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Want to know more about MasterNewMedia? In this monthly web traffic and demographics report, we showcase all of the most relevant data, trends and indicators for the number of visitors, page views and reader profiles collected across many of the major online traffic and trend tracking services.

The web traffic statistics for the past month of November, show no strong changes in terms of visitors and page views for MasterNewMedia.org. Overall a soft decline trend in traffic can be seen across a number of popular blog sites, and this in turn might have been caused by Google recent adjustments to his ranking algorithms.

On the advertising and revenues front, Google AdSense seem to be showing an overall lowering of the rates paid by advertisers across the board, bringing down overall revenues for most web publishers. Revenue increases can still be made by working on linking campaigns and building a greater social following, but the key mover for higher earnings with Google is all about becoming visible and directly relevant to specific advertisers.

By working to optimize your Ad Placement Targeting options, your site can become very visible to AdWords advertisers looking for specific keyword focused pages and topic sections. This in turn means the opportunity to sell advertising also on a CPM basis, as well as a tangible impact on your Google earnings.

Traffic-wise MasterNewMedia is looking forward to further expand its language editions offering and I am actively selecting editor / partner candidates not only for its existing Portuguese/Brazilian and Russian sites, but also for a Dutch, German and French edition of MasterNewMedia. If you know someone who could fit this bill, wanting to translate in his native language our daily feature while sharing with me the Google-generated revenues of each specific languaged edition site, please do send her my way.

In this monthly MasterNewMedia traffic report, you can find all of the key indicators and statistics relative to the number of our total traffic numbers for November. Even more interestingly, especially for potential advertisers is the demographics section of this report, in which we bring together different stats and indicators from a number of different web services. The result is a comprehensive and quite truthful identikit of the typical MasterNewMedia reader profile, helping us learn more about our audience and our specific reader profile as well as providing a sign of transparency and credibility to potential sponsors and advertisers.

What other stats or trends would you like to see published in this monthly report? What other indicators or numbers would be useful to provide to interested readers and potential sponsors to help them even more understand our focus and existing reach? Let me know what you would like to see by utilizing the comments area at the end of the report.

Here all of the MasterNewMedia traffic and demographics data for the month of November 2008:

MasterNewMedia Web Traffic and Audience Metrics: November 2008

Unique Visitors and Page Views

• Total Visits on MasterNewMedia: 534,861
• Total Page Views on MasterNewMedia: 758,822

MasterNewMedia International Editions - Breakdown

• MasterNewMedia International - English Version:
  • Unique visitors: 256,244
  • Page Views: 358,341
• MasterNewMedia Italian Version:
  • Unique visitors: 133,128
  • Page Views: 198,785
• MasterNewMedia Latino Version:
  • Unique visitors: 116,301
  • Page Views: 164,937
• MasterNewMedia Brazilian Version:
  • Unique visitors: 29,188
  • Page Views: 36,759

Source data: Google Analytics

Alexa measures the number of pages viewed by site visitors. Multiple page views of the same page made by the same user on the same day are counted only once. The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the visitors to the site.

Source data: Alexa

Ad Impressions and Clicks

Source data: Google AdSense

Demographics and Technographics

Audience Age

Audience Sex

Audience Education

Audience HouseHold

Source data: Google AdPlanner

Audience Business Activity

Audience Ethnicities

Source data: Quantcast

Traffic by Platform

Source data: Woopra - data relative to a smaller sample than total audience

Traffic by Browser

Source data: Woopra - data relative to a smaller sample than total audience

Traffic by Browser/OS

Source data: Google Analytics

Connection Speed

Source data: Google Analytics

Traffic Frequency

Source data: Quantcast

Traffic Sources

Source data: Google Analytics

Most Viewed Content

Top 10 articles of MasterNewMedia International - English Version - November 2008

1. Best Online Collaboration Tools 2008 - The Collaborative Map
2. Media Centers: Alternative, Open-Source, Cross-Platform Solutions - A FLOSS Comparison
3. HD Video Sharing: Best Solutions To Publish High Definition Videos - Sharewood Guide
4. Browser Compatibility Testing: Cross-Platform Cross-Browser Multiple Resolutions Compatibility Testing Tools - Sharewood Guide
5. The Social Media Optimization Manifesto: Key Social Marketing Principles To Increase The Visibility Of Your Web Site
6. From News Publishing To Newsmastering: Learn, Understand And Experiment How To Create Your Own Newsradars - Sharewood Guide
7. Improve Web Pages Load Times: Practical Advice On How To Speed Up Your Site - The Pingdom Report
8. Customer Relationship Management: How To Build Solid Trust Between Companies And Customers
9. Content Monetization: Fighting Unlicensed Content Republication Via Distribution Networks And Ad Sharing
10. MasterNewMedia Joins The Federated Media Advertising Network: John Battelle Video

Source data: Google Analytics

Video Audience

1. Video Views on YouTube: 2,645,778
2. Video Views on Qik: 1,116,730

Authority

Google PageRank

Here below the MasterNewMedia PageRank calculated with PR Checker:

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be.

If you want learn more about PageRank here are some relevant articles:

• Guide To Understanding Google PageRank
• Google PageRank Explained, Defined, Best Reference Resources
• Future PageRank Helps Reputation And Trustworthiness Shine Over Artificially Inflated Search Results: Google TrustRank

Alexa Rank

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach).

Source data: Alexa

Technorati Authority

Source data: Technorati

Link Popularity

Google Inbound Links

• MasterNewMedia English: 2.520
• MasterNewMedia Italian: 1.230
• MasterNewMedia Latino: 250
• MasterNewMedia Brazilian: 155

Source data: Google

Yahoo! Inbound Links

• MasterNewMedia English: 130,251
• MasterNewMedia Italian: 33,282
• MasterNewMedia Latino: 7,486

Source data: Yahoo!

