crap, ads. The sensitive ads categories include things like Dating, Drugs & Supplements, Get Rich Quick, Sex, Religion, Weight Loss and even Black Magic - i.e. the kind of thing you wouldn't necessarily talk about at the dinner table with your grandmother.

These are all set to "blocked" by default, but it's worth checking if you can unblock any of them if they fit with your target market. Once you've done this, you're set up, right? No more rubbish ads?

Not quite. The content network which AdSense runs from is simply gigantic.

There's no way Google is going to manage this for you, so you (and they) have to trust that advertisers are honest about what their ads are about.

And, while you may block the Dating category on your website, if a wiley advertiser wants to pretend that in fact their advert for "Local Ladies Of Unsure Virtue In Your Area" is indeed about investment, gardening or any of your un-blocked categories there's really nothing stopping them.

That is, there's nothing stopping them except you (and the deterrent of being penalised by Google if they get caught).

Ad Blocking In Google AdSense

The main ways to stop poor advertisers, or a competitor, from advertising on your site are by: 

1. Blocking URLS

2. Blocking AdWords Accounts

3. Blocking Networks

All of these require vigilance and keeping an eye on the AdSense on your site. You can do this by hanging around on your site enough to see AdSense (fairly ineffective, but can catch the big problems) or using the ads review centre (good for catching the smaller issues).

Blocking URLS

Blocking URLs is the best way of dealing with competitors. You know their URLs so you can simply add the URLs to the URL block list to stop any ads showing. Bear in mind however that they may use separate domains for landing pages - so you'll still have to keep an eye out!

If you want to block everything from the domain “example.com” this is all you need to put in the URL field - this will catch:

example.com

www.example.com

example.com/page

www.example.com/page

subdomain.example.com

If you'd like to just on a more specific level, you merely need to be more specific. Full details here can be found here.

If you're running your own advertising on the content network, you may want to block your own website from appearing on the page - after all, you needn't advertise your own site to those already on it.

Blocking Accounts

One of the best ways to keep an eye on the ads which AdSense serves  to your site is to use the Ads Review Centre. This shows you a selection of the advertisers and the ads they are showing. You can scroll through the lists to see ads displaying and, most importantly, block individual ads and individual AdWords accounts.

To block individual ads, just click the red block symbol.

To block whole AdWords accounts, use the cog which appears when you hover over the questionable ad.

If you've made a mistake, or you want to review blocked AdWords accounts you need to view the "settings" page (which allows you to unblock advertisers) and to review individual blocked ads you should look at the "blocked" page.

By default AdSense accounts are set to display all ads without review. You can, if you have time, set ads to "hold" until you've reviewed them. This can be a time consuming and expensive - although you are guaranteed agreeable ads on your site. For the most part we recommend letting AdSense do its thing.

Blocking networks

Networks are the partners which Google has joined up with to provide ads. These are usually large ad buying agencies (many of which you'll recognise). Most of the time you'll find that networks play along nicely, however there are occasions that you'll want to turn ad networks off these could be:

1. Serving Incorrect Region/Language Specific Ads: While many networks are quite clever with their location targeting you will occasionally find a network making a mistake - for example, serving German language ads on your UK site. Many networks are broken into regions (for example: AOL: Advertising.com (JP), AOL: Advertising.com (UK) and AOL: Advertising.com (US)) and turning off ads from certain regions can fix this problem.

2. Consistently Poor Ads: It is fairly rare, but it does happen. We know that even massive companies aren't infallible. If you find a network constantly providing poor quality ads, your best bet is to just switch them off - this tends to be less of a headache than hunting down individual ads they may be serving. 

You can turn any individual network on or off in the "Ad networks" tab under "Allow & block ads" with the slider. Because these advertisers compete for the inventory of your site it's better to have as many networks activated as possible - the more competition there is, the higher the price will be pushed.

What Now?

