Download at WoweBook.Com Google Advertising Tools Download at WoweBook.Com Download at WoweBook.Com SECOND EDITION Google Advertising Tools Harold Davis with David Iwanow Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo Download at WoweBook.Com Google Advertising Tools, Second Edition by Harold Davis with David Iwanow Copyright © 2010 O’Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or [email protected]. Editor: Julie Steele Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery Production Editor: Sarah Schneider Interior Designer: David Futato Production Services: Appingo, Inc. Illustrator: Robert Romano Printing History: November 2009: Second Edition. January 2006: First Edition. O’Reilly and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Google Advertising Tools, Second Edition, the image of a capuchin monkey, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Re- illy Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information con- tained herein. TM This book uses RepKover, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. ISBN: 978-0-596-15579-7 [M] 1258128042 Download at WoweBook.Com Table of Contents Preface . xiii Part I. Making Money with a Website 1. Creating Successful Websites . .......................................... 3 The Taxonomy of Success 4 Entertainment 5 Useful Free Services and Software 6 Magazines and Newspapers 8 The Blogosphere 9 Practical Information: Content Sites and Niches 10 E-Commerce Sites 11 Tools for Measuring Popularity 12 Using the Google Toolbar 12 Let the Google Search Engine Be Your Guide 13 Finding Popularity with Alexa 15 How Much Content Is Enough? 17 Presenting Content 18 Page and Site Design 18 Page Size 19 Images, Video, and Podcasting 20 Keeping Content Fresh 20 Positioning Ads 21 Content Architecture 23 Separating Content from Design 23 Server-Side Includes 25 PHP Includes 27 Optimal Include Layout 28 Where Does Content Come From? 29 The Power of Community 29 Action Items 31 v Download at WoweBook.Com 2. Creating Effective Marketing Plans . .................................... 33 Telling a Story 33 The Elevator Pitch 36 Basics of Marketing 36 Creating a Plan 38 Creating a Checklist 40 Naming Your Site 40 Introducing SEM 41 Comparing SEO with SEM 42 Crafting the Blended Campaign 43 Action Items 43 3. Driving Traffic to a Website . ........................................... 45 Submitting Your Sites to Search Engines 46 Important Search Engines for Submission 47 Submission Tools 47 Working with Google 49 Taking Advantage of Site Mapping 54 Working with Directories 57 Understanding Taxonomies 58 Getting Open Directory Project Listings 58 Getting Yahoo! Directory Listings 62 Becoming Popular by Generating Inbound Links 63 The Best Inbound Links 65 Finding Sites to Make a Link Request 65 Making the Link Request 66 The Power of the Press Release 68 Unleashing Your Inner Blogger 71 Using Syndication Feeds to Your Benefit 73 Creating Feeds 74 Telling the World About Your Feed 75 Submitting Feeds 76 Creating Email Lists and Surmounting the Spam Problem 77 Action Items 78 4. Nuts and Bolts of SEO . ................................................ 81 SEO’s Evolution 82 The SEO Advantage 83 What SEO Can (and Cannot) Do 83 Free Tools 85 Google Webmaster Tools 86 Commercial SEO Analysis Software 88 More About How Your Site Appears to a Bot 89 vi | Table of Contents Download at WoweBook.Com Images 89 Links 90 File Formats 90 Viewing Your Site with an All-Text Browser 91 Excluding the Bot 92 The robots.txt File 94 Meta Robot Tags 95 Meta Information 96 Design for SEO 99 Site Design Principles 100 Words and Keyword Density 100 Site Design Principles 105 Using PageRank 105 Linking 109 Inbound links 110 Outbound Links 111 Cross Links 111 Avoiding Overly Aggressive SEO 112 Google’s Prohibitions 112 Why Not to Be Overly Aggressive 115 Action Items 115 5. Making Money with Affiliate Programs .. 117 Kinds of Ad Programs 118 Understanding Affiliate Programs 119 Mechanics of the Process 120 Creatives 123 Areas of Concern 126 Working with an Affiliate Program 130 Benefits of Affiliate Aggregators 130 Finding an Affiliate Aggregator 131 Ad Hoc Affiliation 145 The Amazon.com Associate Program 148 Action Items 153 6. Making Money by Hosting Advertising . 155 Understanding Cost Per Click (CPC) 156 Contextual Relevance 158 How Good Is the Context? 