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For some while now, about 2 years or so, there’s been a new resource for web marketeers and ad agencies alike: Quantcast.com.

Quantcast shows two kinds of site traffic measurements:

1. Estimated traffic
2. Metered traffic from cookies

They also provide an amazing amount of demographics on the real or estimated economics, ages, sex, family status, income, educational level, and so on of the site’s visitors. To see an example, visit their page for one of our own health related sites — Level1Diet.com. You’ll notice that they link you to dozens of ’similar sites’ that have a similar audience profile by demographics, psychographics, etc.

This is remarkable information. You won’t find such detailed visitor profile info on any public advertising metrics site. In fact until recently, you would have had to pay online data and marketing research companies thousands of dollars just to get access to similar data. This ‘free access’ is amazing… and extremely useful.

Quantcast Marketing Info is Used For:

1. Advertisers — media buyers and ad agencies, who want to know about the sites where they buy banners, links or other ads.
2. Ad-accepting sites or the ‘new media’ companies themselves, who want to know about the incomes, education, and other habits of their visitor traffic.
3. Competing sites, who want to know about the traffic and profiles of their competitors… for marketing purposes.

The New Improved Cookie-Metrics at Quantcast

Since June 22nd or so, the usual cookie measurements have been automatically adjusted to account for the frequency that cookies are erased, modified, and so on. This makes significant differences between visitor measurements before and after the new adjustments. Some visitors erase cookies more often than others. This tendency can be predicted by the type of visitor — their profile specifics — and by the type of site being measured — by contents and related site characteristics

You can read about this new technology at the new Quantcast Cookie technical info page. They also have a “Cookie Corrected Audience Data” whitepaper PDF that explains even more.

This is very sophisticated stuff. However, it appears that Quantcast total traffic estimates and specific audience profile estimates have shifted dramatically after this improvement.

Many sites have changed their relative positions by 10, 20 or even 25 percentage points. Some went up and some down of course, in the new ratings.

Becoming a “Quantified” Web-Site

If you’re a web marketeer, we recommend you apply for a Quantcast account, which is free. They will give you a snippet of cookie code to copy and place in your footer that lets them accurately measure your traffic.

The code snippet is not visible to visitors and doesn’t slow down your site.

However, even if you decide NOT to join their metrics system, you should use Quantcast often to keep track of your ‘estimated’ traffic and visitor profiles, no matter how broad and rough they might seem. It will be nice to know what incomes, family size, education, and other info can be estimated about your traffic.

Good luck to you in the highly competitive web marketing world. We think using Quantcast.com several times a week will help you in the struggle to monetize your web.

How should you spend your web marketing time and your limited internet web-site promotion budget? After decades managing millions of dollars in advertising budgets, I’ve learned some lessons that directly apply to today’s eCommerce web-site owner.

Years ago I owned an advertising agency in a small market in the hinterlands. There was a graphics room for the artist and photo shoots, an audio recording room, a reception area where clients could wait — God bless them! – and my own ‘executive office’ with a window overlooking a lovely parking lot where I had my own reserved slot… But, I digress.

There was little that distinguished my ad agency suite from hundreds of other offices around town, except for one little thing…

It had one feature that made it VERY distinctive, and probably one-in-a-million in the world of ad agency offices, from coast to coast.

You didn’t see this little feature until you left my executive suite itself. Then, as you turned around to leave the room, you saw it. Over the door was a long sign that claimed “Advertising Doesn’t Work — We Do!”

What?

Why would an ad agency point out the obvious fact that any advertiser knows all too well — that usually advertising doesn’t work? Hundreds of my clients would ask me that question. Well, once asked, the question focuses on what advertising works, and how to get it. So, that’s why I wanted to bring up the subject — pointing out that advertising usually doesn’t work.

Because it almost never does. The first thing any SUCCESSFUL business person learns, especially if they are spending their own money, is that single important fact.

But almost nobody ever talks about it. Nobody.

Just “getting your name out there” doesn’t build a bottom-line. Doesn’t increase traffic. Doesn’t increase cash flow. Doesn’t raise profits. Doesn’t guarantee YOU the advertiser ANYTHING.