Social Popularity

Social News And Social Networks

• Bookmarks at Delicious: 1.138
• Pages posted on Digg: 133
• Pages posted on Reddit: 20
• References from Yahoo! Answers: 111
• Comments on StumbleUpon: 8
• Inbound links from Wikipedia: 32

Source data: Quarkbase

Twitter

Source data: TwitterCounter

Citations, Mentions and Trackbacks

Source data: Technorati

Source data: BlogPulse

MasterNewMedia RSS Feed Stats

Source data: FeedAnalysis

When not specified differently the data shown refers exclusively to MasterNewMedia International edition and not the additional language editions in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Edited and prepared by Max Badolati for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 4th 2008 as “MasterNewMedia Web Traffic and Audience Metrics: November 2008“.

Is your site accessible on a mobile phone? Not yet? Do you think your readers are all still accessing your site only via their PC-based computers? Think again: The number of people who surf the web via their mobile phones has been increasing tremendously in recent times and, whether you like it or not, your web site is going to be no exception to this.

Photo credit: Knitware Blog edited by Daniele Bazzano

“The US is the most tech savvy nation with nearly 40 million Americans - 16% of all US mobile users - using their handset to browse on the move. The UK and then Italy come a close second and third…”
(Source: Nielsen Mobile / BBC)

This is why is so important that you add to the list of key usability questions some of the following:
Can your readers access your web site via mobile phone easily? If you have an ecommerce site, what precautions have you taken so that if your reader loses his connection in the middle of a transaction nothing gets lost?

Ecommerce via mobile phones poses specific usability issues that need to be addressed as priorities if your site provides any type of interaction feature.

The result is the need to address with more attention the design aspects of your mobile-enabled web site as to effectively deal with the specific usability concerns characteristic of the mobile universe, such as the smaller keyboards available to your readers, or the limited size of their screens.

In this article, Alexander Baxevanis provides a detailed list of usability issues that must be addressed by any serious web publisher wanting to reach out to the emerging mobile audience(s).

Here all the details:

Ecommerce On The Go - Selling Through The Mobile

Introduction

Since we last wrote about the usability of mobile websites, the rise of the iPhone and other high-end handsets has meant that even more people use the Internet on their phone. (Source: Nielsen Mobile / BBC).

Companies have responded by creating more mobile-optimised websites, some of which now allow people to complete ecommerce transactions on the mobile, instead of simply researching for information.

For example:

• Shoppers can buy any product on the Amazon.com catalogue through the Amazon mobile site
• Travellers can instantly book a room in any Travelodge UK hotel through the Travelodge mobile site and rail tickets at the Train Line mobile site
• Car owners can get an instant car insurance quote on the Swiftcover mobile site
• Music fans can purchase tickets for their favourite concerts at the SeeTickets mobile site

However, while many people are already comfortable making online purchases using a computer, doing the same through a mobile phone poses unique challenges. These challenges need to be addressed by mobile ecommerce sites.

This article provides best practice guidelines for removing potential barriers between your customers and your mobile ecommerce site.

Help People Find Your Mobile Site

Having a mobile-optimised site is no use if your customers can’t find it.

You should always detect when visitors are accessing your site through a mobile phone, and automatically redirect them to the mobile-optimised version of the site.

Although you may also advertise the link to your mobile site, people may still remember the link to your main site only, or may arrive on your main site through a search engine link.

Ensure that the link to your mobile site is easy to remember and type into a mobile phone. For example:

• Append the word ‘mobile‘ to your main domain (e.g. www.example.com/mobile)
• Use a .mobi domain with your brand name (e.g. www.example.mobi)

Cater For Dropped Internet Connections

Mobile internet connections can often be unstable, e.g. when a mobile phone moves into a low signal area or runs out of battery. It’s usually not a big issue if this happens while someone is simply consuming information e.g. reading the news.

However, a dropped connection in the middle of a transaction may leave people wondering if the transaction has been completed or frustrated that the information they’ve entered so far was lost.

While there’s not much you can do to improve mobile network coverage, you can mitigate the effects of dropped connections by:

• Saving all details in every step of a transaction e.g. the items in a shopping basket or the shipping details already entered
• Ensuring that a transaction can be resumed from the point where it was left, without having to start over
• Capturing visitors’ e-mail addresses or mobile phones at the beginning of a transaction and sending them instructions to help them continue an interrupted transaction
• Ensuring that all transactions available on your mobile site can be completed in a few short steps

Avoid Data Entry Where Possible

Although high-end smartphones increasingly incorporate a full physical or on-screen keyboard, typing on a mobile phone still isn’t as easy as on a computer. Unfortunately, completing an ecommerce transaction often requires a lot of information that isn’t always easy to type, such as addresses and credit card numbers.

In order to decrease the chances that customers will drop off at this point, you can mimimise data entry by:

• Allowing customers to log-in with the same username and password that they use for your main website in order to retrieving shipping and billing information stored in their account
• Encouraging customers to create an account to speed up future transactions
• Integrating with 3rd party billing services for which customers need to enter only a username & password e.g. PayPal

Reassure Users About Transaction Security

With frequent reports on the news about credit card fraud and identity theft, most shoppers are looking to be reassured that their online transaction will be secure.

While most desktop web browsers prominently highlight secure websites and protect users from visiting fraudulent sites, many mobile browsers are primitive in that respect.

Also, because there are many mobile phones with different web browsers, people haven’t yet become accustomed to a certain way of highlighting that a website is secure.

It’s a good idea to prominently highlight that your mobile site is secure on the homepage and on pages that ask for sensitive information.

Customers may also feel more comfortable if they don’t need to enter any sensitive information because it’s already stored in their account, as discussed in the previous point.

Think Mobile For The Post-Transaction Stage

Interacting with your customers doesn’t stop when they complete a transaction.

