We’ve been examining our latest “top clicked keywords” list to find out which terms have been in the limelight over the past few weeks. As always, we try to present a taste of the keywords that have been most popular lately in a handful of our content categories.

We’ll begin with the conclusion… The  ‘Beauty & Apparel’ and ‘Employment’ categories are gaining popularity.  This is a comforting conclusion if you think about it.  It comes to show that even in difficult times, we still find ways to focus on what matters most: bathing suit season.

Another category that has received more attention recently is ‘Education’; click-wise it came close to the always popular ‘Entertainment’ category.  While we’re on the entertainment rant, American Idol is coming to a season’s close and not surprisingly, Adam Lambert has landed a spot on our list’s final cut.

As mentioned above, this post series highlights a set of keyword category each month. This list is open to your suggestions- we aim to present keywords from the categories you find most useful.  If there’s a category that you’d like to see included in our next keyword post, please leave a comment here or drop an email at blog@kontera.com

And now, we are glad to present this month’s list:

Kontera’s Top Keywords Post Series brings to you the most clicked terms per category each month.  For additional posts visit Top Clicked Keywords.

Taking a look at top clicked keywords is lots of fun, trying to figure out what exactly made one term turn popular over night sometimes feels like playing detective. So, with no further ado, here are some of Kontera’s top clicked keywords over the last week.

In Sports, “boxing” and “Oscar De La Hoya” get a lot of attention following the latter’s recent loss to Manny Pacquiao. Other popular keywords in this category are “college football” and “cricket.” With regards to “cricket” it’s interesting to note that it now correlates with a top clicked term from the News category, “Mumbai.”  This happens as England’s Cricket Team is preparing to return to India for the Test Series, and its players have announced they’ll donate half their match fees to the victims of the Mumbai terror attack.

In the Entertainment category several celebrities are getting a lot of click-love. “Michael Caine” recently revealed the real ending of The Italian Job on the eve of the film’s 40th anniversary. Guess that playing Alfred in The Dark Knight, adds more interest in light of the upcoming Academy Awards. “Jennifer Aniston” now promotes her soon to be released new film, and her personal life always draws a lot of attention.

The implications of the economic situation are also reflected, as Keywords relating to the “Employment” category are getting more clicks than before. On a happier note, Christmas spirit is already here, with most top clicked Keywords in the Holidays & Special Occasions category directly related to the most wonderful time of the year (we’ll tell you more about this in a special Christmas report).

Where will you be spending your Christmas vacation?
Well, if Travel category keywords are any indication, many of us are thinking about a “ski vacation…”

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.

We discovered something quite interesting on the Net just recently that we want to share with you. It’s an online self-study course, called Site Build It! (SBI!) that shows you how to create – and have fun with – your own successful internet business.

According to statistic sources on the Net, a large percentage of online business do not make it past the 1st year of operation. While the reasons for this result vary, there’s always one main, constant, never-ending battle each website owner faces: the fight for traffic to their site. And it is this battle, especially for attracting free traffic from the search engines, where the vast majority small businesses fail.

About Site Build It! (SBI!)

Site Build It! is the creation of SiteSell Inc., a privately held company based in Montreal.

When you visit their site,  you will quickly discover that SBI! is an online self-study course (and suite of integrated software tools) that empowers anyone, from beginner to Internet expert, to build a successful online business from scratch.

The most relevant benefit provided by SBI! for online entrepreneurs is the power to attract targeted visitors on an ongoing basis.

The traffic levels to Site Build It! sites, compared to regular sites and blogs, are impressive. According to a Netcraft.com study:

• 6 out of 10 Site Built It! site owners get more website visitors than 97% of all other websites.

• And more than 3 out of 10 – a full 35% of folks using Site Build It! outperform 99% of all websites.

How Does SBI! Do It?

Watch this entertaining, informative 30-minute video for the complete picture.

Final Thoughts

We’re excited to recommend any resource from which our partners can benefit.

Site Build It! is a cost-effective and well-supported way to build a traffic-generating business on the web and we thought that Kontera publishers should hear about it here too:)

Site Build It! Now offers Kontera publishers an unconditional 30-day, money-back guarantee. To get started, click here. 

Knowledge is power;)  This is what makes tools like Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools so useful and so popular. The general idea is that the more you know about your site’s user-behavior and visitor interests, the higher your chances of meeting the needs of those visitors.  In this sense, the information you are able to accumulate will serve your monetization efforts and contribute to your overall success.

Gaining a better understanding of your site’s metrics is a key factor in making the most out of Kontera’s PPC advertising. Kontera publishers already benefit from several useful reporting options such as the URL and Keyword reports. Today we’re excited to introduce the latest addition to the Kontera Publisher Center – the Reporting Channels.

What Are Channels and How Can I Use them?

The Channels feature offers a deeper level of analysis than that provided by overall reports. This new feature enables you to create individual reporting for a combination of pages or sections of your website and track and compare performance to that of other sections. By creating and employing Channels you’ll get comprehensive reporting for each section of your website and gain a better understanding of where your clicks are coming from.

