How to Setup Google DFP on your Site

Say you use an advertising network like Google AdSense for serving ads but also accept direct advertisers on your website? Or have you signed up with multiple ad-networks but, due to limited ad space on your site, you will only like to run ads from the network that pays you the most money (read maximum CPM)?

google dfpIn either of these cases, Google DFP, or DoubleClick for Publishers, could be an ideal solution for you. It is a free ad server from Google, like OpenX, that lets you sell ad space on your website more effectively

You may choose to run banner ads, text ads or even rich-media (like video and flash ads) through DFP. The tool, which was formerly known as Google Ad Manager, requires no downloads or installation and any website publisher can sign-up for the DFP program as long as they have an active Google AdSense account.
Sell Your Advertising Space with Google DFP

Say you have a news website (or a blog) where you cover topics such as technology, sports, entertainment and so on. An advertiser wants to serve banner ad campaigns on all your tech related pages. He will pay $20 CPM for all US based impressions (see order) and you can fill your remnant inventory through Google AdSense ads.

Let’s see how we can easily setup such an ad campaign through Google DFP.

Step 1: Create Ad Units

We need to tell DFP about the advertising space on our web pages. For instance, in our above example, we’ll have to create three ad slots for the 300x250 rectangle, the 160x600 skyscraper and the 468x60 banner. These are standard IAB units though you are free to define custom ad sizes as well.

Go to DFP –> Inventory –> Ad Units –> New Ad Unit. Give your ad unit a descriptive name so that you can easily determine where exactly that ad unit will be displayed and it’s size. Also check the option “Maximize revenue of unsold and remnant inventory with AdSense.”

Step 2: Define Placements

You have multiple ad units on the same page and there’s a possibility that an advertiser may want to place ads on more than one unit. Therefore, we need to create a placement which is like a group of one or more ad units where an advertiser's ad can be displayed.

Go to Inventory tab –> Placements –> New Placement and define the placement. To keep things simple, we will associate only one ad unit (the 300x250 one) with our ad placement. Check the option that says “Offer this placement to advertisers” through AdWords and DoubleClick Ad planner to attract more advertisers.

Step 3. Create an Order

Now that we have defined our ad inventory, it’s time to feed in the client’s order. The advertiser will specify where he wants to place the ad, what kind of demographics he wants to target, what’s the price he is willing to pay and how long will the campaign run on our site.

Go to DFP –> Orders –> New Order. Create a company for the advertiser and then fill in the order details under “new line item.” Set the Type to “Price Priority” if you want the highest paying ads to be served on your site. Set Value CPM equal to the price that the client will pay and then add the targeting criteria.

Step 4. Upload the Ad Creative

It’s time for your to upload the “actual ad” that will display on your web pages. You can either upload images, Flash videos or even snippets of HTML and JavaScript in case you’re going with text ads.

Go to DFP –> Line Items and select the “Line Item” that you’ve created in the previous step. Click Add Creatives –> New Creative and upload the image / SWF Flash file. You can even upload multiple creative ads per line item and they’ll display evenly across that site – this helps you determine an appropriate ad copy that performs best with your visitors.

Step 5. Get the Ad Tags for your Site

We are almost done. All we need to do is get the JavaScript code from Google Ad Manager DFP and copy-paste it into our blog’s template.

Click the Inventory tab in your DFP dashboard and choose “Generate Ad Tags” – select the appropriate ad unit (the one that we created in Step #1) and choose “Generate Tags.”  Add this code to your website and within 10-15 minutes, the DFP tool should start serving ads on your pages.

Here's a narration-less screencast that captures all the above steps in a quick video.


Source: Labnol

5 Services To Convert Websites For Mobile Devices

The rise of the mobile is undeniable. Many even say that the future of the web lies on mobile devices. Gone were the days when people can only access the internet at home or in their office, but now some of them even throw away the heavy PC and adopted the mobile devices for web surfing experience.

Sensing the importance stated above, it will be really wise for you to consider a mobile version of your website. Well, going mobile entails another hefty development process, but the good news is there are cheap but quality solutions, and what’s better: right here is a list of services that you can use to either convert your website into mobile version, or create it from scratch.

Details after the jump!