A good mobile user experience should extend well into the post-transaction phase, e.g. when customers need to track the goods they ordered or check a booking confirmation. After all, if your customers have chosen to complete a transaction using a mobile phone, they’ll likely appreciate following up on this transaction in the same way.

Depending on the nature of the transaction, the following guidelines may apply:

• When customers can buy physical goods through your mobile site, provide a mobile solution for tracking the progress of the order and the delivery of the goods.
• When customers can book tickets or other services through your site, provide a mobile-friendly booking confirmation e-mail and consider mobile ticketing solutions, where tickets can be electronically stored in a mobile phone in the form of a special barcode
• In any case, ensure that all e-mails following up on a transaction are mobile-friendly

Conclusion

With increasing mobile internet use, it won’t be long before your customers will expect to transact with you over their mobile phone. This will take more than simply “downscaling” your existing website to fit in a mobile screen.

Only if you carefully consider the unique challenges and opportunities offered through the mobile channel will you be able to offer your customers a truly mobile user experience.

Originally written by Alexander Baxevanis for Webcredible and first published on December 1st 2008 as “Ecommerce on the go - selling through the mobile”

About the author

Alexander Baxevanis is crazy about usability - so crazy that he works for Webcredible, an industry leading user experience consultancy, helping to make the Internet a better place for everyone. He’s very good at information architecture training and extremely talented at eyetracking.

Photo credit:
Ecommerce On The Go - Selling Through The Mobile - solarseven
All other images by Webcredible

Apture is a new tool for bloggers and online publishers that can add interactive multimedia links and embeds to their site with a single click. Apture takes the traditional act of linking to a whole new level and provides your site with greater functionality and depth by providing your reader with the opportunity to browse related off-site content without ever having to leave your site. So in essence, Apture can potentially increase your reader engagement. And best of all, it is completely free.

Photo credit: Apture edited by Andre Deutmeyer

Links are the currency of the web. Any self-respecting blogger… independent publisher… website owner knows this. But when you are trying to maximize your readers engagement with your site, linking (and sending them away) to content elsewhere on the web seems to be a counterproductive process.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could link to outside content, but still keep the eyeballs on your site?

That is where Apture comes to play. Apture gives independent publishers the power to find and incorporate relevant multimedia items, such as video clips from YouTube, photos from Flickr, Wikipedia articles, music, podcasts, and much more from around the web directly on to your site with a single click of a button. You can also bring new life to old content you created by using Apture to upload that content from your computer and embed or link to it on your pages. Readers can then access these linked items without ever having to leave your site.

By doing this, you can increase reader engagement time with your blog or site by providing your readers with a deeper, richer web experience. This in turn can help you monetize your content by keeping your readers on your blog.

Still have questions about Apture? Continue reading below for the full review.

Here all the details:

Apture Overview

Apture is a free next-generation linking tool that allows you to add a wealth of multimedia links to your site. Once installed on your site, you can create Apture links by simply highlighting the word or phrase that you want linked and then selecting the relevant media.

Traditional linking creates a link that opens up in another tab / page, sending visitors away from your content if they want to view that link. But Apture changes the game. Rather than sending visitors away, links built using Apture open up in new interactive windows that can be repositioned anywhere on the page, or enlarged to fullscreen, allowing your visitor easy access to the content behind the link without ever leaving your site.

Apture further extends the traditional linking by allowing you to combine multiple sources of multimedia content together in one place. Each Apture link can be associated with content plus related media, enabling you to build a web of off-site information accessible without ever having to leave your site, and help your users learn more about the topic you are writing about.

If you have existing links to Wikipedia articles, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and other common web destinations on your website, Apture can automatically go through your site and create Apture links out of them with Apture Auto Link, saving you time and effort.

However, Apture is more than just a linking tool. Apture allows you to quickly and easily embed new media to your post / existing content. Using Apture you can add new videos, pictures, documents into a page without having to log in to your CMS backend. Once embedded, you can resize the content to best match your page layout, and add a caption to introduce it.

Installing Apture is as easy as pie. And if you use Blogger or Typepad then it is even easier - one click will set you up with Apture. For other CMS platforms (like WordPress, Drupal, MovableType) installing Apture is a straightforward process if you follow the step by step instructions provided to you by Apture. You only need one line of code to bring the Apture experience to your website.

Finally, Apture offers unique advantages for large publishers. For publishers like The Washington Post, Apture can serve as a new opportunity for commerce and advertising because you can display advertising within the Apture window that pops up when a visitor hovers over the link. By virture of the way Apture works, these ads are guaranteed to appear at the center of your visitor’s attention - an Apture window only appears when a visitor hovers over the link, indicating interest. Apture splits the revenue from these ads 50/50 with the publisher.

Key Features

Apture key features revolve around their next-generation linking service, providing your site visitors with a wealth of information without ever having to leave your site. Apture succeeds admirably. And the approach Apture takes is so innovative that there really is no direct competition for their service at the moment.

Features include:

• Wikipedia Links
• Video Links
• Audio Links
• Image Links
• Document Links
• Easy Media Embeds to published pages
• Related Media option allows you to connect multiple sources of media to a single link
• Auto Link
• Content Monetization (Advertising) for large publishers

Below is a graphical tour of these key features with details about how they work.

Wikipedia Links

Apture allows you to easily link to any Wikipedia article. Link any article that you want by highlighting the word or phrase that you want linked. Apture will then open up a pop-up from which you can choose the Wikipedia article that you want linked to the term. Apture tweaks the display of the Wikipedia article so that it displays beautifully within the pop-up box.

Video Links

YouTube is by far the easiest video sharing site to grab videos from, but as long as you have a web address, you can link to any video that you want and share it through Apture. If the video you want linked is sitting on your local drive, Apture also has an option to upload content and link that instead.

In addition to the ease with which you can link video, Apture also provides a nice feature that allows you to select the video playback start time and end time so you can show your visitors only the part you deem the most relevant.