160 Serving Ads 161 Dollars and Cents 163 CPC Vendors Compared 165 Placing Ad Units on Your Site 166 Table of Contents | vii Download at WoweBook.Com Signing Up 166 Choosing the Kinds of Ads 167 Selecting Ad Formats 168 Adding Code to Your Pages 173 Display and Banner Ads 176 Action Items 177 7. Understanding the Google Behemoth ... 179 The Parts of Google 180 Blogger 183 Book Search 183 Directory 183 Gmail 183 GOOG-411 184 Google Health 184 Maps 184 Product Search 185 Scholar 185 YouTube 185 Content Versus Search 186 Anatomy of a Search Query 187 Google Syntax and Operators 189 The Rules of Simple Search 189 Effective Searching 190 Advanced Search 191 The Search Results Page 191 The Automated Ad Broker: AdWords 193 Action Items 195 Part II. Cashing in with AdSense 8. Working with AdSense . .............................................. 199 Applying for an AdSense Account 199 Setting Account Options 203 Payment Preferences 203 Ad Display Preference 205 Account Access 205 Reviewing Payment History 206 Filing Tax Information 206 AdSense Programs 207 AdSense for Content Ad Settings 211 Ad Type 212 viii | Table of Contents Download at WoweBook.Com Ad Format and Colors 213 Ad Channels 218 Getting the Code 218 Managing Ads 224 Custom Ad Colors 225 Using Channels 227 Applying Competitive Filters 229 Site Authentication, Ad Review, and Allowed Sites 230 AdSense for Search Settings 230 AdSense for Feeds 235 AdSense for Domains 239 Video Units 243 Linking Google AdSense to Google Analytics 246 Action Items 247 9. Making Sense of AdSense ... ........................................... 249 Fundamentals of Navigation 249 Understanding the Metrics 253 Running Reports 254 Saving a Report as a Template 255 Choosing a Date Range 256 Page, Unit, or Ad Impressions 257 Aggregate Versus Channel Data 257 Statistics 259 Downloading a CSV File 260 Other Program Performance 261 Search Performance 261 How Are Your Parked Domains Doing? 262 Optimization Tips 263 Site Diagnostics 264 Your Earnings 265 Tools Beyond AdSense for Tracking 266 Listening to Web Logs 267 Web Analytic Software 273 Action Items 274 Part III. Working with AdWords 10. Using AdWords . .................................................... 277 Signing Up for an Account 277 Creating Your Account 277 Creating Your First Campaign 280 Table of Contents | ix Download at WoweBook.Com Bidding and Budget 282 Advanced Settings 283 Creating an Ad 284 Crafting an Ad 286 Choosing Keywords 288 Providing Payment Information and Activating Your Account 289 Graduating 290 Ad Campaigns and Ad Groups 291 Creating and Editing Ad Campaigns 292 Creating a New Campaign 293 Editing Campaign Settings 299 Ad Groups 308 Getting a My Client Center Account 312 Action Items 314 11. Improving Performance . ............................................. 315 Monitoring Your AdWords Activity 315 Understanding Your Campaign Summary 317 Drilling Down into a Campaign 320 Understanding Ad Group Performance 321 Campaign Management Tools 325 Using the Ads Diagnostic Tool 326 Optimizing Your Ads 330 Action Items 339 12. The Zen of AdWords . ................................................ 341 The Customer Life Cycle 341 Keywords 342 Getting Seen 343 Test Your Ads 344 Landing Pages That Work 344 Tracking 345 Balance 345 The Path of Indirection 345 Success via Iteration 345 Targeting the Competition 347 Estimating Traffic 347 Exclusion 350 Excluding Sites and Categories 350 IP Exclusion 352 Action Items 353 x | Table of Contents Download at WoweBook.Com 13. Advanced Performance Monitoring . 355 Using AdWords Reports 355 Kinds of Reports 356 Creating a Placement/Keyword Report 357 Conversion Tracking 362 Understanding Conversion Tracking 363 Tracking PayPal Purchases 367 Tracking Visitors to a Crucial Page 373 Google Analytics 374 Getting Started with Google Analytics 376 Using Google Analytics 379 Website Optimizer 383 Action Items 383 14. AdWords beyond CPC . ............................................... 385 Display Ad Builder 385 Mobile Ads 392 Video Ads 395 Advertising on TV 396 Action Items 399 Index . 401 Table of Contents | xi Download at WoweBook.Com Download at WoweBook.Com Preface In the five years since the first edition of Google Advertising Tools was published, Google tools for making money from content with advertising (Google AdSense) and for cre- ating contextual advertisements (Google AdWords) have become even more important to every