But easy does not always mean simple.

Google makes it easy to sign up, generate an ad and put it on your site, however, it’s not always so simple designing your site for interest, finding high paying keywords and placing your ads so that they attract maximum clicks.

Here are a few surefire tips that will help draw interest to your site and your ads while helping you get the clicks that will make you money.

1. Build content rich sites

Content rich sites do several things for you. They keepviewers on your site because you are providing information of interest. It’s also important to keep the information refreshed periodically with up-to-date and current content. This is not only useful for your viewers, the search engines like it as well.

Sites containing useful content will also help establish you as an expert in your field allowing viewers to respect your opinions and suggestions. But most importantly, good content will keep your viewers coming back to your site. They will bookmark your site more often and notify their friends a lot more.

2. Research and use higher paying keywords.

Develop site pages using topics that contain high paying keywords while keeping the keywords relevant to your topic.

The Overture website has a free ‘keywords bid tool’ that is excellent for showing you what advertisers are paying for keywords.

For example, using this tool I can see that the keyword ‘pet medication’ has a maximum bid of $1.51 while the keyword ‘pet name’ has a maximum bid of $.11. If I were looking for informational pages to add to my pet site, the clear choice here would be to develop a page about pet medications and optimize that page for the keyword ‘pet medication’.

3. Place your ads in the upper left hand quarter of your website.

Studies show that people almost always scan your site from the top left working down. Placing a vertical skyscraper ad in that section can help increase your click through rate from 2% to as much as 30% or higher.

4. Don’t use horizontal banners or ads.

Google recommends that you use vertical as opposed to horizontal ads. Web surfers see lots of horizontal banners and ads and they almost instantaneously avoid them.

According to Google, wider ad formats such as the large rectangle and inline rectangle also tend to perform quite well. This is probably due to the fact that they are more reader friendly allowing you to read more text at a glance without having to skip a line and return to the left margin every few words.

My experience is that positioning these ads just before or just after your main content can increase your clickthrough rate substantially.

5. Avoid the Dead Zones

Google research has shown that there are zones within your site that won’t generate clicks. These areas are the top right of your site, the bottom right-hand corner and the very bottom. Ads in these areas are often ignored. Keep your ads to the upper left and center or just above or below your primary content.

6. Coordinate the ad colors to match your site colors.

Google adsense offers an array of colors that you can use to display your ads. Choose the two main colors of your site and use those colors for your ad. Keep the URL link of the ad in blue since this is the link color that most viewers are used to. The idea is to blend your ads with your site content so as to invite more clicks.

7. Follow the adsense program policies to the letter.

Google keeps a close eye on how their ads are displayed and they will cancel you immediately if you break the rules. Google adsense is an excellent way to bring in some extra revenue so don’t risk losing a good thing.

If I had a dollar every time someone said they wanted to build a website, but didn’t know where to begin, I would be… well, rich. The problem doesn’t seem to be the actual creation of the site, but more the “what should it be about” aspect. Please note that, I am not in any way referring to e-commerce sites, corporate sites or any commercial sites, but purely about interest and general sites.

The problem lies in the fact that the essence of site creation has moved radically from where it started as an information and entertainment medium, it has changed to almost the opposite and in some cases even to complete rubbish.

So, before you even think of getting your little spot on the web, what should you be sure of, know and be aware of. What are the things that will make my site worthwhile and an asset to the web? What should I create to be able to cash in and earn some revenue for my days and months of hard work? Well, I would like to propose some basic ideas.

Firstly, I firmly believe that any author (website creator) should concentrate on things they know about or at least very familiar with. There would be absolutely no point for me to create a site on nuclear fusion (in fact starting would be a problem). You have to start with something that you can inform and/or entertain with, if you want your visitors to return at some stage. Use this wonderful platform to share your views and express yourself to the world. Not many other mediums allow this to such a massive extent. Share yourself!

The next important aspect, if you do want your site to really draw some attention on a ongoing basis, would be to ensure that the content on your site is as timeless as possible. I recently helped my mom create a site (http://www.mom2me.com) to host her recipes and it is an excellent example of a site that is timeless. Recipes do not get old. The information on your site, unless you want to constantly update it, should not get old either and a great idea would be to choose a topic for your site, where the information never ages. Jokes, photos, good articles etc. are all great examples of non-ageing content. Blogs are great for easy and quick uploading but still the material needs to be timeless as far as possible.