Audio Links

Audio links work similar to video links. As long as you have the web address of the audio file, you can link any bit of audio that you want through Apture. Like video links, you can also choose to upload audio and link that instead.

Similarly, with audio links, you can select the start time and end time of the audio track so that the portion of the track that is most relevant to your reader automatically plays.

Image Links

Apture makes linking images simple too. Like video and audio linking, you can link any image to Apture if you have the web address for it. If you don’t have a specific image in mind, Apture’s built in search of Flickr, Yahoo Images, and Wikipedia Images makes finding and linking images a painless task. Or if you choose to, you can upload content from your local drive and have that display instead.

Document Links

Apture allows you to easily link PDF or other documents using Scribd iPaper technology. This allows your reader to access the article you are linking and read it without ever having to leave your site. The one problem that I noticed with this is that if you set up the Apture link for the document, there is no easy way for the reader to directly download that document anymore if you would like them to be able to do so.

Media Embedding

If you want to quickly embed media (video, audio, images) into your already published article without logging into your CMS backend, you can do so with Apture. Apture allows you to embed new media almost anywhere into your article with a single click of your mouse. You just point to the spot on your page that you want that media embedded, click, choose the media that you want (via search or web address), and presto… you are done. Although the media you embed through Apture will probably not fit your site layout as well as, say, one that you do through your backend, Apture is an excellent solution for embedding media quickly and easily without having to work with HTML.

Related Media

The capability to link multiple resources to one term or phrase is, perhaps, your greatest advantage with Apture. Traditionally, when you link something you can only have that link pointing to one location. But now with Apture, you can provide multiple types of media for you reader to enjoy… all linked to the term or phrase. So if there is a picture, video, and a Wikipedia link that you want pointing at the same term, you can do that with Apture.

Auto Link

Apture Auto Link is exactly what it sounds like. Rather than having to manually go through your old posts and create Apture links for your content, Apture automatically goes through your post and changes popular linking destinations (like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, and more) to Apture links. You can control which types of links that you want Apture to automatically convert through your Apture Dashboard. By default, all the links are selected, so if there are certain types of links that you do not want Apture to convert, then all you need to do is deselect those options.

Content Monetization (Advertising) For Large Publishers

Unfortunately, Apture only offers content monetization options for large publishers like the Washington Post (the above image is from the Washington Post) for now. Larger publishers will be able to serve ads within every Apture pop-up.

These ads could potentially have a higher click-through-rate than other display and contextual ads because as Apture argues, these Apture ads are going to be displayed where the reader is focusing his or her attention. The ads are all cost-per-click (cpc) types. And like Google, Apture will take a cut of any ad revenue that the publisher makes from those ads. Hopefully, Apture will soon extend this option to smaller independent publishers as well.

Pros and Cons

Apture Review - In Brief

Editor’s Comments

Apture is a very functional solution. Other similar linking solutions like Snap fall short when compared to the functionality that Apture provides. Snap in many ways works like Apture. Snap provides pop up windows that link to videos, Wikipedia content, photos, etc so that visitors can view that content without having to leave your site. But unlike Apture, Snap previews are much more limited.

When selecting the content that you want the link to point to, Apture really has few limits. Snap is limited to only those ‘Snap Shots‘ that are presupported. Apture allows you to link almost anything, even content that you have stored on your local drive. Furthermore the Apture ‘Related Media‘ function is great. More than once I have wanted to link multiple pages / media / content to the same term. And Apture is the only platform that allows me to combine multimedia content from around the web, together on one link.

Furthermore, I am not aware of another tool that allows you to embed multimedia into your website as easily as Apture does. The ease with which Apture allows you to embed new media into your post is great. The one shortfall of this, however, is that the media you embed may not fit always as cleanly into your page as media you embed through your CMS backend.

One of the major complaints that I have seen about Apture is that it adds unnecessary noise to a web page. That complaint is understandable. I myself hate the unwelcome pop-ups that occur when you accidentally scroll over text-link ads. But the difference with Apture is that Apture actually provides relevant, interactive content to the viewer… not irritating irrelevant advertising. So despite the annoyance that the unsolicited Apture pop-ups may generate, the added functionality and information that you provide to your readers are well worth the cost.

These factors make Apture a unique product and well worth checking out. Apture is free, so go give it a shot.

Additional Resources

• Sign up for Apture
• Official Product Tour by Apture
• Videos of how to use Apture

Do you see any mistakes? Would you like to share your own experiences with Apture? Please leave a comment below.

Originally written by Andre Deutmeyer for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 2nd 2008 as Add Multimedia Links and Embeds To Your Website With One Click: Apture Reviewed.

AdSense optimization is a series of tactics to help you to improve Google AdSense performance on your blog site. One of the key issues you face when you decide to use AdSense is WHERE to place ads. Above the fold? At the Bottom? Left or Right column? The monetization power of your site depends on the choice you make.

Photo credit: Inside AdSense

To help you better understand WHERE to position your AdSense ads, The Inside AdSense team has released a series of three short videos, entitled “Optimisation Essentials“, that can give you some good basic guidance on how to do ads placement, and how to increase your revenues with a rational design of your site.

In summary, here is what they recommend:

a) Use big ads.

b) Integrate your ads with the layout of your site.

c) Place your ads where users are more likely to see them.

Here all the details:

Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Optimisation Essentials (Part I - II - III)

Bigger Is Better - for AdSense Ad Units

Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their site’s design, and we always point them to these three:

• 300×250 medium rectangle
• 728×90 leaderboard
• 160×600 skyscraper

These ad units have proven in the past to deliver better results for both publishers and advertisers.

Advertisers favour these formats, and if you’ve receiving all ad types, you’ll find that advertisers will specifically target your sites more often. If you position your ad units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find an ad that they’re interested in.