How Do I Create Channels?

A few simple steps to follow:

1. Contact us via the “Help Tab” in the Kontera Publisher Center and request to enable “Channels.” You’ll be notified via email that the feature has been activated on your account.
2. Login to your account and select the “ContentLink Setup” tab. Follow the “Create Tag” link and then click on the “Create Channel” Button.



A new field will open. Fill in the Channel name and click on the “Submit Channel” button.



3. The system will now create your modified tag to include an additional line of code specifying its channel ID.



4. Copy and paste this new tag on all the pages you’d like associated with this particular channel.
   Be sure to replace your current Kontera tag with the modified tag on all the channel’s pages.

That’s it! Your Channels have been set.

To view all the channels you’ve created, select the “ContentLink Setup” tab and follow the “Channel” Link.

Now after all this, you’re probably interested in viewing your Channels reports…Simply select the “Reports” tab and click on the “Channel Detailed Report” link.

We hope you’ll find the Channels features useful and look forward to receiving your feedback.

Become a Kontera Publisher

Read Garry Conn’s post about the new Kontera Channels

Kontera’s WP plugin for version 2.6 has been updated and is ready for your download.  Updates for WP 2.7 will soon begin as well

Read about the plugin’s features and capabilities here.
Here’s how you set it up:

1. Unzip the plugin file to your local hard drive.
2. Copy the Kontera folder to your blog’s WordPress content/plugins directory.
3. On your WordPress administration pages, navigate to Plugins
4. Click Activate next to the Kontera ContentLink plugin entry.
5. Navigate to the Options page and choose the newly created submenu Kontera Settings.

In the top field, enter your publisher ID number. This is your personal ID which appears on your ContentLink tag:

Make your selections- try the different capabilities the Kontera-WordPress plugin offers and see what works best for your blog.

Download Kontera- WordPress Plugin for WP 2.6

To be a successful marketer, one must know how to move with the trend, change with the current fashion. A quick look at the most clicked keywords of any week reveals all sorts of interesting facts on what’s popular these days and where public attention is turned.

As promised, we are delivering the next in a keyword report series:

Not surprisingly, matters of finance and politics are now winning more clicks than at any other time in the past year (though we cannot show the actual number of clicks, we can definitely show rank).
On another note, Beyonce just turned into an ultra popular keyword and a quick look in Google reveals (to those of us who aren’t so MTV savvy) that her new singles are freshly released.  And of course, “Halloween” is climbing its way to the top, no tricks

As we well know, some keywords never get old.  For example, in apparel beauty, keyword “hairstyle” always remains at the top.  “Free downloads”, of course, always wins a place at top of computing category.

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.

Building a site or a blog is no simple task but maintaining it is no child’s play either… Like in any other professional undertaking, this occupation requires you to learn a whole new language, a set of new definitions.  Unlike any other professional undertaking, the online world is the fastest growing fastest changing industry existing today.  And so to be in touch with it, one has to keep up with the lexicon.  If you’re a website owner/online marketer, you definitely know what I mean.

Taking this into account, we thought it would benefit our partners if we presented a short glossary of basic terms revolving around Kontera and online advertising in general.  We hope to make some aspects of Kontera more accessible through these definitions.

Kontera Online Advertising:

• Pay Per Click Advertising- an advertising model in which Kontera pays publishers according to a pre-determined amount each time a user clicks on an ad; the amount is determined by the advertiser and is known as CPC.

• Contextual Advertising- an advertising model in which advertisements on a site are targeted to users based on the site’s content.  Kontera’s contextual advertising is highly specific as it recognizes the meaning of a particular sentence and matches it to the highest paying ad of the same topic.

• In-Text Advertising- a form of contextual advertising in which ads are served within the content of a site through highlighted keywords.  Kontera’s algorithms analyze content and extract keywords in order to match them to ads.  The ads appear as the user hovers over a highlighted keyword with his mouse.

Revenue Model:

• Revenue Share- the percentage of a click’s revenue which is received by the publisher.

Kontera Metrics:

• Impressions- the number of times a website is loaded by internet users; this is calculated by totaling all loads of all pages within the specified site.

• Net Impressions- the number of times a website is loaded by internet users, calculating only those pages on which at least one ContentLink was present.

• CTR- (Click-Through Rate) the average rate at which a site’s users click on an ad; this is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by net impressions to yield a percentage.

• CPC- (Cost Per Click) the dollar amount that an advertiser offers for a click on a particular ad. CPC isn’t a fixed rate and varies from one advertising campaign to the next according to advertiser’s specifications.

• eCPM- (Effective Cost Per Thousand)- the revenue for each 1,000 net impressions that a publisher’s site generates; a key tool in estimating revenue projections based on impressions.

Kontera Optimization Terms:

• Optimization- the process in which a Kontera team analyzes a site to identify its ideal ContentLink settings for reaching optimal performance and revenue potential. Click to learn some optimization tips.

