In the beginning Google acquired the San Diego based Urchin-Software Corporation, a company that offered enterprise-class Web Analytics, and then they lowered the monthly subscription cost from $495 to only $199. This alone caused the industry to get a little jumpy, to say the least. Well, now they’ve got good reason to be jumpy, because Google are now offering the newly branded Google Analytics to everyone for free.

So what exactly is Web Analytics and how can it help you?

Firstly, the term Analytics can be defined as: The process of gathering and analyzing information electronically then displaying it in a way which allows a company to track business trends (putting it simply of course). Web Analytics is a set of sophisticated tools that works on the same principle, they are used to analyse, report and track your web site visitors.

But how does Google Analytics differ from other competitors?

Not much really, except that this isn’t going to cost you thousands of pounds every year and it’s available to anyone with a web site, it also provides tightly intergrated AdWords support and remember this is enterprise-class Analytics, not your standard control panel weblog analysing software. This is the same product that companies up until now were paying thousands of dollars for each year.

Google Analytics -

Google Analytics offers a host of compelling features and benefits for everyone from senior executives and advertising and marketing professionals to site owners and content developers.

Learn how visitors interact with your website and identify the navigational bottlenecks that keep them from completing your conversion goals. Find out how profitable your keywords are across search engines and campaigns. Pinpoint where your best customers come from and which markets are most profitable to you. Google Analytics gives you this and more through easy-to-understand visually enhanced reports.

Learn how Google Analytics features can help you start increasing ROI and better understand your visitors.

Learn more. »

I had an interesting debate with Alex from soleredemption.com last night about how permalinks affect they way Google index blog pages. He argued that dynamic links are useless, that pages with links like this http://soleredemption.com/?p=20 aren’t being properly indexed by Google. I didn’t have much to say but I did read something about that ages ago, and I’ve always kept all my URLs with permalinks, or permanent links.

If you use WordPress, you can do this easily by chmod-ing your .htaccess file to 666, then from your WP control panel, go to Options - Permalinks and enable permalinks from there by copying-and-pasting the sample structure on that page into the provided field.

Google usually takes a few days if not weeks to come by and crawl your pages. So after you enable permalinks on your blog give it some time to sink and soon you’ll get that extra traffic from Google directly into your archive pages.

AdSense have just introduced a swanky new referral program. New and existing customers will have to agree to the amended terms and conditions before implementing it on their site first though. But when you’ve done that you can be earning yourself some serious cash (rubs greedy hands!). Every time your referrals make their first $100, Google AdSense will give you $100 dollars as well. We’ve already implemented our referral link on the left, just under the main menu options. Unfortunately due to the new TOCs you can only display one referral link per page and they only come in image format, like the one displayed (but not linked) in this post.

US bloggers/publishers are rumored to have an option that also lets them take advantage of the FireFox with Google toolbar download, which pays $1 per download. I’m not registered as an American publisher, so this isn’t an option on my account

At the heart of Google’s Search Engine software is PageRank™, a system developed by Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin for the purpose of organising and ranking individual web pages using Google’s vast link structure, which it then uses as an indicator for each individual page’s value (pages are ranked on scale of zero to ten).

As defined by Google:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

Simply throwing your web site address up on every guestbook, comments page or internet forum you come across wont achieve anything. Remember, high quality sites receive a higher PageRank™. The more high quality sites you get linked on (and the more relevant your own content is), the higher your own PageRank™ will be.

While the subject of heatmaps are still hot around the blogosphere, I thought I’d mention it here too. This is to follow Lee’s post on AdSense Optimization Tips for your forum as Google has some tips for blogs and regular websites too. Here’s Google’s very own heatmap for effective AdSense placement. It’s been proven to work many many times, so throw your doubt in the back burners and start following the heatmap if you want to increase your CTR. I know, I know, we’re not very compliant when it comes to layout and design, but sooner or later we’ll learn to swallow our egos and settle with what works.

So next time your blog is ready for a redesign, keep the heatmap in mind. Happy blogging!

Just found this great Google AdSense Heat Map for Forums posted over at adsense.blogspot.com

Optimising Google AdSense for use on your forum is as simple as using Google’s Heat Map for Forums displayed on the left.

Research shows that the sidebar on the right doesn’t get as much attention as the sidebar on the left, so you may want to ignore placing Google AdSense on the right altogether. Placing a Skyscraper ad on the left of your forum and placing a leaderboard ad before and after the first post works best. Repeat visitors will not bother so much with the header, choosing instead to go straight for the main thread. You might consider placing a horizontal link unit just below the header though, these provide relevant topics for your users to browse.