When you’re considering how to design your site, our testing has shown that displaying at least one of these ad formats on your page can increase your AdSense earnings potential.

So remember, sometimes bigger is better!

Dress for Success - Impressing Your Audience

Over the years, we’ve seen some colorful ad unit designs.

Some publishers design ad units that contrast with their site so that they stand out. Although this can work in some cases, we’ve found that ad units that match your site’s design tend to perform better in terms of revenue and click-through-rate.

Users are more likely to read ads when they’re well integrated into your site.

When you design your AdSense ads, keep these tips in mind:

• Use colours that either blend with or complement your site’s colours. Make the ads a part of your site.
• Use lighter colours for borders, or no border at all.
• Try rotating colours or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.
• Save sets of frequently-used colours as a palette.

So give your ad design and colours some thought, and you’ll notice the difference!

Position for Performance - Be Noticed

We’ve also made a heatmap to show you where the best placements are on a typical page. Great positions include:

• Above the fold of a page (the section of the page a user can see without scrolling)
• At the end of an article
• Aligned with content

But don’t just take our word for it - every website is different. Make sure you use your judgment of how visitors interact with your pages to determine good ad placements.

Position your ads so that they’re visible, but be careful of intruding on the experience of your site’s visitors.

Most of all, think like a user and you’ll be able to balance your website’s content with a successful ad strategy.

Where Should I Place Google Ads On My Pages?

The best location for Google ads varies from page to page, depending on content.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when considering where to position your ads:

• What is the user trying to accomplish by visiting my site?
• What do they do when viewing a particular page?
• Where is their attention likely to be focused?
• How can I integrate ads into this area without getting in the users’ way?
• How can I keep the page looking clean, uncluttered and inviting?

Certain locations tend to be more successful than others.

This “heat map” illustrates the ideal placing on a sample page layout. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). All other things being equal, ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.

While this heat map is useful as a positioning guideline, we strongly recommend putting your users first when deciding on ad location. Think about their behavior on different pages, and what will be most useful and visible to them.

You’ll find that the most optimal ad position isn’t always what you expect on certain pages.

For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well. It’s almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, “What can I do next?” Precisely targeted ads can answer that question for them.

Additional References

• AdSense Placement Optimization: User Behavior
• Improve AdSense Performance: Step-by-Step Video Guide From The AdSense Team
• Online Ad Management And Optimization: The Google Ad Manager Is Here to Optimize Advertising ROI
• Online Advertising Strategy - Ads Relevance Is The Key

Do you want to learn more about AdSense and other key strategies in professional web publishing? Check out POP, a new video blog site where Robin Good shares his expertise with “in-depth” video tutorials to help professional online publishers to monetize their sites.

Originally written by Mel Ann Chan for Inside AdSense and first published between November 3-18 as “Optimisation Essentials (Part I) - Optimisation Essentials (Part II) - Optimisation Essentials (Part III)“

Social media optimization is a marketing approach utilized to increase the visibility of your site by leveraging the power of social media and online communities.

Photo credit: Fred Cavazza mashed up by Robin Good

Social media optimization is a term originally introduced by Rohit Bhargava back in 2006.

Rohit writes:

“For years now, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites has been honed into a fine art with entire companies devoting considerable effort to defining best practices and touting the value of SEO for raising a site’s performance on organic search listings.

While I believe in the power of SEO, there is a new offering we have started providing to clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO).

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.“

SMO (social media optimization), originally based on the five key principles Rohit first wrote to increase the visibility of a blog site, grew with time to 17 items, as other social media experts contributed to them by suggesting new ones across new blog posts about social media optimization best practices.

As all such great social media optimization principles have only being linked and referenced on the original post by Rohit, and remain therefore scattered across multiple sites and blogs around the Web, I have decided to add to, aggregate and prepare a comprehensive list of all them and to title it “The Social Media Optimization Manifesto” while leaving this document open for further additions and updates.

Here it is:

Intro by Daniele Bazzano

The Social Media Optimization Manifesto - Key Social Marketing Principles To Increase The Visibility Of Your Site

Increase Your Linkability

This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are “static” - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront.

To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format.
(Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy

Adding content features like quick buttons to “add to del.icio.us” are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage).
(Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Reward Inbound Links

Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to recreating similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you.
(Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Help Your Content Travel

Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site.

When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.
(Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Encourage The Mashup

In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). YouTube’s idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can embed videos from their site has fueled their growth.

Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content.
(Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Be a User Resource, Even If It Doesn’t Help You

Add value to users, including outbound links to areas that could help them with their goals and purposes. Deployed corrected, even if you link to competitors you stand to gain as the communities first source of information finding.

How will this help SMO? Folks will link to your social site and tag is as helpful or the ‘ultimate’ guide in that space. As this adds up, it will become more and more relevant in search engine results.
(Principle suggested by Jeremiah Owyang).

Reward Helpful and Valuable Users

Often helpful or popular users will be influencers and champions within your social site, devise ways to elevate them buy promoting their works on the homepage, or develop a rating system. Sometimes a quick email or note in private telling them you appreciate them can go a long way.

Some folks have done that to me, and for communities I run, I do that as well. Only do if sincere.
Perhaps this is not truly SMO, but it will help to keep the most valuable members of a community closer to your site.
(Principle suggested by Jeremiah Owyang).

Participate

Join the conversation. Social Media is a two way street, lets not forget that. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your buzz. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect. Participating helps your message spread further and faster.
(Principle suggested by Cameron Olthuis).

Know How to Target Your Audience

If you don’t even know your target audience you are in trouble. I would love to have everyone using my product too, but you need to be realistic. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can’t. So know your appeal and who it is appealing to you.
(Principle suggested by Cameron Olthuis).

Create Content

There are certain kinds of content that just naturally spread socially. It does not matter what industry you are in and what boring products you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work. Whether it is creating widgets, making people laugh, or writing a whitepaper, it can be done. Know what type of content can work for you and create it.
(Principle suggested by Cameron Olthuis).

