Thursday, October 26, 2006

Adsense Templates

I don't remember if I mentioned it but I bought Joel Comm's latest set of Adsense Templates (150 of them). I am about to put up my first site and I figured I would use one of his templates. That way, alot of the technical work would be done for me and I could concentrate on content.
Well, it appears that it's not so simple because Google isn't crazy about templates.
Today, I got a very interesting email from Michael Campbell, and because I think that the information is very valuable I am going to post the mail in its entirety here. Anyone interested in templates should read this:

Internet Marketing Secrets Newsletter
Issue #104 Thursday October 26 2006

How to Modify Your Templates

In issue 101 "Modify Your Templates or Suffer the
Consequences" we learned that HTML website templates,
especially the AdSense ones, must be modified before you
use them. They leave giant footprints that are easily detected
and penalized by Google's engineers.

The most frequently asked question (FAQ) after issue 101
was, how to modify the templates, or what to modify, to
prevent getting penalized. Here are your answers:

(Get issue #101 and the follow-up discussions on the IMS
blog, or download it from the IMS archives page.)

IMS Blog & Discussions ==> http://homepage.mac.com/dmcorp/

Archives ==> http://www.InternetMarketingSecrets.com/backissues.html

Or if you prefer the condensed "single paragraph" version of
what we discussed...

Google employees went through the process of looking at,
and evaluating, sites that had AdSense ads on them. Based on
what the humans did, they created an automated computerized
version, a Quality Control Robot to do the same thing.

This QualityBot now visits all your AdSense sites to ensure
they are not auto generated, scraped content, or low quality
templates. If it finds "off the rack" template sites, they are
given a low quality score, meaning that you get a lot less
money, every time someone clicks on one of the AdSense
ads that are displayed on your site.

So here's what you can do, to keep your revenues up.

= = = = =

IMS #104 - How to Modify Your AdSense Templates

The way that the "Template Filter" works, is based on the
"travel time" between elements. Or in other words, the
interval, or the measure of the distance between elements,
and how long each element occurs.

Perhaps a better way to understand the concept is with a
musical analogy.

All Western music is based on the 12 notes of the piano.
Yet there's millions of original songs... how can that be?
It's the intervals and durations of the notes that let you
recognize patterns. The Template Filter - that my geeky
buddies to as K1 - is similar.

If I walk up to any piano in the world - it doesn't matter
if I play in the Key of C, G, or F - and I go "1 1 5 5 6 6 5"
you'd instantly recognize Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
It's the same way that the K1 filter can recognize any
template in its database.

Even if your template has perfect HTML. Even if it complies
to W3.org standards with a valid Doctype and an ISO
statement, it still doesn't matter. That's just like saying
your piano is tuned and doesn't have any sour notes.

So what can we do, to make the Template Filter think our
template is playing an original tune? First off we have to
look at the obvious basics.

Take a look at your template. Is the background green?
Make it yellow. Is there a masthead at the top? Resize it.
Is your column width 700 pixels? Make it 720. Is your artwork
in a folder called art? Give it a new name. And for heavens
sakes, rename all the photos and include ALT text.

These are just a few things we can do to reduce the
footprint of the template. But these alone are not enough.
These are just the surface items and the real work remains
to be done. Afterall, we're looking for intervals here, the
measure of the distance, or travel time between elements.

The elements that make up a web page are things like
graphics and photos, hypertext links, headline tags like H2
& H3, paragraphs of text, anchors, bold, italic, bullets and
other types of lists, rules, tables and ad blocks. What we
need to do is change the order in which the elements appear.

So if you look at your template and you see the following
items... masthead, ad block, photo block, ad block,
paragraph, paragraph. You are singing Twinkle Twinkle
Little Star to the search engine's Template Filter.

To make the song of the template your own, do something
drastic like deleting the masthead. Start with H2 headline
text containing your keywords. Move the photo block up and
put an ad block underneath. Then move up the paragraph,
and add a second ad block under the first paragraph.

Remember that it's not just the notes or elements on the
page, its the intervals between the elements, and how long
each element lasts. Just by moving the elements around,
you've created your own original symphony. One that the
search engine has never heard before.

To be successful, you must vary your templates. Modify
them, until each one can stand on its own merit.

Remember, the goal is to convert customers for the
AdWords advertiser. If you do that, they'll keep advertising
on your AdSense site, and you'll earn way more per click.
Then everyone will be signing a happy tune.


That's it for this issue my friend. Thank you for reading.
We'll chat again soon. Until then, here's wishing you all
the best for online success.


Michael Campbell

P. S.

If you want to read more content just like this, click
to the IMS Blog for important news, reader comments
and answers to FAQs. I'll be posting them all there.

Recent posts to the IMS Blog include:

* Yes... AdSense is Alive... But Hold Your Horses!
* When in a Quandary... Where Do You Start?
* All Templates are Subject to "Quality Control" Filters.
* Getting Started with Affiliate Programs & Terminology.
* Clickin' it Rich Student Makes 1,000,000 in a Single Year!
* Are Mininets Still Effective? What About the Future?

IMS Blog ==> http://homepage.mac.com/dmcorp/

WebLink ==> Click



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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Dena,

I like you blog too. It's got a lot of personality and the information is quite valuable.

I've just linked to you from my blogroll.

Cheers,
Rob.