Some of my most popular posts are those in my make money online series that discuss how to avoid Adsense smart pricing by displaying Adsense only to search engine visitors. Now I’ve found the most complete solution to the problem of smart pricing, over on the Blog associated with RT’s backlinks service (more below).

What Is Smart Pricing?

I’ve explained this many times before, but here’s the short answer again:

Smart Pricing is a penalty that Google applies to Adsense accounts (yes the entire account) that don’t convert well for the advertiser. This can result in a penalty of up to 90% of what you earn for a click. Pretty significant hey!

To avoid smart pricing, you need to provide the advertisers with targeted traffic. This traffic will convert well for the advertiser and ensure that you don’t attract the smart pricing penalty. Search engine visitors provide targeted traffic (no problem). Regular readers and social networks visitors provide untargeted traffic (problem). Many bloggers are smart priced without even knowing it.

If you need any further information, see Grizzly’s authorative explanation of smart pricing. This explains the intricacies of smart pricing far better than I can. If you’re trying to make money online, then you need to understand this.

How To Prevent Smart Pricing – My Solutions

As I said, I’ve written quite a few posts about how to prevent smart pricing. These all centre around displaying Adsense to only search visitors (targeted), not to your regular visitors or social media visitors (both untargeted).

I started with a hack to the Shylock Adsense Plugin (for WordPress) so that only search engine visitors would see ads (regular visitor wouldn’t see them). This could also be used for showing Adsense directly, without using Shylock.

This solution only displayed Adsense ad units on the first page that a visitor landed on. If they navigated to another page on your site, Adsense wouldn’t appear, as they no longer came immediately from a search engine. Therefore, I followed up with an improved solution that shows ads to search traffic on subsequent pages as well (by setting a cookie).

Later, I converted this solution to work on the Blogger platform, so now you can filter out non-search visitors on Blogger as well.

The Most Complete Solution To Smart Pricing

RT’s post on filtering out non search engine visitors in WordPress is amazing. Not only does his solution filter out non-search traffic, it also filters out certain search terms that are unlikely to convert well and posts from categories and tags that are not likely to convert because they aren’t targeted for Adsense,

This is the most complete solution I’ve seen. If you follow RT’s advice, then you are very unlikely to get smart priced by Google.

The only caveats are:

• It only works for the first page, not subsequent pages. I know RT will say that the vast majority of clicks come from the first page and there’s no point showing ads on subsequent pages.
• It won’t work with PHP caching solutions, such as WP Super Cache (neither does mine). RT is working on a solution to this, although as he points out, the whole point is to get search traffic rather than loads of social traffic, so this may not be needed anyway.

Following this technique should ensure that you are earning the maximum amount possible via Adsense.

What Is ConnectContent?

Before wrapping up, I’ll take the chance to explain what ConnectContent is. Chances are, if you’re interested in avoiding smart pricing, then you’ll be interested in ConnectContent as it can help you earn more money online.

RT founded ConnectContent to help members get relevant links, with relevant anchor text. Getting such links is the most important thing to do if you want to improve your rankings in the search engines. If you want to dominate your niche, relevant links are essential.

More information from the ConnectContent site:

ConnectContent is a managed network, designed to promote relevancy between websites. Search engine quality guidelines are followed and reciprocal linking is discouraged while one-way linking is encouraged.

The service is not free, but is very reasonably priced: USD$12.00 per month (or USD$120.00 for a year). There is no restriction on how many links you can get, except for any self imposed limits on how many links you can give. The more you give, the more you receive.

There’s an affiliate program that pays 50 percent of subscription fees as residual referral commissions. That means if two people sign up through your affiliate link, you break even. That’s leaving aside the extra money you can earn through improved rankings! Easy AdSense money.

Final Thoughts

If you really want to make money with Adsense, then make sure you’re not smart priced. Many people are only earning a fraction of what they could be. There is no guaranteed way of avoiding smart pricing, but RT’s solution is as close to a guarantee as you’ll find.

I’d like to announce the release of KeywordLuv, my new WordPress plugin, but RT from Untwisted Vortex beat me to it, announcing it several days ago. I need to be quicker with this sort of thing! I don’t mind, as KeywordLuv was partially inspired by RT’s post on building backlinks via DoFollow blogs.

KeywordLuv helps you reward your commentators by separating their name from their keywords in the link to their site. This gives them improved anchor text, which can help their site rank higher in the search engine results.

Example Of KeywordLuv

If a commentator enters: "Stephen@Custom WordPress Plugins" in the Name field, their comment will have:

Stephen from Custom WordPress Plugins Says:

If they don’t enter the @ symbol, the anchor text will simply display as normal. For a live example, see the first comment below. Feel free to leave a comment to try it out!

What Are The Benefits?

Most commentators enter their name in the Name field. This helps them rank well for searches on their name, but little else!

Some commentators enter their chosen keywords instead of their name. This helps them rank well for searches on their keywords, but many blog owners will mark them as spam! Even if you don’t mark them as spam, you probably get a little tired of talking to Miami Hotels!

KeywordLuv lets them enter their name, so you can feel as though you are talking with a real person, while at the same time helping their blog rank well for their chosen keywords. It’s the best of both worlds!

The Fine Print

There are a couple of things you need to be aware of:

1. For your commentators to really benefit from this, you will need a separate Dofollow plugin, to remove the nofollow tag.
2. KeywordLuv may not work with all themes. For more information and workarounds, see KeywordLuv – Theme Compatibility Issue.

Where Do I Get KeywordLuv?

The plugin is available for download via the KeywordLuv plugin home page. More information about how KeywordLuv works and how to use it is also available on the plugin home page.

I’ve been pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks, mainly due to offline endeavours. However, I did find time to finish off a new WordPress plugin called LocalCurrency, that allows you to show currency values to your readers in their local currency.

For example: If a post contains 10 yuan, a user from Australia will see 10 yuan (AUD$1.53), while a US user will see 10 yuan (USD$1.39).

How LocalCurrency Works

LocalCurrency determines the reader’s country (via IP address), gets the current exchange rate from Yahoo! Finance, then calculates the equivalent value in the readers currency for any values in the post. It then updates the post so the reader can see their currency, in brackets after the original value.

All of this is done using ‘AJAX’ techniques so that page load times aren’t affected. Readers can change their currency via a selection box if they desire.

Where Do I Get LocalCurrency?

See the LocalCurrency plugin home page for more information about LocalCurrency, a live example, and to download the plugin.

Why Is It On JobsInChina?

There is one big difference about this plugin, compared to my other plugins. LocalCurrency is a JobsInChina production. That means I’m hosting  it on the JobsInChina.com website. There are several reasons for this:

1. It was written for use on the JobsInChina blog
2. It’s running on that blog, not this one
3. It is more likely to appeal to a higher percentage of visitors to that blog (as many will start their own blog when living in China).
4. Honestly, the backlinks will help JobsInChina. I’ll write more on this in the coming weeks, but a plugin is great at generating backlinks.

This was a hard decision. This is my WordPress plugin site, so it could be argued that all my plugins belong here. Point three swayed the argument. JobsInChina is supposed to provide resources to people wanting to live in China. That includes bloggers!

It’s not all about point four. In fact, I’m sure there are SEO experts out there who’d say that it’d be better to keep the two sites separate and tightly focused. Of course it is possible for a site to be an authority on more than one topic. This blog has some authority for China – it ranks at position 20 for Chinese Hospitality (it used to be on page one, but it’s slipping).

Anyway, I may come to regret the decision, but it’s been made now. I’ll provide any feedback on the SEO impact if it becomes obvious.

Final Thoughts

This was one of the more complicated plugins I’ve written, as it involved JavaScript and ‘AJAX’, but it’s been very satisfying to complete. I’m not expecting it to be a mainstream plugin, but it is handy for people living abroad who often talk about what they’ve spent recently.

Many things have been said about the recent toolbar PageRank update. Most tend to agree that PageRank has lost relevance and that we shouldn’t place too much importance on it. Most of us feel it’s time to move on and stop talking about it. I’ll do that, but not until I’ve had a final say on the matter.

On A Positive Note

Firstly, some sites, mine included, have received a good PageRank. I am very happy that my site is PR4. I’ve worked hard and waited a long time for the update. I was expecting PR1 or PR2 at best, so I am thrilled with PR4.

However, it’s a little hollow, because so many sites have ranked lower than they should (then again maybe mine is ranked too high).

Sites That Should Be Higher

I’m only naming a few sites that I read regularly. There are many more that deserve to be higher, that I’m not aware of right now.

I’ll start with authority blogger Andy Beard, whose site should be PR 6 in my opinion. PR4 is just wrong. This is a definitive case showing that PageRank is not an accurate reflection of a site’s worth.

The following are other great sites that I read regularly, which are definitely worth more than the PR3 they’ve been given:

• Big Bucks Blogger
• Untwisted Vortex
• The Cayman Host Blog
• The Make Money Blog

All of these sites serve up quality content on a regular basis. They have a much larger body of work than my site and many more backlinks. I know my DualFeeds plugin boosted my PR a lot, but I just can’t understand how their PR is lower than mine. It’s incredulous!

What Can I Do About It?

Stop using Google. I’ve read people suggest this. Would it work? Probably not. Even 10,000 bloggers abandoning Google probably wouldn’t have any effect. Am I willing to do it? Honestly, no. Some of their tools are very useful and I would find it hard to give them up. And as Josh points out Google Brings Traffic – Why Boycott it? But full marks for Maurice who stopped using Google tools even before the recent PageRank penalties.

Promote other alternatives. Many of us are Google centric, but there are other options out there. We can easily promote these options, instead of, or as well as, Google. We should be doing this anyway!

Pass on the link love. I’m going to try to link to the sites I listed above more often. Of course I’ll only link to them only when it’s relevant. As I already link to them fairly often, it probably won’t have much effect, but it’s the least I can do. I’ll try to give good quality links rather than making the common linking mistakes encountered on blogs outlined by Andy.

Move on, remembering that PageRank isn’t really relevent. It’s time for us to do this. Things like traffic and subscriptions are more important. Hopefully advertisers will stop using PR to measure the worth of sites.

So Is Google Evil?

When the first round of penalties kicked off, RT asked Is Google Evil Now?

I don’t think they are. I think they just have a different agenda from us bloggers. It’s their search engine, it’s their PageRank system and they can do what they like with them. My real frustration with Google is that they aren’t open enough about what’s happening and aren’t specific enough about the rules. No one really is really sure what’s okay and what’s not.

Getting slapped for something you thought was okay is a lot worse than getting slapped for something you knew was naughty.

PageRank Alternatives?

If PageRank is not an accurate reflection any more, can someone else come up with an alternative ranking system, which is fair and updated regularly?

There have been other ranking systems but they weren’t adopted widely. To be successful, such a system would have to be introduced by a big name.

My original thought, first voiced in the comments of Reflections On The Google Slapfest, is that Yahoo would be the ideal candidate. They must have a private ranking system already and they’d love to deal a blow to Google.

However, I found Yahoo already tried this back in 2004 (or thereabouts). Yahoo called their system Webrank, but it seems to have been abandoned long ago. When I searched for information on it, what I mostly found was webmasters saying that it was just a poor copy of PageRank and it wasn’t worth worrying about. So, to an extant, we’ve made our own bed.

It’s worth noting that I also found complaints about Yahoo applying penalties. Sound familiar?

Maybe it just isn’t going to get any better. Or maybe we are underestimating how hard it is to make systems covering such a massive number of sites work successfully. Still I’d like to see Yahoo have a go.

What I Won’t Be Doing

I won’t be stopping writing sponsored posts. Adsense: 35 cents in a month; Sponsored Posts: $16 for one post (on a topic I’d write about anyway). If you can pass my Maths Comment Spam Protection, you can add this up!

I won’t be cloaking Nofollows so only Google sees them – Thanks Lucia.

And I won’t be talking about this any more. Well maybe in the comments.

The Final Word

I’ve said my piece. Now I’m moving on…

Nofollow has been disabled on my blog for more than a month now. I joined the Bumpzee No Nofollow community immediately, but I only recently learned of the Do Follow List. I signed up a few days ago, but I have mixed feelings about this list.

While I want to support anything that promotes DoFollow, something put me off the Do Follow List. What put me off specifically? The comment Nicusor left on my site saying a link back would get a do-follow link on the list.

My first reaction was “hang on isn’t this all about DoFollow – shouldn’t the list be DoFollow by default?” His comment on my site gets him a dofollow link to both his main site and to the list itself – but I have to write him up to get a dofollow link on the list?

After I settled down a bit, I realised that I overreacted.

The logic discussed in the comments of my last post about plugins promoting themselves can be applied here. If Nicusor is asking for the link back to help promote the list, so as to help promote DoFollow, then that is acceptable, perhaps even admirable.

Having checked out his site, I’m pretty sure he’s genuinely trying to promote DoFollow. I should also point out that I did get a dofollow link on the page where you comment to be added to the list.

So I do recommend you join this list, if you are not already on it. However, be ready for link back request and try not to react as I did.

Nicusor, if you’re reading this, maybe you should explain that you’re doing this to help promote DoFollow when you leave the comment. It was easy to misunderstand this as being a cynical attempt to get a link – In hindsight, I know that’s not what you meant.

The upcoming release of the DualFeeds plugin for WordPress includes an optional feature which promotes the plugin by displaying ‘Powered By DualFeeds’. I want to know what you think about this – is it okay for plugins to promote themselves?

The feature in question is the DualFeeds sidebar widget, which provides links for the reader to subscribe to the Full Post, Summary and Comments Feeds. You can see an example of it in my sidebar – the bright orange one!

The user does not have to use this feature. They can set the sidebar widget to use text links, or they can manually setup links to the feeds in their theme.

I stopped short of adding a link to the plugin home page (though I was tempted), because it was too close to the Comment Feed link. I didn’t want people accidently clicking the DualFeeds link by accident.

Some plugins, such as the excellent Lucia’s Linky Love do add a link (it can be turned off), but most plugins don’t promote themselves at all.

What do you think – is self promotion by a plugin okay? Please let me know in the comments or via the following poll:

I appreciate that the circumstances have a bearing on whether it is acceptable or not, so I’d be grateful for any specific feedback on the “Powered By DualFeeds” statement.