Be Real

The community does not reward fakers.
(Principle suggested by Cameron Olthuis).

Don’t Forget Your Roots, Be Humble

Sometimes it can be easy to get carried away being a BlogStar or industry talking head. Remember those who helped you along the way, and that respect will help all involved.(Principle suggested by Loren Baker).

Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Things, Stay Fresh

Social Media is changing and morphing by the minute, keep up on new tools, products and challenges in your social sphere.
(Principle suggested by Loren Baker).

Develop a SMO Strategy

Define your objectives and set goals. Be fully aware of what your desired outcome is as a result of performing these tactics. Reputation, sales, influence, credibility, charity, traffic / page views, etc.
(Principle suggested by Lee Odden).

Choose Your SMO Tactics Wisely

Be cognizant of what actions will influence the desired outcome with the most impact.
(Principle suggested by Lee Odden).

Enable Content Creation

According to Hans Peter Brondmo of Plum during the SES San Jose session “Marketing with Social Media“, 1% of those involved with social media are creating content, 10% will enrich that content and 90% will consume it. That’s a lot of influence wielded by content creators and those that reblog and mashup.

Think about what you can do to enable content creation as well as the repurposing of that content for what might possibly be the most productive outcome.
(Principle suggested by Lee Odden).

Tag Tag Tag

Help existing content become more meaningful to others by tagging with relevant keywords images, videos and other multimedia resources posted by others. Instead of simply cheering up or complimenting someone for sharing a valuable media object, go and tag it with relevant, descriptive words providing a valuable, though discrete but tangible contribution to everyone and to your community in particular.
(Principle suggested by Robin Good).

Share Really Valuable Stuff

When you share news, links or media objects on your preferred social media outlets, be them Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed, go for the meat. Share first and foremost things of great value to your social community. Yes, chat, provide feedback, compliment and congratulate when appropriate but do not make this the end activity of your social media presence.
(Principle suggested by Robin Good).

Market and Promote Great Stuff From Others

Go out of your way to give visibility and reward to great ideas and work done by others. Talking always about how cool and great you are gets boring after a while. The idea is not either to save yourself time and effort by picking and re-sharing cool items you get from others in your social media communities. The goal is rather to be a social paladin of other people’s work to bring them the attention they deserve.
(Principle suggested by Robin Good).

Don’t Be Afraid to Let Go of a Message or Idea and Let Others Own It

In the spirit of social media principles, the idea of Social Media Optimization is now out there and belongs to the marketing and PR community.
(Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava)

In the very spirit of this last point, I see this as an open list, welcoming others to bring in and contribute other additional ideas. Feel free to use the comment area here below to suggest other key principles you think should be added to it and I will be happy to add the best (with a link back to your site) that you will provide.

This manifesto has been inspired by “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)”
originally written by Rohit Bhargava and contributing authors for theInfluential Marketing Blog and first published on August 10th 2006 as “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)“.

Daniele Bazzano and Robin Good of MasterNewMedia have expanded and remixed Rohit’s and the other contributors’ original content by aggregating all of them on this page, providing a more engaging editorial format, and by adding new in-text links to references and relevant resources and a couple new principles to it.

About the author

Rohit Bhargava is a founding member of the 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy and author of the marketing book Personality Not Included, a guide to using your personality in marketing. He also publishes the Influential Marketing Blog. Rohit Bhargava is widely recognized across the marketing industry (and on Wikipedia) for inventing the concept of Social Media Optimization (SMO) on his blog.

Photo credits:
Increase Your Linkability - Stephen Coburn
Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy - Christophe Testi
Reward Inbound Links - Ilin Sergey
Help Your Content Travel - ronen
Encourage The Mashup - sonya_m
Be a User Resource, Even If It Doesn’t Help You - Sandor Kacso
Reward Helpful and Valuable Users - Karam Miri
Participate - Cathy Yeulet
Know How to Target Your Audience - Tomasz Trojanowski
Create Content - Ieva Geneviciene
Be Real - Paul Moore
Don’t Forget Your Roots, Be Humble - Anita Peppers
Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Things, Stay Fresh - Ashwin K.A
Develop a SMO Strategy - Andres Rodriguez
Choose Your SMO Tactics Wisely - Silvia Bukovac
Enable Content Creation - Marc Dietrich
Tag Tag Tag - Asia.ru
Share Really Valuable Stuff- Norma Cornes
Market and Promote Great Stuff From Others - Philip Date
Don’t Be Afraid to Let Go of a Message or Idea and Let Others Own It - Sun Jeng Tan

As content can be copied indefinitely and distributed instantaneously across the web, web publishers need to cooperate and partner with their peers to create free content distribution networks - collections of blogs and web sites where they can freely syndicate and republish their original content. Why?

Photo credit: kiankhoon

In the rapidly changing online publishing landscape that exists today, the old mantra “If you can’t beat ‘em… join ‘em” seems to ring truer than ever. Publishers, large and small, have long tried to find effective ways to fight against those who re-use and re-publish their content without permission.

But finding site editors, webmasters who hide under a barrage of protective layers, takes lots of time and it is often as ineffective as sending out DMCA or takedown notices. Smart web publishers are beginning to realize how ineffective and time-consuming is to continue to send these draconian cease-and-desist letters to those republishing their content, especially if they want to survive and thrive in the future.

This problem is not limited to independent web publishers however. The video game and movie industry have been fighting this same loosing battle for years. Even today there is a report that the Sony Blu-ray DRM has been broken and Chinese pirates are moving unauthorized copies of HD discs.

If DRM doesn’t stand a chance while scraping and RSS republishing become easier by the hour, what chance do web publishers have in hoping to control the unlicensed distribution of their content?

None. But…

The time has come for publishers to embrace change. The creation of new online content distribution networks, through which content can be easily shared and freely re-published, may be the possible road to their salvation.