Remember not to clutter your forum with Google AdSense. Find a layout that blends in with your forum and one that doesn’t distract your users too much from the main threads. Keep it simple, keep it unobtrusive!

In my last post ‘Tips for blogging and Google AdSense’ we talked about creating a blog optimised for Google AdSense. In this post we are going to discover the importance of keywords to help increase your search engine rankings and improve your success with Google AdSense.

Before we get started you should understand that this post is NOT about META KEYWORDS. They are totally useless in my opinion and considering that most search engines ignore them now anyway due to keyword abuse, you are better off not bothering with them at all. What search engines and Google AdSense are most interested in these days are keywords within the blog posts (the main content of your site), title headings of your posts and your html document title (web page title).

If you are writing a blog about blogging for example you will need to use keywords in your content relevant to your chosen subject of blogging. But you will also need to make sure you avoid overkill, use keywords this way and your posts will be uninteresting and people will stop visiting or you might find your site black-listed for being Splog (Blog Spam).

When linking to previous posts in your blog or someone else’s blog, try to be more creative with the links. Simply having click here or hyperlinking a single word wont do your rankings any good, try and use meaningful phrases that your visitors might do an internet search on instead. Take my example in the first paragraph of this post, notice how I use the full title of the post i’m referring to, that’s a great phrase and it contains good KEYWORDS. Search engines like this format and your sites will get better rankings if you keep doing it.

Your post titles should be descriptive and use good keywords. Try to imagine how someone might query a search engine for information your post discusses when constructing your post title. On the subject of titles, most blogging software will automatically add your post title to the html document title (displays in the blue title bar at the top of your browser), but if it doesn’t, either change your blogging software (try Wordpress for example) or try and edit the html document title tag directly.

So in short keywords are your Key to successful ranking and better results from your Google AdSense. Remember also that motivation and drive to keep posting those blog entries is also Key, don’t fall foul of Blogger Apathy.

You want to make money from your blog right? Of course you do, if not then this post isn’t for you and I suggest you don’t read any further. Otherwise please read on..

How difficult can it be to setup a blog that generates daily cash through the use of Google AdSense? Not difficult at all, in fact I’m going to give you my own personal tips to a successful start in optimising your blogs for Google AdSense. This wont make you rich overnight, but if you stick to the advice given you will notice an improvement and over time you may even start to make bucket loads of cash!

Tip 1
Google AdSense works best when your blog sticks to one subject area. If you must have a personal blog (aka online journal), keep it separate from your money making blog ideas. Don’t try and mix keyword rich content with your personal blog, unless of course you only ever talk about one subject like a hobby for example, or your online journal is based around a central topic.

Tip 2
Choose a subject and stick with it long enough to be sure whether it will work or fail. Simply trying something out for a few months does not constitute a proper test of your blogs earning potential. You should aim at running your blog for several months, checking your Google AdSense reports for increasing profits each month. For example, I nearly gave up on UrbanSkaters.co.uk until I noticed that each month my Google AdSense takings were increasing by roughly 10-15%. I made nothing in the first 3 months, then it slowly started to climb.

Tip 3
Got more than one idea? Then build separate blogs for each of them. Running multiple blogs can be easy, you just need to be sure you’ve got the time and motivation to update them at least 3-5 times a week. Never try to combine two separate subjects into one blog, this only confuses Google AdSense and you will never achieve the higher paying ads that are targeted at sites with better keyword scoring.

Tip 4
If you give up on a blog and decide not to update it anymore. Keep it online if you can, because people will still visit and you may get the odd click here and there which will add to your Google AdSense. Anything is better than nothing! Try another blog idea, register a new domain name and start over. Repetition is the mother of success baby, yeah!

Tip 5
Keywords are key. (MORE ON KEYWORDS ANOTHER TIME!)

Have you got any tips or advice ? Then please leave your comments below.

Keeping track of your AdSense revenue hast just got easier with the public release open source php AdSense tracker from Adsenselogger.com.

In short, the purpose of AdsenseLogger is to track the owners clicks and impressions on Adsense Ads across multiple domains. The Adsense ad tracking registers amongst others : Adsense ad colours, referrers, details about ad clicked, ad size, ad type and much more data that will assist in optimizing Adsense earnings.

A Wordpress plugin for the AdSenes logger is available for download over at kloeschen.com.