• Link Density- the concentration of ContentLink ads within a publisher’s content; the higher a site’s link density, the more ContentLinks are presented per page. (e.g., a link density of 10 would mean a maximum of 10 keywords out of 100 words will be highlighted on a page).  Link density is a scale that Kontera’s optimization team can easily control.  Contact support@kontera.com for more details.

• Zone Tags- publisher-initiated Javascript code that specifies which areas of a site Kontera’s algorithm should analyze to generate ContentLinks; not to be used with Filter Tags.

• Filter Tags- publisher-initiated Javascript code that specifies in which areas of a site Kontera’s algorithm should not generate ContentLinks; not to be used with Zone Tags.

• Metrics Fluctuations – Many factors may influence one or more of your metrics and be reflected in your site’s overall performance. Fluctuations may result from changes in your site’s settings, ContentLink attributes, your site’s traffic sources and visitor trends, available relevant campaigns and advertisers’ specifications and more. It’s therefore very important to remember that when you analyze performance you should keep track of all the values above as well as take a look at your site’s stats as reflected in Google Analytics or any other tracking application you may be using.

We hope this helped in gaining a better understanding of Kontera’s advertising and how to analyze your site’s metrics. Stay tuned for an upcoming post on better understanding Kontera through the use of Google analytics.

Across the web, bloggers of different sizes and niches use ContentLink™ ads to make money from their blogs. Kontera’s ContentLink ads are contextual advertising units linked to keywords on a publisher’s web page. With ContentLink ads on your blog, you provide your users with additional and relevant information, and you get paid for doing so.

And now, if you’re using Blogger.com, making money blogging with ContentLinks is just one click away!

Use the “Kontera It!“ Widget for a quick and effortless ContentLink™ implementation.

Ok, I use Blogger.com, what does this mean for me?
It means all you have to do is sign up, login to the Kontera Publisher Center, select the “ContentLink Setup” tab and click on the “Kontera it!” button.

ContentLink™ ads will be distributed to all your blog’s pages at once!

For some time now we’ve wanted to publish a post with marketing and writing tips for bloggers. We thought: who’s better to do it than Kontera’s Sr. Marketing Manager, Jennifer McHugh. With broad marketing and communications experience that spans from online publishing to non-profit work, Jennifer’s advice is a must read for every blogger.

Here are Jennifer’s blogging tips:

1. Pick a Topic and Stick to It- People come to your blog for a reason, they want to hear your opinion in an area of interest you’re passionate about. Whether you’re blogging about cooking, travel or shopping you need to focus on one subject and related topics to keep your readers coming back for more. As soon as you start losing focus, you’ll lose readers.
2. Keep it Simple – Your blog isn’t a place to show off your vocabulary or grammar skills. If you can, choose simple words and keep the word count down to a few hundred words. The more complicated you make it the less you’ll sound like an expert.
3. Post Frequently – Imagine if you rushed home early to watch your favorite show only to find out that it’s not on. When people visit your blog, they expect to see new content. Don’t disappoint them with infrequent postings. Pick a schedule and stick to it!
4. Link, Link, Link – There is no better way to build your reputation within your own niche than to link to other relevant blogs. Chances are they will link back to you which will help increase your traffic, improve your rank in search engines, and drive even more traffic to your website.
5. Make it a Dialogue not a Monologue – In today’s Web 2.0 world readers expect to connect and share information. Add a section to your blog for comments so your readers can participate or provide feedback to keep the dialogue going.
6. Have Fun – This isn’t just my advice for your blog, but for life in general. You should love what you’re blogging about and have fun doing it.
7. Kontera Advertising Solutions – Last but certainly not least, monetize your blog with Kontera ContentLink™ and earn revenues where your users are already engaged, within your page content. Integration is fast and simple. Once you place Kontera’s code on your page, we take care of everything else. http://www.kontera.com/ads-for-site/become-a-kontera-publisher
   

   This is part of our blog series “Kontera’s Backstage Pass”.
   Read more:

   • An Interview with Lori Xeller, Kontera’s Director of Advertising Sales
   • An Interview with Gabi Peles, Kontera’s Senior Product Manager

It’s all right to change your mind. The fact that you’ve been receiving your Kontera cash through one payment method up to now, doesn’t mean it can’t change.
Kontera offers publishers several payment methods. Since we receive many questions regarding PayPal, or more specifically, how to switch to PayPal, I thought it would be a good idea to specify it here on our blog.

Switching to PayPal is a simple task to undertake:

Login to Kontera’s Publisher Center and select the “My Account” tab.
Follow the “Payment Method” link. Now click on the dropdown menu and select “PayPal”. Then type in your Paypal account name.

Here is a point to remember: Your PayPal Address and your Kontera account user name have to correspond. In the event that they are not the same, you’ll need to change your account email address. Go to the “Account Info” link and change your email address.
The next time you log in to the Publisher Center, recall that your login name has changed.

Any change you make to your account information, tax information and or selected payment method will be immediately updated in our system.