As you probably noted in my last entries, my focus lately has been on high volume keyword phrases. The more I have worked with this concept the more I want to research it. As with any site optimizing its performance should always be on your checklist. Part of optimizing my high volume sites to make money online was to take a look at how people were navigating around them. What were they seeing and clicking on?
Recently I came across a wonderful site called CrazyEgg.com that has an excellent interface for tracking clicks and click density over a period of time. I could easily see if my AdSense ads were being ignored, what articles were being read, if any promotions were focused on and what part of my pages were generating real interest.
CrazyEgg.com is a very cool web 2.0 application that basically creates a simulated overlay on top of any web page. This overlay is triggered by a simple javascript line embedded on the page you want to measure. Basically it is keeping track of clicks, click location, and density. What I really like about it is the ability to adjust as the page adjusts. So, if you have a blog you don't have to worry about the content locations changing (although I'm sure a drastic change would probably affect it.)
This tool is particularly helpful with Adsense ads allowing you to visually understand if you ad positioning is working. I was easily able to optimize my placements by viewing the heat maps and rearranging the ad positions. For my high volume sites this has been extremely beneficial. In fact, there were ad placements I definitely thought were in the correct position that turned out to have no clicks at all! I was floored! It seems that users are tuning out ads in various locations that I had no idea were poor screen real estate.
If you have any page that gets some traffic you should try it out for a test drive. A possible option would be to use a very low bid Adwords campaign to get clicks before the page has been promoted so you can tune the layout sooner rather than later. Whatever way you want to test, tune and monetize your site, I strongly suggest that you try this tool out soon.
Recently I came across a wonderful site called CrazyEgg.com that has an excellent interface for tracking clicks and click density over a period of time. I could easily see if my AdSense ads were being ignored, what articles were being read, if any promotions were focused on and what part of my pages were generating real interest.CrazyEgg.com is a very cool web 2.0 application that basically creates a simulated overlay on top of any web page. This overlay is triggered by a simple javascript line embedded on the page you want to measure. Basically it is keeping track of clicks, click location, and density. What I really like about it is the ability to adjust as the page adjusts. So, if you have a blog you don't have to worry about the content locations changing (although I'm sure a drastic change would probably affect it.)
This tool is particularly helpful with Adsense ads allowing you to visually understand if you ad positioning is working. I was easily able to optimize my placements by viewing the heat maps and rearranging the ad positions. For my high volume sites this has been extremely beneficial. In fact, there were ad placements I definitely thought were in the correct position that turned out to have no clicks at all! I was floored! It seems that users are tuning out ads in various locations that I had no idea were poor screen real estate.
If you have any page that gets some traffic you should try it out for a test drive. A possible option would be to use a very low bid Adwords campaign to get clicks before the page has been promoted so you can tune the layout sooner rather than later. Whatever way you want to test, tune and monetize your site, I strongly suggest that you try this tool out soon.