You're probably pretty set up for the time being - but it's a good idea to keep your eye on the ads and look for small ways in which you can improve the quality and relevance of ads served. Finding a little time each day to have a look at the ad review centre, or responding to community requests to get rid of certain types of ad can improve the overall quality of your ads and in turn the first impression your site gives.

Next: Panda Problems!

AdSense, Google's display advertising platform, has a lot going for it, from the vast pool of advertisers it attracts to its excellent tracking and ease of set-up. 

You may have some concerns though. What about all those blogs with the terrible "one tip for a flat belly" ads running on them? Will your site immediately come to resemble one of those? Or worse, what if you get it right, but you've set up your ad templates in a way which sees you penalised by Google's recent Panda updates? Your hard-fought rankings could be savaged.

Never fear though, we're on hand to offer advice and guidance as to what you need to consider before belly-flopping into the world of AdSense! 

This article is part one of a three part series:

Part 1: Is AdSense Right For You? (You Are Here!)

Part 2: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Part 3: Panda Problems: Laying Out Your Website To Avoid Panda Attack

How Does AdSense Work?

Google AdSense works by you, the ‘publisher’, placing a small snippet of code on your website to display any ads which AdSense wishes to deliver to your page. A pool of advertisers bid for these ad spaces on your, and others’, website. This collection of websites is known as the Google Display Network. The higher the quality of the publisher's website, and the tougher the competition for placement on that website, the higher the cost is to the advertiser and the more profit to be shared between the publisher and Google. Ads are placed on a publisher’s site based on page content and general site affinity - as well as things like the visitor's search history.

When a visitor to your site clicks on an ad you get paid, Google gets paid and hopefully the advertiser gets a customer. Sounds like winners all round surely? Yes, most of the time but there are some drawbacks  - we'll deal with these in the Limitations of AdSense section below.

Is AdSense Right For You?

Before you begin you need to know whether AdSense is an advertising solution that works for your website. There are two main types of websites out there – ‘ecommerce’ sites which directly sell services and goods, and ‘content’ websites such as blogs, forums and social sites.

If you run a content website you should feel confident that AdSense is for you. Why? Because you don't have another revenue stream to interrupt. AdSense is good for websites which don't have a direct way of making money through a product or service on offer.

In that case your consideration should not be so much whether display advertising is best for your website, but more whether AdSense display advertising is the best option for you: in most cases it will be at the very least a happy medium. Because of the sheer size of the AdSense network there's almost no limit to the kinds of niches which AdSense can find relevant ads for. Even if your direct ad sales pay better and are more directly relevant to your visitors, AdSense is a handy tool to fall back on for remnant or backfill campaigns (i.e. the impressions that remain once your premium advertisers have had their share).

However, if you do have a product to sell, or some other means of converting visitors into cash, then AdSense probably isn't for you.

Why You Shouldn't Use AdSense (Or Any Advertising) On Your Ecommerce Site

With an ecommerce site you're likely to have built your site as a funnel from the first landing page (e.g. via PPC, organic or direct traffic) through to your checkout/conversion page. You have probably spent a great deal of time working out what's the smoothest, quickest way to turn a fresh visitor into a customer. Sticking an ad on the page is like putting a "diversion" sign on the 100m track.

Every AdSense placement is an attempt to distract visitors from your website to their product page and into their funnel - and you certainly don't want that.

There's even a fair chance that your competitors are running AdSense campaigns which, as you're in the same industry, will have a great deal of relevancy to your site and your customers. You wouldn't want to advertise your competitors' products next to your own would you?

If that hasn't dissuaded you from running AdSense on an ecommerce site (or you have a hybrid site containing a mixture of content and ecommerce elements) here are a few quick rules to keep in mind:

1. Keep your competitors off the page: You can do this fairly easily within AdSense using the allow and block ads facility. We'll cover this in a later AdSense blog entry.