However, “covering all the bases” with “a little here and there” does in fact do one thing. It makes the ad agency money.

For a while.

But sooner or later the clients find out. Some of them discover it on the way to bankruptcy court. Some find it out in time to save their business.

Hundreds per month in every “Yellow Book” phone directory. Hundreds per month on every radio station and television station, scattered all through the day-long schedule to “cover the full audience”. Hundreds or even thousands on every newspaper, every week. Thousands on direct-mail and free-distribution newspapers. Tiny business card ads in every charity newsletter and club magazine — don’t want to offend all those potential loyal club member customers.

Even the smallest business can spend $10,000 a month on this caca-dodo. A hundred grand a year on nothing. Nothing memorable. Nothing worth crossing the street for. Nothing worth telling a friend about. Nothing at all.

If they were to disappear, and for most business managers that is the probability, nobody would notice.

And, after all the dust settles and the business closes its doors, after the sweat and tears have dried on the cheeks of its owners… after they have lost their house and cars, exhausted their life savings and robbed all the money from their kids’ college savings accounts. After years of 80+ hours per week slavery to trying to save their life-long dream business… they would say: “I don’t know why we failed, we were advertising everywhere.”

But, they missed one little fact:

In Business, Being Everywhere is Being Nowhere.

Their advertising was killing them. Literally. I’ve seen it personally. I saw one of these businessmen lean over and then faint away in a fatal, stress-induced heart attack. We were standing in the front of his huge, and empty, furniture store. Slowly, he collapsed onto a nearby couch, hands hanging loosely over the cushions. In minutes, he was gone!

Minutes before his lights went out for the last time, he had been explaining to me that he couldn’t afford to have a big sale promotion that might save his busness, because he was already doing TOO MUCH advertising.

None of which was working for him, obviously. He had, in fact, advertised himself to death.

Advertising almost NEVER works. It’s a fact. Over 99% of it is pure crap. Customers know it. Media reps know it. Ad agents know it.

The last guy to figure it out is usually the one paying for it.

And if you’re in business, that would be YOU.

Can this be a lesson for us web marketing people?

Make Your Ads (and Your Time) Count

When you spend a buck or a minute on something, make it count. Don’t try to do a little of this or that, all over the place. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Don’t create thousands of things trying to cover all the bases. Do you think you can out-spam the entire web with its trillions of pages? Make your pages count. Create meaningful, original content. Focus. Elaborate. Detail. Reference. Make a difference!

The web will love you for it.

Look at things from the point of view of a Google, a Yahoo, an Ask, or MSN, Metasearch, Dogpile, etc. Can you imagine what they think of yet another copy of yet another useless, duplicated, completely unnecessary, redundant, duplicated, all-over-the-place, unfocused web-site? Who needs yet another useless web page?

The search engines now provide most web traffic to web sites. Yes, some does come from bookmarks, email links, tell-a-friend and so on. However search engines like Google and Yahoo and Ask do most of the heavy lifting in generating visitor traffic. Whether from pay-per-click links on search engine result pages or from the “organic” listings that are not paid for, the search engines drive the web.

But in order to serve up the results pages, these search engines need to evaluate what is REAL and what is NOT about each of billions and billions of possible search keyword phrases.

And what do they see? Billions and billions of useless, meaningless non-original pages. And more coming every day. Many of these pages are scraped from other pages. They aren’t even trying to be original.

If you’re building yet another page or hundreds of them, why bother, unless you have something unique to say?

You can work yourself to death and spend a fortune building stuff that everyone else already has done. Or, you can do something better, bigger, more focused, filled with facts, etc.

The 3 Rules of Web-Site Promotion Success

So, since we know that in general, advertising doesn’t work, we can focus on what does work.

1. Originality.
2. Significance.
3. Community (sharing)

You could say it another way.

1. Be unique.
2. Do something that matters.
3. Let others know.

Those are the three ways to succeed online. And, in the brick-and-mortar-world too. What works in real world advertising also works for internet marketing.

