No Comments Written by Robert on August 12, 2008 – 8:44 am

This blog post provides you with a comprehensive strategy for driving organic traffic through effective search-engine optimization, or SEO. With improved search-engine rankings, you can maximize the revenue you generate from your Web site.

If you are running your Web site as a business, monetizing your traffic is likely one of your main interests in improving your SEO efforts.

Monetizing your Web site includes implementing one or more revenue-generating activities, such as paid banner placement or affiliate marketing, in order to generate money based on the incoming traffic to your Web site.

If you are running your Web site only as a hobby and simply want to receive more traffic, monetizing your traffic might not be your main priority. However, regardless of your intentions, you should at least possess a fundamental understanding of how Web site traffic is commonly monetized.

From contextual advertising on networks like Google AdSense to affiliate marketing and paid blogging on networks like Pepperjam and ReviewMe, you can find numerous opportunities to monetize your Web site traffic.

Place Google AdSense Ads on Your Web Site

One of the easiest and most common forms of monetizing traffic is through contextual advertising, which requires you to place basic JavaScript code on your Web site. The undisputed leader in this space is Google’s contextual ad program, Google AdSense.

With the Google AdSense program, you can publish content on virtually any topic and automatically display highly relevant ads that come from the Google AdWords platform.

Each time a visitor clicks one of these contextual ads, you receive a percentage of the funds paid to Google for that click. When you have the traffic to deliver thousands of clicks a day, this form of monetization can be incredibly lucrative.

Adding contextual advertising to your Web site is one of the fastest and easiest methods to effectively monetize your Web site traffic. Currently, the market leader in contextual advertising is Google AdSense. Launched in 2003, the Google AdSense program allows you to display contextually relevant advertisements on your Web site. The ads are delivered from available ad inventory on Google AdWords.

Each time a visitor comes to your site and clicks an AdSense ad, you earn a percentage of the money paid to Google by the advertiser for that click. Although one click is likely to earn a small amount of money, producing thousands of clicks a day can lead to a substantial income.

One of the key reasons that Google AdSense has become the most popular tool for monetizing Web site traffic is because Google consistently provides contextually relevant ads in a fraction of a second. Google displays AdSense ads on publisher Web sites based on its examination of all keywords on a particular Web page. For example, if the content on your Web page is primarily about renting apartments in Philadelphia, Google analyzes your content and serves advertisements to your visitors related to renting apartments in Philadelphia.

Because the ads that Google displays on your Web site are consistently relevant to the content of your Web page, Google AdSense represents an excellent tool to monetize your Web site traffic. Installing the Google AdSense program on your Web site is easy and only requires a basic understanding of HTML.

Not all Web sites are allowed to join the Google AdSense program

All you need to do is sign up for an account, create an ad by specifying the size and colors, and then copy and paste a piece of JavaScript into the source code of the Web page you want to display ads. Within 24 hours, Google AdSense analyzes the content of the Web page and begins serving relevant contextual ads.

Not all Web sites are allowed to join the Google AdSense program and display contextual ads. For example, Web sites that contain content related to adult material are not accepted into the program. Google AdSense also refuses any sites that promote illegal activity, violence, or racism. This also includes the sale of tobacco and alcohol. Nevertheless, Web sites that deal with banned topics attempt to enter the Google AdSense system anyway, but such efforts are typically short-lived. Thus far Google has done an adequate job of enforcing content guidelines within the Google AdSense program.

Google AdSense also gives you the ability to display image, video, and pay-per-action (PPA) ads in addition to the traditional text-based advertisements. Of course, your site can display these additional ad types only if advertisers in your niche create the ads within the Google AdWords system.

Currently, most of the high traffic industries have a substantial number of advertisers purchasing image ads, and the video ads are beginning to gain traction as well; Google’s PPA ad network, which may potentially pose serious competition to other related affiliate marketing networks such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, and AzoogleAds, appears to be in its infancy.

Place Yahoo Publisher Network Ads on Your Web Site

An alternative to Google AdSense is the Yahoo Publisher Network, or YPN, a potentially lucrative contextual advertising network. The Yahoo Publisher Network is based on the same idea as the Google AdSense program. As a publisher, you insert a piece of code into your site, which then automatically serves up ads from the Yahoo Search Marketing Program.

YPN ads are targeted to the content of each individual page of your Web site. Again, as with Google AdSense, each time a user clicks one of these ads, you are paid a percentage of whatever fee the advertiser was charged.

Although Google AdSense is the contextual advertising market share leader, the Yahoo Publisher Network, or YPN, offers an alternative option for you to monetize your Web site. Roughly two years after the release of Google AdSense, the Yahoo Publisher Network launched. The Yahoo Publisher Network works on the same principles as the Google AdSense program.

You simply sign up for free and insert a piece of code into your Web page. Yahoo analyzes the content of your Web page, taking into consideration factors such as categorical relevance, and then serves appropriate ads from Yahoo Search Marketing.

One common complaint about the Yahoo Publisher Network is that advertisements are often unrelated to the content of the display page, which has led some users to the conclusion that Yahoo Publisher Network consistently serves up less relevant ads than the Google AdSense program.

To you, the publisher, this simple fact can make a world of difference. If the contextual ads are not properly matched to your content, your click-through rate on your ads can decrease dramatically. If you get fewer clicks on your contextual ads, you naturally earn less revenue.

Another factor to consider when you compare Google to Yahoo is that just as Google AdSense serves ads from Google AdWords, Yahoo Publisher Network serves ads from the Yahoo Search Marketing Program.

When deciding between AdSense or YPN, keep in mind that Google AdWords currently has more advertisers than Yahoo Search Marketing and thus more AdSense ads to potentially serve, increasing the odds of it accurately serving ads matched to your content.

As with Google AdSense, the Yahoo Publisher Network has a relatively simple installation process that does not require advanced technical expertise. After you are accepted into the program, installation is as simple as creating an ad and pasting a piece of code into your Web page.

Much like Google AdSense, the Yahoo Publisher Network does not accept Web sites that promote illegal activity. Yahoo prohibits any adult, hacking, or warez (illegal downloads) sites from joining Yahoo Publisher Network. This is done to ensure that Yahoo is never directly supporting any illegal activity or acting as a source of income for unethical activities.

Regardless of rules against illegal and unethical Web sites, there are still many cases where these Web sites get into the Yahoo Publisher Network. Despite the criticism of the ad-matching ability of the Yahoo Publisher Network, you should still test the program on your Web site and compare the performance against other monetization methods described..

The single most important factor in choosing a strategy is what makes you the most money. Do not let occasional negative reviews discourage you from testing Yahoo; there are an equal number of positive testimonials from publishers suggesting that you can make more money with Yahoo versus Google. Always test things out for yourself. After all, each program performs differently with each individual Web site.

Yahoo Publisher Network pays you via PayPal

Another interesting feature of the Yahoo Publisher Network is that it pays you via PayPal, a feature that is unavailable for Google AdSense publishers. Alternative payment options may provide an advantage to you as you build your business and monetize your Web site.