2. Don't advertise at key conversion points: This should be a no-brainer, but it's something that can slip through when defining advertising areas of a website template. Advertising on the checkout or shopping basket pages is the same as suggesting that the customer really must shop around first!

3. Don't place ads in better positions than products: Ad placement is a tricky proposition in the post-Google Panda world, but as a general rule of thumb they should be a secondary source of income and be treated as such.

AdSense - What You Need To Know

Once you've decided that AdSense is for you there are a few things you need to keep in mind regarding the rules and applications of AdSense.

Getting Set Up

Getting set up with AdSense is simple. Head over here and sign up with your Google account.  Once set up you can start creating ads on the "My Ads" page. Here you choose your ad type (text, image & rich media, or both), ad size, and if you're using text - the way that appears.

What's Best?

When it comes to AdSense ad units there's a desire to just put "the best" out there - whatever that is. It used to be that image/display advertising would bring better returns than text ads, but this isn't as clear cut any more. 

The position pushed by Google is that a mix of image and text ads is the best option as it makes the advertising pool massive - more advertisers means more bids for positions,  means the better rate you (and Google) get. While this may be the case it really does depend on your site. 

We suggest tracking performance over time and testing to see what combination of text and image advertising works for you. For example, you may want to test whether having text ads in one location improves the CPC of other ad units across the page or if visitors are more likely to be drawn to image ads when they're placed within text blocks.

Regarding ad sizes, this usually depends on the layout of your site, but a variety is encouraged. We've found that large MPUs (366x280) tend to earn a higher CPC than ads of other shapes and sizes - but this again may be due to their prominent positioning on most of the pages they're present on. Generally speaking however you want to tend towards larger, newer ad unit sizes as older sizes (such as 468x60 and 120x600) are no longer as widely supported by advertisers.

If you currently have an old template for your site which contains smaller, less popular ad-types, updating this to allow new ad formats can be a very quick way to improve AdSense revenues.

Limits of AdSense

There are a few limits to AdSense - and falling foul of Google's policies can see you booted out of the AdSense club pretty fast.

There is a maximum of 3 content ad units per page and only one of Google’s new, and frankly giant, 300x600px ad units per page. Google put limits on the number of units per page to avoid publishers putting dense collections of AdSense on a page making it impossible to avoid clicking ads (this is against the rules) or, alternatively, providing millions of unseen impression.

Other limits include not making your ads look like content (and vice versa), aligning images with ads so the images look like they're part of the ad, placing other websites displaying AdSense ads in frames on your site, placing ads on sites with pop-ups, reloading ads on a cycle or encouraging accidental clicks in any way. In short, if there is an obvious way to game Google AdSense, it's been tried already and you're not going to last long if you try it!

What Now?

If you intend to run AdSense on your site you should get started by designing or updating your ad template and have a good read of the Google AdSense Ad Placement Policies document. Once you've got AdSense running you should begin to test different combinations of ad type across your pages and optimize what works best for you.

Next: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of Google AdSense

Your website is often your first, and perhaps only, chance to market your company’s products and services to online customers, so make the most of this opportunity by ensuring your website’s content is top notch.

Not only does it give viewers an instant impression of the quality of your company (glaring spelling and grammar errors do not bode well!), but high quality content can also help you rank higher in search engine results.

Content needs to be fresh – it’s important to regularly update the written text on your site. Make sure it engages with your target audience and is interesting enough to encourage people to return.

To help people find your site via search engines, include important keywords in your written content but only in context and where it is appropriate to do so. Definitely do not over-use keywords – this practice is known as keyword stuffing and not only will your content not read well, it can cause a webpage to be penalised as search engines will think it is spam. An example of this would be such a paragraph:

Are you looking for cheap gym equipment? We have cheap gym equipment for sale. Our website is the best for cheap gym equipment. Check out our cheap gym equipment now.

It’s important to create content that fulfils the needs of the people looking for the information. Most people start their online search for a product or service with an information-based query. At this early stage, they don’t want to be bombarded with sales pitches, so subtle sales messages are key here. Ensure that, above anything else, your content is useful.