Try to be original. Easier said than done, I know, but try to not to start yet another site featuring the same old jokes. Not only will you never be able to ever monetize your site (earn revenue from it), but it would just be a copy of another person’s expression. Something as simple as creating a site on a smaller section of an existing site could be a great idea. What about a site dedicated to jokes about plumbers (if you really have to do a joke site). Be original not only in what you create, but what you represent as well.

Start small. I do not want to be the bearer of bad news, but you are not going to start a Google in the next year. Try to ensure that whatever you base your site on, is within your financial ambit and time sphere. You do not want to overextend yourself and leave the site halfway complete, by the time you realize that you have lost interest. It is always easier to add to a completed site and see it grow even bigger. Set realistic goals and try to achieve them within a specific period. Planning is critical and if you do it correctly you will never have to have those horrible “under construction’ pages on your site.

Lastly, and probably most importantly of all, think about how you are going to attract visitors, hopefully repeatedly, to ensure that you can earn revenue from your hard work. If you are thinking about making use of Affiliate Programs or programs like Google’s Adsense, always remember that they will require visitors. Visitors in return require a reason to visit in the first place and secondly to come back again and again. The only way you are going to ensure any form of revenue is by making sure your site is attractive, informative and generally a great place to visit.

In a perfect world, all sites would be as I described above, but sadly that is not the case. The good news is that due to the fact that more than 50% of sites are not that great, you are already halfway there, without even starting. Best of luck and I look forward to visiting your great site soon!

Werner Coetzee

Mom2me.com

Why Should You Create a website?

A. What do you want when you create a website?

B. What to do to get what you want.

A. What do you want?

1. You may be in a non-profit organisation and want to post forthcoming events on the web. You don’t want to have thousands of visitors to the site. But wait – do you want to create a website for new members from the web? I found a new barbershop singer through my website.

2. You may have a small business selling locally. You’re happy with yellow pages. But wait – how many thousand words can you put in your yellow page advert?

There is no limit if you create a website.

Have you ever had someone keep you on the phone for half an hour of your valuable time with their questions? Wouldn’t it be nice to direct them to your website for answers and sales messages? Create a website!

Once you’ve written all those answers, wouldn’t it be profitable to have potential customers reading your answers? Create a website. A dentist has clients from a hundred miles away, from his website.

3. Perhaps you sell items weighing a hundred tons costing a million dollars. When you create a website you can still write as much information about your product as you like – not like the yellow pages. Then you can direct prospects to phone to make an appointment with your best sales staff.

4. You want to sell a product on the web. First create a website then get lots of traffic.

5. You want to make money on the web?!! without a product?!! No…I’m not laughing. Create a website. If you have lots of traffic you don’t even have to be good at selling to make some money with Google Adsense.

If you’re good at pre-selling then you can try affiliate marketing, or selling advertising on your site, or several other channels of income. Just create a website and get the traffic first.

B. What to do about it

To get high traffic you must give visitors what they want. Tricking Google will only get your domain banned from their listing.

Here are some things not to do when you create a website. If your visitors hit the back button their numbers don’t count.

a) Don’t use frames when you create a website – the search engines can’t find you, and the inventors of frames don’t use them on their own website.

b) It may be artistic to disguise your links, but you will lose customers. I visited a site that displayed just one big picture. I happened to pass my mouse over the picture on the way to the back button, and discovered links flashing on the screen. Apparently I had to click on bits of the picture to see any more!

c) Don’t use Flash when you create a website. If people are using ADSL they are unlikely to wait longer than three seconds before hitting the back button. If they’re on a 56K modem they might be prepared to wait ten seconds. You’ve just lost another client.

d) Don’t use big pictures when you create a website. If you have a photography site, use postage stamp sized pictures with the size stated in your coding, and ask the visitor to click for a larger picture. Telling the browser how high and wide your picture is will allow it to load after the text, so your visitor has something to look at meantime.

e) Don’t use irrelevant pictures when you create a website. One picture is worth a thousand words, but only if the picture is saying what you want it to say.

Why do people visit websites? It is NOT for entertainment. Their TV gives them all the moving pictures that they need. Even if it is an adult site, the visitor is really wanting to download digital information for later entertainment.

Information is what your visitor wants – When you create a website don’t waste your time and money on anything else.

A paid designer will use all sorts of clever artistic tricks – you now know that you will lose clients that way. More than 99% of new websites soon have to close because they have no traffic, which means no profit.

That is your biggest mistake. Instead, find what people want to know first, then give it to them.

So why create a website? Simple, you know more about your own subject than any show-off website designer. You don’t even need to understand HTML coding if you use SBI. You still should learn a little about HTML coding, but there are free lessons on my website.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR