By Mika Tal

Information- the more we have of it, the better? Sure, so long as we know how to use it.

This is the simple conclusion I came to in one of my ventures through Google Analytics.  With so much information around to explore, one has to know how to ask a question accurately.  Needless to say, narrowing down the mounds of information to a set of central parameters is an important step in learning how to utilize such an advanced tool to one’s benefit.

Today I’d like to suggest a few Google Analytics parameters that can aid you in optimizing the performance of your Kontera pay-per-click ads .  If you’re new to Google analytics, you may find this information especially useful. I’ve narrowed it down to 4:

• New vs. Returning visits- Returning visitors tend to generate a higher CTR for ContentLink® ads.  The reason for this is that visitors who return to your site are already familiar with the information you serve, and with the advantages of Kontera ads.  They are more trusting of ContentLinks and they tend to click the ads more often. For advice on how to get more of your site’s visitors to become returning visitors, consult this great post on entrepreneurs-journey.com

To find out your site’s ratio for New/ Returning Visitors- on your Analytics account, go to Visitors and then click New vs. Returning.

• Top Content Pages – To get the best results, it is recommended that you place your ContentLink tag on all your website’s pages.  However, if you choose to place ContentLinks on a few pages rather than all, make sure the pages you choose are ones that generate traffic.  I’m sure there’s no need to explain why traffic is important for making the most out of your ContentLink ads.

To find Top Content Pages on your Analytics account, go to Content then click Top Content.

• Top Search Engine Keywords- we have published a series of posts on how to maximize your ad earnings by optimizing your site’s content. Knowing which keywords bring the most search engine traffic to your site is important because these are likely to be the more popular keywords, often sought after by advertisers.  These keywords have better monetary potential.

Go to Traffic Sources and then click Search Engines.  Select a search engine and make sure you see the first option on the dimension field: “keyword”.  Google analytics enables you to see all keywords typed into any search engine for your selected date.

• Map Overlay – where are your users coming from?
  Kontera’s top earners are publishers whose sites  get over 55% US traffic.  The reason for this is that online advertisers invest much of their resources on traffic from the US.  While Kontera has partnerships with advertisers all over the world, the highest CPCs generated by your site originate from your US visitors.  An increase in US traffic has an immediate effect on earnings.

Use Analytics Map overlay to see exactly where on the globe your traffic is coming from.
Click Visitors then go to Map Overlay.

I hope you will find this information useful in making the most out of Kontera ContentLink ads  on your site!  If there’s anything I left out, or any additional tips you’d like to share please drop us a comment below.

Multiple factors contribute to a successful site search engine optimization effort. It is an ever changing endeavor as the web and search engine crawlers constantly evolve. With that said, every online marketer will agree that extensive keyword research is crucial to your success.

Content optimization for your targeted keywords is also an important factor in maximizing your results with the various pay per click advertising methods employed on your website or blog. It’s safe to assume that the popular keywords in your niche are also in high demand by advertisers targeting your niche’s users. When creating new content, are you making sure that your content is keyword rich and in line with current search trends of your target audience?

Word cloud was created with Wordle

Kontera’s contextual advertising technology analyzes your content and determines what it’s all about. During the analysis process, keywords are chosen according to relevancy, click-through rates, and revenue potential. We then utilize all these parameters to match your keywords with the most targeted, highest paying ads for your site. Guess you see the connection, right?

There are countless articles about successful keyword research and the various tools you can utilize for this, but we wanted to remind you of two great keyword related tools that Kontera offers publishers:

Keyword Report – This report, available through the Publisher Center “Reports” tab, enables you to identify your site’s top performing Keywords during the last week.  This is a current list of the most clickable keywords on your pages; by adding these keywords to new content you create, you should positively influence your site’s performance.

“Kontera’s Top Clicked Keywords” posts series – While your account’s keyword report provides you with an accurate depiction of your site’s top performers, in this series of posts we provide a glimpse into the larger picture. Every few weeks we share Kontera’s top clicked keywords in a variety of content categories – be sure to follow this as the next post may include your niche and grant you with valuable inside information you can use.

Bryan Everett, Kontera’s SVP Business and Development, was interviewed on Adotas this week.  In a Q & A series, Everett presents an overview of Kontera- technology, history, and direction. Through this overview, Everett offers interesting insight into the world of In-Text contextual advertising.  Here’s a sneak peek:

Q: With more than 300 ad networks out there, how do you add value to advertisers? Publishers?