Homebase’s website is a great example of this. The “help and advice” section on the site provides people with a range of “how to guides” for jobs such as laying laminate flooring, fitting locks and planting trees. Each guide is information-rich and details everything you need to know in easy-to-follow steps. Some of the guides feature videos too. Sales promotion is included in the form of a green button which reads “Choose from a range of flooring”. This button directs users to the retail part of the site, but it is a discrete, inoffensive effort that is not too “salesy”.

If you’d like more information about how SilverDisc can assist you with your website's content, contact us or send us an email at info@silverdisc.co.uk.

When it comes to online marketing there’s a lot to think about! Do you want more visitors arriving at your site, do you want more “free” traffic, are you struggling to manage the negative reviews your brand receives online, are people just not buying from your website?

Don’t despair, no matter what your needs are, there is an online marketing solution for you. Take a look at the table below to see what will best meet your goals:

Here at SilverDisc we’re experts in online marketing and we offer all of the above services, give us a call if you could do with some sound advice!

User generated content always seems like a good idea, after all: "content is king", right? Who better to write that content than those who are, hopefully, most engaged with your brand and those who use it regularly? On top of this, it's free, can make your offering more enticing to new users and often creates a ton of great long-tail pages in Google! What could possibly go wrong?

Whether you've got a blog with comments to manage, a collection of active social accounts, a forum, a niche social platform or even a Q & A site there's a few frustrations you'll run into along the way.  So, without further ado, here are our Top 5 Frustrations of User Generated Content:

1. "They're Not Using The Site Properly!"

When designing, redesigning or improving a website which contains a large amount of UGC you're likely to take into account the way information is structured and represented in the Google SERPs. You may think, for example, that subject lines could be used as title tags and appear as the titles of links on Google - after all, if niche/long-tail pages are likely to be created, we might as well make sure they're effectively ranked. Maybe you've also got a clever system of categories or tags which inform URLs of your pages and almost certainly would help improve rankings of these pages.

It doesn't matter*. While you can carefully craft what might be a perfect system for your UGC to rank effectively it doesn't mean any of your users will indulge you by using it correctly. Spelling mistakes will occur in title tags, content will be placed in the wrong category and you'll be forever sighing at the missed opportunities where great content will never be picked up just because it's just not been filed properly.

How To Deal With It: Firstly, deep breath - believe it or not, users are human. Not all of them are going to type perfectly, be willing to double-check their work or even be sober while using your website. Take solace in the fact that these people will also search with mis-spellings.

Secondly, reassess why this might be happening. Remember, these are invested and important human beings who actually enjoy your product, not your human-powered-long-tail-Google-rankings-machine. Maybe you need to take another look at your usability - does your help text actually help? Is it obvious what you can do on every page? Is there a part of your service "missing" which causes users to use your site in the way they do? Maybe it's time to plug that gap.

*It matters.

2.  You May Become Pen-pals With A Lawyer

Occasionally someone might use your site for the purposes of venting their anger at a company. If your site is large enough it's likely the content passed you by without much notice - especially if the complaint seemed a legitimate venting of anger at poor service.

Almost inevitably you'll receive a sternly worded letter from a lawyer representing the company. It turns out it's all your fault. Also, if the content isn't removed and you don't visit the company director and give him a foot massage you're going to court.

Many members of your site may be under the illusion that their rights extend to the internet from the real world. The burden of their free speech in fact falls on you, the publisher (in the UK at least).

What To Do: Check your moral compass and see if you think the right for this disgruntled person to speak their mind is worth fighting for. This check can be efficiently carried out by opening your wallet and seeing if you have thousands of pounds to throw into a fairly pointless legal case. Our suggested protocol is to 1. Ask the claimant which elements in particular they find defamatory 2. Remove these and 3. Cross your fingers they won't sue you anyway.