You have 2 choices:

(1) Work yourself to death like my old friend in the furniture store who literally died saying he was covering all the bases.

Or, don’t.

(2) Instead, create wonderful content that’s different from the other guys. Make it stand out. Market the heck out of that singular page. Not everywhere, but in a few select places where it counts. Follow those 3 rules of successful web marketing.

You’ll live longer. And get a little famous. And, just maybe — rich!

Life — and web-site promotion and web marketing — is like baseball. Let me explain…

When you knock-in a run with a pop-up fly, everyone cheers. You’re the hero of the … hour? No. The minute.

Until the next time someone else knocks-in a run. Then he is the hero of the minute.

But, when you hit a home-run with bases loaded, you’re the hero of the hour, and the game (usually). And when that game is the final game of a 7-game playoff or series, you’re the hero of the Season! And, when that Season is itself memorable due to a convergence of great games, great players, and close calls… you’re the hero of a LIFETIME… and you get into the Hall of Fame!

Now, why is that relevant?

Because when we ask these questions about popularity, the issue of popularity ALWAYS is related to timeliness. You can’t answer the question without reference to the time frame. So, in the web and life, like in baseball, your popularity will always be related to:

1. How long a period you are examining — a few minutes, an hour, a day, a week, a month or a year, etc.
2. What else is or was going on in this period — look around you and see if what you are/were doing makes you a stand-out player in this time frame

Strategically, the decision you have to make is this: Do I want to try to make hundreds or thousands of plays of the minute or hour, so that I can continuously be on top of whatever is happening? Or, do I want to make only a few “plays of a lifetime” that will garner rewards (in traffic and hopefully income) for years to come?

Personally, I use a mix of both.

However, as the years roll by, I’m leaning more and more toward the second goal; I see the value of building major pages that yield traffic and accumulate ‘trust’ or ranking for years and years. Thank heaven I do have a few hundred of those pages. They are the big players in whatever success I have from day to day.

So, if you can write, if you can manage a writing team creating WONDERFUL CONTENT, then do it. Don’t waste time trying to be only the player of the minute by knocking-in a few runs here and there. People who do that, even for twenty years are always forgotten players. The players who make dramatic achievements — the MOST homeruns, the MOST of almost anything — are remembered. For a long time.

How long you are ‘remembered’ in the game of web marketing and page popularity depends on whatever else is happening. That you can’t control, the whatever else. But you can control what you do.

Aim for the Cheap Seats

PS: The cheapest seats are at the top of the bleachers. Aiming at them CAN put you in the history books. Aiming lower will GUARANTEE that you never get a mention above the footnotes at the back of the books.

Work like you’re playing in the final game of the World Series. Because, on the web, you are.

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Hey, I’m only quoting, no invective intended.

But, we should all remind ourselves that we are less bright, when we complexify what would otherwise be simple. If we’re trying to build an online web business, or perhaps a home business that runs on the web, we’re likely running on a limited budget. We need to get the most for our time. Acquire more free web traffic, per hour of marketing effort.

Simple Web Marketing Rules

The simple fact is that following only a few simple rules will generate more unique visitors than any other way to spend our time (or money). You don’t need fancy and complicated tricks and techniques. Build a good web page. Google and your visitors will love it. Prime the pump with a few press releases, articles, internal links and basic good page-design-html rules. The water (visitor traffic) will flow… freely.

The Old Google PageRank vs. the New Simpler Google Algorithm

Google has recently (May 20, 2008) introduced a new way of evaluating the web. The Google V.P. of Engineering in charge of Search Quality is Udi Manber, who wrote an article on the Official Google Blog describing the new and simpler approach Introduction to Google Search Quality. You should read his article when you have time. Read it carefully and you’ll note some interesting changes to the way they do business, technically. However, it’s basically a more simple approach. “Simpler is better,” says Udi. Google’s Page-Rank algorithm is now simpler, and so should be our marketing and SEO strategy. Google has recently refined their technology that analyzes web pages. They don’t tell us exactly what they did, but they do confess that they have reduced its previous complexity. This will mean that they will now be able to index, crawl and inter-relate your on-page content better than ever before. Write better pages and they will know it.