A: Considering the economic situation we’re in now, more advertising dollars will be pushed towards performance-based vehicles. As it relates to advertisers, what differentiates us from other ad networks is that we are a Cost-Per-Click based platform which means that they only pay for performance. In addition, we convert well for advertisers once users do click on an ad. For publishers, we provide a very strong additive eCPM to the overall page, as well as a solid user experience because we choose the most relevant keywords and ads at the most relevant and opportune time… Go to Article

It’s time for our top clicked keyword report again:

“iphone” is always a top-clicked keyword in the Consumer Electronics category, but as the holiday shopping proved, “Nintendo wii” is a strong contender for first place in this particular niche.

“The Pussycat Dolls” are going on a European tour with Lady Gaga, if clicks are any indication tickets are probably sold out. It’s twin girls for “Rebecca Romijn” and husband Jerry O’Connell, and this happy news generated many clicks for the “Ugly Betty” actress. It’s the award season so it’s hardly surprising that “red carpet” and “Golden Globe Award” are topping the clickable keyword list in the Entertainment category.

A new year is always filled with promise and hopes and apparently it’s a season that attracts good business for astrologers… The Society & Culture category is dominated by astrology related keywords with many users interested in a prediction of how 2009 will unfold.

Against the backdrop of Facebook’s “breast feeding” controversy, we’ve witnessed a rise in this keyword’s popularity within the Health category. But can you speculate what sparked the sudden popularity of “face lift” in January?

The “Top Clicked Keywords” post series is aimed at providing you additional information about the top performing keywords in our network.  For previous posts visit our Top Clicked Keywords Category.

To get into the spirit this holiday season, Kontera adopted a local family through Compass Community Services, who provides housing, education and employment services to San Francisco’s homeless and at-risk families. Kontera adopted family of six and our employees purchased gifts from the family’s wish list, ranging from gift cards to provide the family with a healthy holiday feast, to shoes, robes, teddy bears and knitting needles. We wrapped the presents just like Santa’s elves would, and then placed them under the Kontera tree for delivery to the family.  Kontera’s participation in the adopt-a-family program helped to provide thousands of presents for over 150 families, including 250 children. At Kontera, we really enjoyed celebrating a season of giving, and look forward to more community service activities in the future.  Thank you to our publishers and advertisers who help make our generosity possible.  We couldn’t do it without you!

Compass Community Services
Each year, Compass fills the needs of more than 3,000 low-income and homeless parents and children. Its services include intake and referral to shelter, emergency shelter, transitional housing, and childcare – in addition to a broad spectrum of counseling, parenting education, prevention, and support services. With its deep understanding of homelessness and personalized support, Compass helps clients regain a solid footing and move toward long-term stability.

2009 has only just begun and we’re kicking it off with a brand new post series -”The Kontera Publisher of the Month”.

Through this post series, each month we’ll introduce you to one of the most interesting and unique sites from amongst Kontera’s network of publishers. Ask-Leo.com, the first Kontera Publisher of the Month for 2009, is a perfect example of a website that truly deserves your bookmarks.

Ask-Leo is a website that offers answers to hundreds of tech questions in a variety of categories.  The site is easy to use, and provides thorough and informative advice that anyone from a tech newbie to an experienced programmer or webmaster will find useful.  Leo A. Notenboom, the man behind Ask-Leo, is a former software engineer for Microsoft who has decided to share his wealth of knowledge in the personal computer and software industry with Internet users worldwide.

As the owner of the January Kontera Publisher of the Month, Leo has agreed to answer a few questions for us; we hope you’ll enjoy this interview.

It’s widely known that you were a Microsoft employee for over a decade prior to starting ask-leo!; what was the impetus for starting your own business?

I didn’t actually set out to start a business. After 18 years at Microsoft I “retired”. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that my job was also my hobby, so I couldn’t really stop playing with computers and technology. I have some friends who are also internet entrepreneurs, and I started to dabble in a world outside of Microsoft.  As you might expect family and friends were always asking me questions, so I started to write up the answers to questions I was getting asked most often. Those entrepreneur friends gave me guidance on things like web site construction, search engines and the like, and they also pointed out that this might well be a revenue opportunity. That was in 2003, and the rest, as they say, is history.

