Create multiple 125 x 125 Image Ads for your blog using Google Ad Manager

I just finished setting up my ads for this blog using Google Ad Manager. Its very simple, and I would like to share this with my readers.

First you need to activate your Google Ad Manager Account, every Google Adsense account has Google Ad Manager enabled by default now, so just login to your Ad Manager Account.

Create Your Ad Slots

Suppose your are planning to to display 4 125 x 125 px image ads, you need to create 4 Ad-slots. For this you need to go to the inventory tab of your Ad Manager and click on “Create New Ad Slot”. Give a name like I have given the name “Asokans_125×125_1” for my first Ad Slot. You can give any name which is meaningful. Please note that there should not be any space in the Ad Slot name. Next select the size as 125 x 125 , next you should uncheck the Adsense Ads. You should also enter a description for the Ad Slot.

Follow the same procedure and create another 3 Ad Slots in the similar way, namely, Asokans_125×125_1Asokans_125×125_2, Asokans_125×125_3, Asokans_125×125_4 with the same settings, except the description.

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Google Ad manager for all Adsense users

Google yesterday announced that Google Ad Manager is enabled for all Google Adsense users. Earlier Ad Manager was only open through invitation. Google ad manager is useful if you are selling ads directly to your advertisers. The advantage is that if you do not have any ads booked for a particular slot or if the advertisement booked is expired then Google Adsense Ads will be displayed automatically if you enable this feature. Other biggest advantage is that you will be using a hosted ad manager on the Google server which should me reliable and your server does not need to bear the load of traffic. I had been using OpenX for a while but this was really slowing down my site. Now I am using Google Ad Manager as I had got an invitation for this earlier in March 2008.

If you have a Google Adsense account, you can sign-in here or you need to apply for a Google Adsense Account

Mattcutts the Google Web Spam Head

Mattcutts is the head of the Google web spam team. He joined Google in the year 2000. He did his PhD in at the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has an M.S. from UNC-Chapel Hill, and B.S. degrees in both mathematics and computer science from the University of Kentucky.

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Traffic from Google Image search

I was going through my traffic source on Google Analytics (Your Traffic Source) and found something interesting. I get a lot of traffic from image search. I really do something to get this and today I would just give you some tips to get your images listed for relevant keywords for Google Image Search. I do a lot of posts related to the resorts in Maldives on my other blog. I do use lots of images on this blog as I always travel with a camera ( canon Tx 1 ) and the texts in my posts are very less compared to the Images and Videos. If you search of Kanuhura Resort on Google  Image search, my blog images are listed first and I get a lot of traffic from this. This is just an example, but how does Google know that this image is of Kanuhura resort?

Optimizing your blog for Image search

Let me come back to the answer to the question that I came up. You need to tell Google or any search engine that the image is of so and so or give the information about the image and you do this using the Alt tag.

I use windows live writer to do my blog posts and it has an excellent feature to insert the alt tags. As you side on the image on the left side, I just need to enter the alternate text in the text box provided. By default, the image file name is inserted, but you need to edit it insert the right keywords or description of the image.

Using Alternate text for your images will be really worth the time you spend as your images get listed in Image search results and this is again opening up your traffic and chances of more back links.

Google Adsense Vs Private sales of Ads

Revenue generation from your blog will be your ultimate aim if you are running a blog for money. I have discussed about earning through blogging in my previous posts and different sources of revenue for your blog. How much can you earn from a blog is a question which had different answer for different bloggers depending upon the traffic of the blog and kind of traffic you have.

Google Adsense is the most widely source of advertising tool by most of blogger. But when they start getting sufficient revenue from private sales of ads, they avoid Google Adsense for many reasons. I have noticed that blogger like Darren Rowse, John Chow do not use Google Adsense these days. They started their earning from Google Adsense but now they get very high income from their private sales of Ads and almost all the ad slots are over booked.

Which one should you choose?

I got an invitation for Google Ad manager recently and was just trying to do the settings. I have not yet started using it as I really do not need it. It is has good features, but its not helping me much. I use Google Adsense more on this blog not because I earn more from Google Adsense, but I do not have any private advertiser yet who pays me more than Google Adsense.

Bloggers like Amit Agrawal earns more than US$ 1000 from Google Adsense, so why should we think that earning potential in Google Adsense is less, but Amit’s blog has millions of page views every month, so we cannot expect a big revenue from Google Adsense. Another problem that can happen to your advertising revenue is if your Google Adsense account is banned, what will be your source of revenue if you solely depend on Google Adsense.

My Strategy

I use Google Adsense, and I am trying to get some private advertisers, not looking into the rates much for now. I can offer good discounted price and I have good number or Feed readers now. As my blog statistics improves, I may get good advertisers and good revenue from private sales of Ads.

Other possible revenue is from Affiliate programs and other advertising sites like CJ, Amazon, etc, but all needs conversion and you may not earn anything in the beginning. I also offer paid reviews complying with the Google Webmaster guidelines

So to conclude, Google Adsense can play an important role in your blog’s revenue, stick to it and as your blog traffic grows, you can try for private sales of ads

How important is pagerank for top bloggers

Pagerank is a ranking given by Google Search Engine for every page that is indexed by Google. Pagerank has importance for getting a good position on the Google SERPs. There are many factors which decide the SERPs, but I am not going to discuss those things as its out of scope for this post.

Last two pagerank updates have really slapped many bloggers with high pagerank. Google is against Paid Links and Paid Reviews. According to Google, web pages with high pagerank posting paid links which are not relevant to the content or website will effect the quality of the search results of their search engine. To discourage this, Google is penalizing such websites by reducing the pagerank of such websites. Johnchow was penalized for paid links and paid reviews. Same happened to many bloggers. Paid Links and Paid reviews are the best review generators for bloggers, but they get penalized if they are selling links. The only option to do post paid reviews and paid links is to use the rel=nofollow tag.

I was just doing some analysis of bloggers who were effected by the pagerank penality,  for example, Johnchow who is earning around US$30,000/- a month is still earning the same even though his pagerank is on 3 now which was 6 earlier.

How do combat pagerank penalty?

Once you are penalized by Google, then getting traffic from Google is something very rare. I am sure that the traffic share from Google must have reduced tremendously. But I see lots of Adwords campaign going on for his blog. He spends around US$ 400 every month on this and should be getting good traffic from that. He already has 25,000 subscribers and he has news letters which again keeps his traffic going.

Other option to carry on with paid links and paid reviews is to use the rel=nofollow tag, but the rates will not be same when you provide a link which can enhance the search engine ranking.

My advice to bloggers is not to go against the Terms of Google as Google is the best and free traffic provider. There is no alternative yet for Google. You can monetize your blog by other means like Google adsense or sell private ads with the rel=nofollow tag.