Avoid Grey and Black Hat SEO Complexity

Instead of constantly rewriting existing pages, and killing ourselves with bizarre and complicated marketing strategies (often called grey or black-hat SEO) aimed at acquiring external backlinks and endless multilevel layered referral technologies, why not simply build good pages, and more of them?

Building good pages is what the web is all about. At the end of the day, if we design simple, content rich, unique pages that give something to the web, the web will give us traffic to them.

How can we do that? Here’s how to get the most for your SEO efforts:

Building Successful Organic Search Engine Traffic:

1. Focus on one simple topic per page. Your page will be “about” this subject. We will write the page in an unusual order. If you organize your work in the order, building successful web traffic will be easier.
2. Divide that topic into 4 or 5 main ideas.
3. Make each of those ideas a sub-heading.
4. Write a good topical sentence in the first paragraph under each sub-head.
5. Write at least 2 or 3 more paragraphs of 50 or more words under that first paragraph.
6. Go back to the top of the page and write a introduction paragraph that reflects,but doesn’t repeat what each of the sub-heading/paragraphs will state below.
7. Go to the end of the page and write a very short summary of what the page has discussed. Do NOT repeat the top paragraph that you just wrote as the introduction.
8. Add 4 or 5 outbound links to sites that discuss the topics and ideas discussed on your page. In these links, make the link around 2 or 3 main keywords thatthe page is “about” inside each link.
9. Link this page to several other pages inside your own site which discuss your main keywords. Placing these links inside some of your paragraphs is better than doing it in a sidebar or footer. Sidebar links and footer links are detected and discounted by Google and some other engines. Make these links around relatively unique wording if possible.
10. Now go to the TITLE tag of your page and write a unique, human readable and short heading that starts with your main keyword or idea, and mentions one or two more. This should not be exactly the same as your H1 tag, but similar.
11. Now go to the META “Description” tag and write a nice short (150-160 character)summary of the page that is a brief version of the INTRO paragraph or SUMMARY paragraph in the page content. This is what Google may show to describe the page for many searches.
12. Now go to the META “Keyword” tag and write 8-10 keywords and phrases that are the main phrases from your heading and sub-heads, separating them with commas. Don’t over do this. Shorter may be better for most searches.
13. Then go to your graphics library and name one or two images something using the keywords that are your main content ideas. Something like “keyword1_keyword2.jpg”.Place a normal language description of the image in the image tag ALT and TITLE tags.Make this short and relate to the real content of the image, and the page.
14. Save this new page to your server using a name that uses 2 or 3 different keywords,separated by dashes. You could use up to 5 or 6 if needed. Make the most important keyword first in the list. Doesn’t have to be sensible or grammatical.
15. Now go elsewhere on your site and make 4 or 5 links on different pages, one link per page, pointing into this new page you are creating.
16. If you have time, then go to some social networking or bookmarking sites, discussion forum sites (find them by Googling your subject’s main keyword, plus “forum”), hub page or free WordPress blog sites and add a link or two to this new page from those sites, using keywords and short descriptions. Make sure these links are on pages that actually are about a similar topic to this new page.

That’s it! Pretty simple. No black hat or grey hat. Just plain good web content building.

If you do that, Google and the other guys will reward you. You’ll have built a 100% unique, all-new content page that nobody else has online, that is valued as being unique by the search engines, that others may want to link to, and that will bring high levels of free, organic, real-world traffic and maybe even business or profits for your site.

If you don’t follow these simple web marketing and search engine optimization rules, the search engines won’t refer free traffic to you. It IS that simple. Really.

So you want to make money with Google Adsense? I don't blame you, who doesn't want residual income! This article will show you how to better optimize Google Adsense to make more money from your web site(s).

Before we get into it, learn more about Google Adsense here: http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/

First and foremost is: Positioning

Where you position your Adsense link boxes and banner ads is extremely important. Trying to make money from the bottom of your pages within your website just won't cut it.

You need to add your Adsense links right in the heart of your template or right in the heart of your content. I would personally suggest both actually.

Adding Adsense in the heart of your template:

Link Units:

Since the introduction of Google Adsense "link units", we can now add what looks like a "menu system" to compliment our menu system within our website. This is HUGE. Have you ever just clicked on a website and kept clicking on the menu links?

I know we all have. By adding a "Google link units" to your menu, you will get more clicks than you thought possible. Try adding the link units near the top for better performance and try creating your link units to match the color of your menu system in place. Once in a while I find myself clicking on a menu link unit without even realizing it which in turn gives more money to the website owner.

Leaderboards and Skyscrapers:

These may very well be your "bread & butter". I only say this because of the sheer size of these ads units. The best place to add these ad units is obvious; Straight across the very top of your website (leaderboards), and straight down the side of your template (skyscrapers). Anywhere else may not look proper within your template and may look unprofessional.

Square and Rectangle Ad Units:

These are great to compliment the mass amount of content within your website and also within your recommended resources. You want to compliment your content, you don't want Adsense to BE your content because this will look poor on your part. Adsense is very popular with webmasters; who doesn't want to make some extra money. However, don't forget that many of your visitors are also used to seeing Adsense within a website, and need a good reason to click on them.

Square and rectangular units are great to use within articles posted on your website or within your link resources. Try adding your Adsense boxes above your resource links within a page to give your Adsense account that added extra exposure. Just remember that Google allows up to 3 ad units per page. Using these 3 strategies will help to better optimize Adsense for positioning! Let's now go onto targeting…

Optimizing Adsense: Taking out non-related ads!

Do you ever wonder how ads like "business card specials" ever get displayed on to your website when your company content is all about baby clothing? Since the introduction of "Adwords Site Targeting", we now have to keep an eye on the ads being displayed on our website(s).

Companies may now specifically target your website for more exposure. There is no restriction whether the website is content related or not, just more marketing exposure for the advertiser.

Filtering Adsense Advertisers:

Within your Adsense manager, you have the option of using the "Competition Filter" which allows us to remove certain websites from the ads being displayed regularly. This is going to be an on-going optimization task in the future. Without filtering the ads being displayed within your website, you might find yourself with ads unrelated to your industry and possibly some ads that have a negative effect within your site. If you don't remove all the unwanted ads being displayed on your website, you might end up hurting your Adsense performance online. The more targeted you can get your Google Adsense ads to display on each page, the better your chances at being able to make more money. Try to take a moment every week to study the ads being displayed on your website. Open up a note pad, or word document and record all the websites you don't want to be displayed anymore.

Add these sites to your "filter list" within your Adsense account. Remember to add the website (within your filter list) like so: smartads.info - without the www. Adding anything after or before the url will only prevent the company from displaying one of their many ads like so (www.site.com/ads/1.html). This way you stop anything from the entire website from showing up within your Adsense campaign online. The more you optimize your Adsense filter, the better your performance will pick up and the less non-related ads will be displayed on your website.

One constant that holds true with Adsense:

The more pages you have with your Adsense campaign being displayed, the more you WILL make. People who have online networks immediately can profit from Google Adwords because they have the power to add their Adsense boxes & banners onto multiple websites, possibly 1000's of pages.

Should you add Adsense to your website?

If you own a small company that has a brochure type website that gets maybe 50-100 visitors a day, I recommend NOT adding Adsense to your site. It will never make enough money with that kind of traffic.

Remember: Your Adsense campaign needs to make over $100 to get paid out. If your company receives around 500-1000+ visitors a day, you can now start considering to make money through Google. Adsense is all about numbers. Play the numbers to make more money. In fact, try making goals for yourself to make X amount of dollars through your Adsense account by a certain time.

Doing this will only increase your business and make your company more powerful online by increasing the amount of traffic it receives. For multiple websites, channels are important: Google allows you to track the performance of multiple websites all in one account which ultimately gives you the ability to track how many visitors you're getting for each website. It also allows you to work harder on those sites that aren't up to par. I consistently look at each individual website channel to work harder at promoting the ones that aren't performing well.

