Should You Put Google Ads On Your Ecommerce Site?

One of the biggest debates in the ecommerce world is whether to post PayPerClick advertisements on a website, or not. Many sites are using video advertisements to improve the look and feel of their sites. Others are hoping that PayPerClick will offer a passive source of income, but this short-term thinking may cost the company serious profits.

The purpose of a PayPerClick ad is to take a visitor from your website and put them on another website. This person leaves before they ever see the host company’s squeeze page, buy-now page, or Social Networking tools. This means that a potential customer is gone for good. The problem is - the ads on the host company’s website represent the competition.

PayPerClick Passive Income

On one side of the debate is the idea that PayPerClick lets ecommerce businesses generate some revenue from people who were going to leave the website anyway. The problem arises when the website looks at the actual numbers.

It takes several months before Google starts registering clicks, even if thousands of people have already clicked the link. Even when Google does start registering links, they rarely register more than one half of the actual links. In many cases, Google counts less than half.

Then, there is the Page Rank Trap. Google only pays a percentage of the money promised, based on the site’s page rank. A site can build more than 10 000 inbound links and 1000 pages of content and still have only Page Rank 3, earning about .05% of Google’s promised payout. Many sites (non MFA - Made For Adsense) work for 2 - 3 years before they earn $100 a month.

A website can make hundreds of dollars a month from Adsense, as long as the primary purpose of the site is to generate PayPerClick traffic.

PayPerClick Traffic

Many ecommerce businesses sign up for a PayPerClick program through Yahoo or Google to generate traffic. While the search engine advertising companies promise that they do not favor their advertisers, it is foolish not to. They are only cutting their throats letting sites which do not use their ads to rank higher than the sites who do use their ads.

From this side of the fence, PayPerClick is a good deal, because you are the company stealing customers from the competition. However, very few PayPerClick programs give the advertiser control over sites they appear on.

Google does, to a certain extent. It is possible to visit a major competitor’s site, which generates millions more hits than your site does, and place an ad on their pages. However, this does not guarantee that these same people will not click off your website.

Rule #1 of Sales
The first rule of sales is to hook a potential customer. This means keeping them on the host ecommerce site, and encouraging them to click through the links until they reach the buy now page.

There are some crafty ways to do this. For example, make the link bar to squeeze pages and buy-now pages look like PayPerClick ads. Another trick is to lead people from one website owned by the host company to another of their sites, in effect, creating a big circle.

However, make sure that the main pages are optimized with no=follow code in the links. Search engines penalize this type of ‘black hat’ SEO trick. The no=follow code in the ads will prevent the search engines from penalizing the site.

Both of these tricks will keep potential visitors inside the company’s ecommerce sites.

Another trick is to use a ‘default’ internal search tool. Instead of Google’s search, use one that defaults inside the ecommerce network’s sites, instead of on the world wide web.

Keeping customers is the only way to increase profits, and retain customers.

Is Paid Blogging For Your Blog?

I Started five blogs this summer, to help the students of my course 'make $1000 a month blogging wat writersonlinecourses.com' learn the ropes and actually see that the claims in the course are true.

Paid Blog Posts and Page Rank

This blog now has a PR2. That is good enough to get started, but it does bring up some good questions. Will blogging for pay lower the site's PR. The simple answer is no.

One reason it does not lower the page rank is because paid blog links almost always lead to a page with a higher PR than the blog post. So, in fact, the opportunity to increase the PR of the blog is real.

Communati mentioned that I helped increase the Page Rank of this site. In a real way, I did, by linking back and forth from this site to web pages and blogs with PR3 and PR4. This increased the value of the communati page.

Understanding Page Rank

Now, if the blogger were using heading titles, and were 'breaking' their posts every 150 words. If the blogger were building 'keyword anchored' links to a specific post, then yes. There may be an argument that the blog is being degraded by the paid ads. But, as there are few blogs in a site like communati that meet the criteria:

-No more than 10 keywords which are repeated through the entire blog
-Staying on topic
-Using proper coding and H1/H2/H3 titles

Then the effect of paid blog posts is minimal and on the 'plus' side of the scale, as apposed to the minus side.

Not everyone is intrested in writing for pay. This is totally acceptable. For others, the concept is a natural progression from hobby writer to professional blogger status. Will it offend your readers? I will talk more on this later, but the answer is basically - no, not if done right.

The Question of Ethics

It is difficult to decide whether you write about a post - or not. While you can make $1000 a month, easily, especially with 10 blogs at PR3 or higher, it is important to remember to read the fine print.

Blogitive and blogvertise expect bloggers to post every post. Now, you can let the posts laps, but over time, this will have a dramatic effect on the number of offers in the dash board. But then, accepting every one requires balance.

It is okay to talk 'on topic' for most posts, while still including the link. You'll notice that I do it. What is not allowed is including the word sponsored, or indicating that the post is paid for. I get around this by writing a lot of my own content, and leaving tags off the paid posts. This way, they just disappear into the background.

Still, it is a good way to get paid to write. It took me 3 years to start making money from Google. This year I received 3 checks in 10 months, with less time between each check. I have a friend who makes more, but she works hard to please Google.

This also raises a question. The only way to make Google money is to build a site that people will leave. Most bloggers want to keep their blog readers. So, optimizing for Google is not an option.

Beware of Google AdSense Clicks

There are a few things that new bloggers must realize with Google AdSense. The idea of clicking friend's ads, or asking people to click yours, may sound interesting - after all - who knows.

The truth is - Google does. They can track any web site visit, its duration, where it came from, how many pages each visitor viewed, what links they clicked, and now long they were on the next site.

You can get this information if you sign up for a Google Account (different from your AdSense account). Then, go to the web analytics site. Will the stats be better than the ones from the stat counter I suggested? Not really. In fact, because of config problems and the advanced level of Google Web Analytics - you may get less results.

I had one site that the server based software cited more than one million hits, but Google only showed 2000 - because my view was not configured right. However, you can bet that Google's view is config'd right.

The warning is - do not click on Google ads, have your friends click. If you do notice an unusual number of clicks. If you are checking your Google AdSense account (which must be done once a week) and see an unusual number of clicks, just contact customer service and tell them. They are very nice, and will not ban you if you appear to be concerned.