5 Recommended Services:

MobiSiteGalore

mobiSiteGalore claims itself to be the easiest mobile web builder, for as average as 54 minutes their customers can already build a fully functional mobile version of their website. Another good thing is, as you may have noticed, many of the services listed below focuses on smartphones. Well, mobiSiteGalore do support low end phones that aren’t so smart. (Free – $225/year)

Mofuse

With mofuse, there are two ways to convert your site to mobile: building it yourself through mofuse or hiring them to build it for you. By building it yourself using their application, you have more control over the design and development process, only you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription to keep the service going, else you can hire their design experts to build it for you. (Self Service: $7.95/month – $199/month)

BMobilized

Turns your website into mobile version really fast with bMobilized. It offers the fast conversion with comprehensive customization as an option available for you to tune the design well.

bMobilized claims they support more than 13000 mobile devices, including all major brands. Also the more website you host using their service the higher the discount you get. So if you have a network of websites that needs conversion, bMobilized is the perfect service for you! ($19.99/month)

ConvertWebsite

ConvertWebsite requires their customer to send them the PSD file of the website they wish to convert. Why? To determine what approach is best in the redesigning process from desktop to mobile. Its method is quite similar to Code My Concept, which means handcrafting your provided PSD into mobile website.

Unlike other services, this service actually takes days for the conversion. For a general conversion the delivery date is 9 days, with option to expedite the process. The price is fairly high compared to other service, but consider that your site is handcrafted by industry professional. ($307 – $362)

Mobify

If you are engaged in e-commerce, Mobify is probably the best service out there for you. Mobify offers HTML5 features for its clients, and their experienced teams will design your mobile site to your specific requirements, with the fact that most stores going from concept to launch within 3 weeks. You can also go for self-serve solution by referring to their Publisher page. (Publisher Pricing: $0 – $1000)

More:

Onbile

In a hurry to create a mobile version of your website? Well, with only 3 very simple steps and 5 minutes at hand you can! Onbile supports smartphones like iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. The only disadvantage here will be its limited templates, but their templates are generally awesome! (Free)

Mobile App America

Mobile App America promises better SEO for your website, and most of all it helps to gain a competitive advantage among your competitors who doesn’t have an elaborated mobile version of their websites yet. As of writing this, it supports devices including iPhone, Blackberry, and Android. (Free)

MobStac

MobStac delivers the future-ready, HTML5-enabled experience for your mobile website. It also got easy customization, and supports several themes (if you want a change of design) and CMS integration.

Among other services, MobStac is probably one of the few that has an in-depth monetization plan for mobile websites. The only disadvantage is the service is currently in Beta, but you can sign up for an invite. (Free – $19/month)

Conclusion

Think if you will really need a mobile version of your website. Mobile conversion has its ups and downs. The pros are indeed easier navigation, optimized user experience, and focused site content.

Its disadvantage, however, is there will be limited advertisement space. Really. Also, if your website exists with heavy and tantalizing graphics and you want it the same in mobile version, you might need to think to redesign the current site or abandon the conversion as the mobile website should be designed with minimalism in mind.

So consider carefully between the pros and cons, and make the wise decision that will benefit your users and you.

Source: Hongkiat

Create an Infographic with your Twitter Activity

If you have an account on Twitter, you should try Tweetsheet.

The app reads you Twitter activity and turns it into a visual infographic (see sample) revealing your top followers, your most-retweeted posts, and some other interesting details. The stats mentioned in the infographic are calculated using the last 3200 tweets that you have posted on Twitter.

One good thing about Tweetsheet is that only requires “read access” to your Twitter account during authentication so it won’t tweet your results without asking.

There’s however no option to save the infographic as an image. Thanks @Shankar.

Source: labnol

6 FREE ways to DOUBLE your blog traffic in less than a week

Everyone want's traffic.You set up a blog with great content but,no one is visiting your blog, so what's the use of it. So, you need atleast a decent amount of traffic and what's great than getting that traffic for FREE?

So, here is the good list of 6 Free ways to get traffic to your blog.

1. SEARCH ENGINE:Yea! it brings lots of traffic to your blog.There are millions of people search in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, msn everyday. So, if your blog has so many good posts and is well indexed by google,etc.. you will get a good amount of traffic via search engines. There are a few steps to look at if you want a decent amount of traffic from the search engines like "submitting your blog sitemap to google", yahoo to index you blog pages very quickly. And the other important one is adding meta tags to your blog. If you follow these two simple steps,then you will get a decent traffic(massive traffic if your content is good).
2. Submitting your blog to Blog Directories: You may know this before,submitting your blog to blog directories will bring you a good traffic.
3. Here is a good list of blog directories(there are so many directories,but the below one's will bring you a good traffic). Most of these blog directories ask you to register before you submit your blog. My suggestion is, create a new email address solely for this purpose so,your personal emails are not flooded with the emails sent by the blog administrators,etc. You can find the Blog directories list here.
4. Participate in forums, groups, etc: Just go to google and enter your [major keyword + fourm] or [keyword+groups] and search. Suppose, your blog is about blogging, then search 'Blogging forum'. You will find some forums,groups related to your site. Register in the forums and post articles,etc with a link back to your blog(as a signature). Answer questions,clarify doubts and provide a link to your blog.But,Dont' SPAM.
5. Social Bookmarking:Social Bookmarking is another way to build good traffic to your website/blog.If you don't know what Social Bookmarking is "Social Bookmarking is a practise of saving Bookmarks, tagging the posts with keywords in a website".Bookmarking means saving a specific website url(address) in your browser that you wish to visit later.There are so many Social Bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg, furl, technorati. One good thing about these Social bookmarking sites is,y ou will get instant traffic. Just register with them, store your bookmarks, tags,.. and you are done,See your site meter blasting with traffic.
6. Submit Articles to Article Directories: Submitting articles to article directories is another effective way to build more traffic. By submitting to them,your articles get massive exposure and gain you more traffic. Some of the popular article directories are goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com, articlecity.com, etc. There are hundreds of article directories,just google it.
7. Leaving Comments on other blogs:Leaving comments with a link back to your blog is another good thing to do. Leaving comments in the related blogs is more useful and it also increases your pagerank. Always leave good comments and don't Spam(by placing links like'click here' like that).

Original Source : http://www.bloggertricks.com/2007/12/6-free-ways-to-double-your-blog-traffic.html

Installing Add Social Bookmarks in Blogger Posts Easily.

The best way to improve your reader's count is to add a social bookmark at the end of every post. This makes it easy for the readers to bookmark the post page using their favorite social bookmarking service (eg: Del.icio.us, Technorati, Facebook, Digg, MySpace, etc..) My post features to add some of the best social bookmarks at the end of every post.

Installing Add Social Bookmark to your blog on Blogger is easy. This visual guide will walk you through the installation process.

• First be sure to Get the Code for Blogger
• Then, follow the steps below.

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Sidebar

If you'd like to place the button in your blog's sidebar, follow these instructions. Installing this button will automatically position the button in your sidebar (typically in the top right hand corner of your page). By installing it once, it will appear on all your pages.

Step 1

Click the Install to Sidebar button on AddThis.

Step 2

Click Add Widget, and you're done!

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Blog Post Button

If you'd like to place the button below each one of your posts, follow these instructions. Installing this button will automatically put the button below each individual blog. This is the most popular implementation of the button for Blogger.

Step 1

Log into Blogger and select the blog you want to add AddThis to. Select Layout > Edit HTML. These controls look like tabs, and they're located at the top of the page.

Step 2

Check the Expand Widget Templates checkbox. This checkbox is located in the top right corner of the page, above the code. By clicking the checkbox, the code in the field below will refresh.

Step 3

Copy and paste the AddThis code snippet into the template, right after the div class='post-footer'> tag.

Note: If you have trouble finding this DIV, try copying and pasting the blogger code into a text file editing program and do a search for 'post-footer'. Once you located it, copy and paste the AddThis button code below the DIV. Then copy the entire text file and replace the code on blogger.

Step 4

Click Save Template, and you're done! A new page will load along with a confirmation at the top of the page should appear that reads, "Your changes have been saved. View blog." Click View Blog to preview your blog with the new AddThis button. The button should appear beneath each blog post.

Resource: http://www.addthis.com/

Create SEO Friendly Search URL - Wordpress Plugin

Nice Search is a WP plugin that makes your blog search “SEO friendly”.

It’s in quotes because normally search results won’t get indexed by search engines, because they are dynamic. Unless of course you store them as a static page in a specific folder in your blog.

This is a really simple plugin that redirects your WordPress searches (?s=search-term) to the pretty-looking URI version: /search/search-term, and also converts spaces (%20) to plus symbols.

http://www.domain.com/?s=search-term

into

http://www.domain.com/search/search-term

Obviously, you need to have mod_rewrite enabled, so that WordPress can process the /search/style URIs.

This plugin requires WordPress version 1.5 or higher.

Download

• Latest Version (0.2) [phps]