If you think about it, sharing online ad revenue between content publishers can create new monetizing opportunities / revenue streams and partly recoup the revenue loss caused by the above listed unauthorized content republication practices.

Sharing online ad revenue through partnerships with other publishers… bloggers… and others, who would take their content and re-publish it anyway, could indeed be for many, the very best course of action.

Here, all the details:

Introduction by Andre Deutmeyer

Atomized Content: The New Reality

Publishers today face a changing online landscape, one in which users are taking control of how and where they view content. Rather than going directly to the destination sites of specific publications, users discover content through blogs and other non-traditional sources. These new publishers often re-purpose and sometimes completely republish content without attribution.

Industry observers have called this development the “atomization” of content, and many believe it poses a significant challenge to publishers. “It is potentially more disruptive to big traffic sites than Web 2.0 was,” says Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights at Edelman Digital. “If almost all content can be lifted from one spot and placed somewhere where it’s more convenient to the user, just how will it be monetized? The ramifications reach far and wide.”

With these new realities come new opportunities. Forward-thinking publishers are already embracing the trend, freeing up their content to be distributed off of their destination sites. This strategy allows you to increase offsite ad revenue, drive more traffic to your site, and find new opportunities for licensing and syndication. This whitepaper looks at the ongoing changes and suggests ways you can survive and thrive in this evolving content landscape.

Extracting Value From Offsite Content Distribution

The rise of atomized content requires fundamental changes in how you deliver content to your consumers. “The challenge is that [publishers] will lose control of their distribution systems,” explains a recent report from Jupiter Research. “But…those who try to retain control of their distribution will likely fall behind their competitors.”

Still, letting content “go free” does not mean giving up ownership or copyrights. Nor does it mean that you will be creating articles, images, and videos, only to have third parties benefit from them. Instead, you have merely relinquished control over where your content appears. To compensate for this, you need new ways to profit from the offsite appearance of you content. These include valuable editorial insights and innovative monetization strategies, such as link building, licensing, and ad revenue sharing.

Gaining Insights From Web-wide Visibility

The first step in developing an offsite content strategy is to find out who is re-using your content and in what context. With technologies available today, you can closely track the republication of articles and other assets, wherever they appear the Net.

One advantage of this increased visibility is a deeper understanding of what your customers want. This is particularly valuable for publishers that syndicate their content. For the first time, near-real time metrics on how your licensees are using your content are available, enabling you to tailor your content offerings, identify upsell opportunities, and increase revenue. For example, Reuters recently reported that content tracking enabled it focus on more popular styles of articles. “We have been a little surprised [online readers] are moving more toward fluff stories, infotainment,” says Reuters’ Maria Molland, SVP and Global Head of Strategy and Business Development. “As a result we are putting a lot more editorial resources behind sport and lifestyle.”

Links as the Currency of the Web

Traditionally, links have been considered a method of attribution or branding your content. While this still holds true, a process called link building offers a significant opportunity for increasing traffic and revenue. Simply put, link building involves getting other sites to link back to the original appearance of an article, image or video.

For leading web sites, link building is one of the most powerful traffic-generation tools available on the Internet today. The reason is not merely because readers click on links and bring your site direct traffic. Far more important is the effect that links have on search engines. Most publishers today receive a substantial portion of their visitors from keyword searches on sites like Google or Yahoo. A great example is The New York Times, where search drives more traffic to its site than any other source.

To understand the role link building plays in increasing such traffic, it is necessary to understand how search engines work. Search engines continually scan the Internet cataloging the content for leading web sites. For each set of key words search engines return a list of results. These results are based on complex algorithms to assess how important or relevant each site is. The sites the search engine deemed most valuable by the search engine are ranked first.

The number of inbound links to a site is a very important factor in determining this ranking, mainly because links help search engines assess how authoritative a site is. Experts in the field often refer to this quality as “domain strength.” While there are many contributing factors, sites that have many links to them, in general, have greater domain strength than those that do not.

By tracking the use of your content off your destination site, you can identify opportunities for link building. Many bloggers and other non-traditional publishers are not as careful about providing attribution as they should be – reports indicate that 50-65% of all republished content does not link back to the original web site. By securing a link whenever your content is re-purposed, you can increase the authority of your site. That, in turn, can drive additional search traffic and increased revenue.

Unlimited Licensing Potential

As a publisher you are almost certainly interested in reselling content to other media outlets. But finding potential partners in this field can be a challenge. How can you identify sales leads? Which ones are potentially valuable, and which are not worth the effort?

By gaining insight into who is republishing your content, you may be able to discover publications or media outlets who are good potential partners. An additional advantage of offsite tracking comes after licensing agreements have been reached. By learning how your licensed content is being used, you can optimize your content offering.

Advertising That Follows Content

There is little doubt that the Internet is being propelled by advertising. According to IDC, U.S. online advertising totaled over $25 billion in 2007, representing a 27% increase over 2006.

Savvy publishers are demanding that the commercial sites repurposing their content also share ad revenue. This approach can be particularly useful when dealing with smaller sites that lack the traffic and resources to qualify for a licensing agreement.

The technology to share revenue exists today on platforms such as Google AdSense that allows you to receive ad revenue automatically, regardless of where your content appears. In this model, you would set your content free, but attach an ad sharing agreement to it that follows the content whenever it is used.

The result will be a new and vibrant content marketplace, where publishers benefit regardless of where their content appears.

Originally written by Attributor.com and first published in March 2008 as Set Your Content Free (and Monetize It) - [PDF] - Reprinted with original author permission

Photo credits:
Atomized Content: The New Reality - SSilver
Gaining Insights From Web-wide Visibility - vacuum3d
Links as the Currency of the Web - Danabeth55
Unlimited Licensing Potential - logos
Advertising That Follows Content - vacuum3d

As passion, integrity and authority are among some of the key selection criteria used, it is with great pride that I can officially announce that MasterNewMedia has become part of the Federated Media Publishing and advertising network.