While this may seem like you're not standing up for some notion of freedom of speech you have to remember that in the UK, as the publisher, it is as if you have said these things. Can you truly say the comments in question are ones you can stand your name by, would you have made them? Take some time to assure the "censored" parties that their opinions are important, but explain the legal situation of the company.

3. Is It Bullying? Banter? Or Freedom of Speech? (Or Just, Like, Your Opinion Man)

You're forced to make judgements about anonymous human communications in their written forms between (usually) highly engaged and invested parties. Naturally, while attempting to take an even hand you would like to avoid alienating your core user base while also ensuring individual and usefully dissenting voices do not feel completely marginalised. Sounds simple enough, right?

Identifying bullying is difficult as the variety of human tempers means that you may be faced with a situation where some are happy to offer criticism, but are unable to receive it in return - and cry “Bullying”, while in another situation those who rightly feel victimised simply go quietly and disappear from your UGC community. Separating these kinds of interactions can sometimes seem impossible. 

Dealing With It: Bullying online has taken prominence in the online safety concerns of the general public - especially of minors. If minors use your site often then you really do need to have a good, anonymous and fast-reacting system for reporting and dealing with inappropriate content and bullying online. With more mature members of society there's plenty of scope for really annoying people, many of them willing to let you, and others, know about it. 

To deal with this the best policy is have a clear set of rules, ideally defined by the community, which can be applied rigorously. As long as the rules are consistently applied a set of expectations for how to act will emerge from your communities and it will, to some extent, become self-policing.  

4. It's Not My Brand?

Anyone having to work with UGC will soon find that they're dispossessed of the brand identity. While, yes, steering conversation is part of your job, those who interact with your brand will end up owning it. This can be great, there's nothing like a good community atmosphere for growing that community. However, negativity or closed communities can be off-putting to new users and even damage your brand.

Ultimately it's about association, if visitors feel like your brand is for "those kind of people" (who they happen to not get on with) they're going to be turned away. 

What To Do?: As mentioned above, steering conversation around a brand should be part of any UGC strategy - but an even better way to steer conversation is to attempt to bring certain key contributors "on side". You can offer privileges in exchange for their "on message" content. While this sounds like buying favours it needn't be so, you just need to make sure you're always promoting and rewarding the UGC of key contributors who are either representative of your target market, or aspirational to them. Remember, nothing looks better than having your brand defended by its users (as long as they don't rip the throat out of those with reasonable criticism).

5. Site Updates May Be The End Of The World

We've all seen it on Facebook, your friends who don't immediately begin to think of the SEO, usability and privacy implications of Facebook updates (i.e. normal people) join, create or "Like" a group along the lines of "I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK LAYOUT CHANGE IT BACK!!!!".

That's just for big sites right? Changes and redesigns to your brand's communication channels don't matter quite as much as that, do they?

Of course they do. Every minor change will be decried as the end of the site as you know it.

How To Deal With It: First, you should take a moment after all the hard work of the redesign and getting the thing launched to have a cup of tea and have a look at this image:

A lot of the time the reason users complain about changes to a site is not only because they're used to how it works but because they really feel they own it! This should be considered a good thing. 

To minimise the "backlash" it's advised you once again go to your most trusted users. If it's possible setting up a beta environment for these respected users can be enough to get them on side. Not only is it great for user feedback (you can find usability problems and fix them before they can even be complained about) it's perfect for having advocates who can help form future opinion.

User generated content can be the thing which makes the difference between a successful site and an inelegant belly-flop - it adds colour, flavour, traction to sites which might otherwise feel "stale". It's not just about "brand management" either, for example: can you now fathom a world where Amazon-style reviews aren't present? That's UGC too and without it many visitors find it hard to buy-in, let alone buy!

If you're considering using UGC on your site, just remember that it's not about your customers doing your work for you - it's about collaboratively making the experience better for everyone.

And remember, if it all sounds too complicated, we're always happy to help.