How many questions were submitted to Ask-Leo during 2008? What were the most common types of questions?

I don’t have an exact count, but on average I get between 50 and 100 questions and blog comments (which are often also questions) per day. So I’d put it in the 25,000 range.

Most common, by far, are questions relating to password recovery, email account theft, and loss of email account access. After that it starts to vary widely into areas like Windows quirks, suspected hardware failures, specific software problems as well as issues around viruses and spyware.

What was the strangest question you have received?

There are so many to choose from, I don’t think I could. But I certainly do collect the odd and off-beat questions, and each year on the anniversary of Ask Leo! (August 10th), I post a “best of” collection on my personal blog. You can see last year’s collection, and links to the prior years, here: http://ask-leo.com/d-bestof5. I will say this: I’m somewhat surprised, and a little concerned, at the frequency I get asked for relationship advice – I am a computer geek, after all.

Thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs start their own website/blogs daily with the hopes of building a profitable, internet-based business.   What “words of wisdom” do you have for these fledgling entrepreneurs?

There are no shortcuts, but well focused and well directed hard work can be both rewarded and rewarding.

Getting Ask Leo! up and running was a fair amount of work, and it took a goodly amount of time before it truly started to look like a business. It was probably two years before it was generating a reasonable amount of revenue. During that time I was carefully learning about what it means to write authentic content for the web, what it means to be search engine friendly, and what it takes to manage a resource of this magnitude.

Even then that’s not enough. I’m actually a fairly small player in what happens to be an extremely large segment (on-line tech support). It’s a great segment for me, because in many ways answering people’s questions is what I was doing anyway. Formalizing that, and doing it myself in a public venue like Ask Leo! not only capitalizes on my experience and interests, but also allows me to differentiate myself from other players by simply being myself. Every Ask Leo! article (save one, I believe) was written by me, and I plan to keep it that way. In all honesty, that’s part of what keeps it fun for me.

Another point of common wisdom is the adage “find a problem and solve it”. I don’t have to find problems, they come to me. I can’t solve them all, but when I can, everyone walks away happy, myself included.

When did you start to monetize Ask-Leo and what role does In-Text advertising play in your overall monetization strategy?

It actually started out as a for-pay service. For $27 I would answer your question or give you your money back. That lasted only a couple of months. Google’s AdSense program was picking up steam, and of course I signed up. That’s when the power of advertising in general became readily apparent to me.

In-text advertising such as Kontera’s came along later, of course, but has become an important source of not just revenue, but security. I say there’s a natural concern about building businesses or websites around a single advertising relationship. Kontera’s participation in Ask Leo!’s profitability turned out to be significant, and definitely helps mitigate the risk of perhaps otherwise having all my eggs in one basket.

What also became readily apparent, is that contextual targeting is key. With a problem/solution site such as Ask Leo!, it’s not that uncommon for one of the ads to actually be the solution that my reader is looking for. It doesn’t get much better than that when it happens.

What sort of responses have you been getting from Ask-Leo users with regards to the various types of advertising you employ?

I get amazingly little feedback on the ads. Occasionally someone will confuse an Adsense ad as being some kind of recommendation from me, but I’ve not heard of that happening with Kontera ads. I do get occasional complaints, either for advertising in general or for the in-text ads, but that might be once every other month or so. Given that I’m running 1.3 million visitors a month right now, I consider “one in two million” an acceptable rate. (And I do make available and answer that includes instructions for people who would like to turn off the in-text ads.)

What’s in store for Ask-Leo users as we look to 2009?

Honestly, mostly more of same.

As we talk, I’m actually in the process of kicking off a major editorial review of the entire site, bringing the content up to more consistent level of quality, as quality is so key to continued success on the web. But that’s almost administrative in nature.

More visible will simply be my reacting to those 50-100 questions I get every day, and see where they take me. One of the reasons I so enjoy my career/hobby is that there’s something new every day; something to learn, to research or to play with. The fact that I can do so in a way that also helps people overcome some of the problems and frustrations they have with their computers is just fantastic.

The Kontera Publisher of the Month series kicked off in January of 2009. A publisher is selected from Kontera’s network each month and provides an insider’s perspective on what it takes to manage a successful site. To learn more visit the Publisher of the Month Category.