By doing this, we increase the amount of promotion going into the websites that under perform, and in turn eventually increase the business for those websites as well. The more you promote your website, the more the exposure you will ultimately deliver for your Adsense campaign and your company.

Google Search with Adsense:

To top all that off, you can add Google search within your site to give visitors a search function for your content and to allow people to also click on your Adsense program. Please note that for Google search to work, your website and all of its content pages must already be indexed by Google.

Adding the Google search bar to your site right away won't help your visitors at all. For more Google Adsense optimization tips, go here: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html

Don't forget to read the Google Adsense Policies & Procedures: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies I hope this article helps you to make more money!

About the Author: Martin Lemieux is the president of the Smartads Advertising Network. Smartads helps their clients to maintain a strong presence online through up-to-date marketing tactics. Sign up for Martin's weekly newsletter here: http://www.smartads.info/newsletter For a free SEO evaluation, go here: http://www.smartads.info/website-evaluation.html Copyright © 2005 Smartads Advertising Network - Reprints Accepted

Increasing your web site popularity, raising your page hit count, augmenting your unique visitor traffic, and elevating your Google Pagerank is a big job. The job of designing and creating effective web pages that rank highly in search engine result pages is not conceptually difficult.

If you own a simple site with only one or two products or services to promote, you may want to do it yourself (see “How to Design Web Pages to Promote your Own Website, and SEO or Search Engine Optimization Rules”, on the next page).

However if you already own or you are going to build a web site with hundreds or even thousands of products and services to describe and sell online, you have a truly overwhelming job. This kind of page optimization must be done automatically. That’s what we specialize in at IdeaPro.com.

Our automatic search engine opitimization rates are reasonable, starting as low as $500.00 for smaller web stores. We also offer hourly consultations beginning at $125.00 per hour. A small investment now can provide amazing benefits for months and years to come. Contact us by E-mail.

Top Google Pagerank & Highest Search
Engine Results & Page Rank Positions
Highest pagerank position in google and other search engine results pages come from good writing about your web site’s subject, your services and products, from the customer’s or reader’s viewpoint. SEO requires keyword research, excellent planning and simple, clear execution of the web page concept.

12 Years of Experience
IdeaPro.com, established in 1996, is an online eCommerce Marketing company that offers Search Engine Optimization technology, and specializes in producing web stores that automatically promote their full catalog of products or services to online search engines.

We Do the Tough Programming Work
Then You Do the Simple Daily Maintenance
You do not need to know anything more than basic HTML to maintain your online store, once we have re-built it around our new optimization system. We provide easy to use online forms to add new products, delete products, or change prices, etc. New changes are instantly and automatically added into your store and are promoted across the web by our system.

We Follow the Rules
There are no hidden or forbidden ‘tricks’ or spam-like approaches used in our software. We are 100% following the accepted web promotion and search engine optimization techniques, as established by the search engines themselves. The reason it works is that it follows the rules. And, it does so effortlessly and automatically… for every product you offer.

TOP TEN PAGE RANKS - FREE

While nobody can guarantee top ten pagerank at Google or Yahoo, following the search engine’s own rules will help you get the best possible search engine results for popular keyword searches. Top 10 search engine listing are the goal everyone seeks. But, the reason they don’t get to the top of results pages is that they don’t follow the rules… it’s that simple!

How IdeaPro.com SEO Technology Works
Our online stores are uniquely designed to optimize each page presented so that they are easily searchable by robot search engine crawlers. As a result of this automatic optimization technology, your store can be easily found by potential customers who are searching at Google.com, Yahoo.com or any of hundreds of other search engines. Click either of those links to see how our client Americal.com shows up for one of their main product lines, which is “inkjet dvd-r”. (We’ve shown a screenshot image of an actual search done on February 15, 2006 for Google and Yahoo to the right - click on the small images to see the search results obtained in a new window.) Our clients do not pay Yahoo nor Google to have those listings show up “#1 on top” or “nearly on top” in the search engines. As our client, our automatic SEO software does the job every day for them.

Contact Us
Contact us by E-mail.