Federated Media, headed by John Battelle is the premiere online advertising agency for author-driven sites and the pragmatical avant-garde of conversational marketing made reality. The Federated Media network is a fantastic ring of independent, author-driven blogs and sites - such as TechCrunch, Digg, Search Engine Land, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Boing Boing and many other great ones.

“An FM site has influence not because its author is well known, but because the author has earned the trust of an influential community.”

And this is why I am so happy to make this announcement: as John Battelle mentions in the short video here below, MasterNewMedia has been selected among 4000 sites that have applied in the last year to become part of the FM network. MasterNewMedia is also among the elite group of four sites not based in the US (only another one is based in Europe).

I feel very excited by FM choice to select this site as one of its network advertising partners and I like to think of this success as a reward for the hard work in publishing and sharing quality content that me and my team have been bringing forward.

To celebrate this new partnership, I have a very special present for you: John Battelle, CEO and founder of Federated Media has allowed me to get an exclusive video sneak-in inside his office to record a 4-min video where he explains to you what Federated Media is and what makes it so unique for independent online publishers.

FM has also kindly asked me to ask you, my readers, a few simple questions to help Federated Media find the most relevant potential advertisers for the MasterNewMedia community. This will help both Federated Media learn more about what kind of readers I have but also help them identify the best possible matches in terms of advertising brands that may have something really relevant to bring to you, the MasterNewMedia audience. I know surveys are never the most appealing thing to do, but I have taken two steps to make this one as sweet and approachable as it can get:

a) it is very short - you can go through it in a couple of minutes

b) As a thank you, I am giving away to each survey respondent my own complete list of RSS new sources. Yes, I am making available for all MasterNewMedia long-time readers and supporters my original OPML source file, containing all of the RSS news sources my newsroom taps into daily, to hand-select the very best news you see daily on the front page of MasterNewMedia.

So, if you are a Robin Good’s passionate reader and want to give a little contribution to my publishing efforts please share your views about MasterNewMedia here: Federated Media / MasterNewMedia short-survey.

Here below John Battelle exclusive mini video interview for MasterNewMedia readers:

MasterNewMedia First Italy-Born International Site To Join The Federated Media Network

John Battelle CEO and founder of Federated Media explains 1) What is Federated Media, 2) What makes FM so unique to independent web publishers.
Duration: 3′ 57″

Full English Text Transcription

Intro

John Battelle: Hey Robin, and Robin’s readers and viewers, it’s John Battelle here, welcoming Robin to the FM family.

I wanted to answer a couple of questions that Robin had for me about Federated Media.

Two questions:

1. What is FM? Why did you make it?
2. What makes Federated Media unique for independent publishers like Robin Good?

What Is Federated Media

John Battelle: First of all, what FM is, it is a media business leveraging technology and leveraging shifts that are happening in the ecosystem of the media business over the past ten years. Toward a conversational form of media like this. Leveraging the Web as a platform.

A couple of big trends that FM has built in:

1. The cost of distribution, which is to be the largest cost in all media, has been mitigated by the Internet.
2. Secondly, the tools of production are no longer an impediment to the creation of media allowing for talented individuals to create platforms to allow audiences to aggregate and have conversations around the individuals’ passions, like what Robin has done.

This is a trend that has been happening for ten years, we really took off in the last five. Federated is a business that has developed around those trends to support independent publishers.

Not unlike what happened with music business, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, as musicians began to get tools of production in their own hands: in other words, the organ wasn’t just in the church.

You can have a guitar, and playing in your garage and get really good, but you needed a music label, a band manager and a talent agent, distribution people, to get you records out and all that stuff. You needed this all infrastructure for the musician to get to the point of making money. Similarly, independent web site publishers need a business around.

Big difference of course is we don’t control, own, or try to exploit the intellectual property. We actually work as partners with the publishers in finding ways to get brand revenue to those publishers mainly through working with top nudge, top five-hundred brands, in the United States, and increasingly globally.

What Makes Federated Media Unique

John Battelle: Second question: What makes FM unique? It’s our approach to working as partners with publishers, and working as partners with marketers and bringing the marketers and the publishers together in conversations that add value to the audiences.

I think what makes us unique is that we are very selective about who we bring on, and we’re very selective about how we bring these conversations together, and actually keep marketing in this new environment.

We’re not a pumped-up banner ad, punch-the-monkey, ram-it display network, we try to bring high quality to everything we do.

Sure, we run typical ads but we run a lot of different kinds campaigns that try to get the community involved in conversations, around the greater themes that are contributed toward to a brand.

And there’s a lot of examples of those on FederatedMedia.net site, so encourage anyone interested, given that I know most of the audience here is interested in new media and marketing, to go to FederatedMedia.net and check it out.

I think you’ll see our difference there.

MasterNewMedia Becomes Part of The Federated Media Family

John Battelle: That’s like a good summary I think, of everything that we do, looking forward to engaging with you and your site as you become member of the family.

Welcome!

I guess I should say congratulations, 4.000 people applied last year to be part of the family and it’s very rare that we let someone through the door, so I hope we can have a great partnership together with not just you Robin, but your audience in particular.

Thanks very much!

Share Your Opinion about MasterNewMedia

If you like MasterNewMedia please help me and Federated Media better understand your needs and expectations as a MasterNewMedia loyal reader. I am providing as a kind compliment to all who fill out this short survey my own complete list of news sources, the same one my newsroom utilizes to hand-pick every few hours the most relevant news for web publishers from the ocean of news that is out there.
Go share your views about MasterNewMedia

Originally shot and recorded by John Battelle for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 17th 2008 as “MasterNewMedia Joins The Federated Media Advertising Network: John Battelle Video“