Google Gadgets & SEO

1) Affiliate links

It used to be if you wanted to display an affiliate ad 100,000 times a month you would have to create a website, get seriously huge traffic to that website, and then hope someone clicks on the ad and then pray they bought something.

Not anymore.

My Kayak travel search gadget is an affiliate ad…

It is about a month and a half old. It receives 25,000 page views a week so far. But in reality less than 1000 people are actually using it. Having said that though… it makes money.

The numbers so far are averaging 3000 clicks a day and between 30 and 50 sales a day, each sale provides me some commission.

The brilliant part is that it is only looked at or used by people interested in doing a travel search. They choose it, they request it.

I will be giving some specific instruction on how to make such gadgets in about a week or two, but until then here is a hint of where to to get started.

Gadgets like this are good.

Zero spam. Good for user, good for advertiser, good for Google and good for the developer.

2) Direct links

I have a Google gadget directory of my very own. In that directory is a Virtual Pet page, which receives traffic primarily from direct links in virtual pet gadgets….

The gadgets have a link that says “see more virtual pets” which links to my virtual pet page. That page has two things on it:

Virtual pet gadgets and adsense ads.

Virtually all of my very specific traffic from those links are people who are interested enough in Virtual pets to already have one on their homepage. They will probably like and use my page, my gadgets, or my ads.

How many people are using those virtual pet gadgets? Thousands.

It is easier to get people to use your Google gadget than it is to create the comparable amount of traffic to a website.

To get traffic from a Google gadget simply create a few simple gadgets about something you care about or something that your web page is about. Have a link in the gadget to your website. Enter the gadget into the Google gadget directory, and you will start receiving traffic from it.

3) Ads.

If you create gadgets that are popular guess what? You are now the proud owner of highly targeted prime link and ad real estate. What if a business who made virtual pets wanted to highlight their product to potential customers?

Think they would see the value in thousands of direct links to their products on thousands of their potential customers home pages? The answer is yes.

I know it is cool with Google to do this because I caught Google testing it out. The benefit of such ads is their highly targeted nature. They can provide great traffic that advertisers love even when the ads are within the Google webmaster guidelines and do not pass PageRank. (note: in general Google gadgets do not pass link juice in most cases as they are typically displayed from an iGoogle page.)

Google is sponsoring Google gadget developers because they are the gatekeepers to tomorrows ad space. Pure and simple.

But be careful with ads, they are ugly! Gadgets need to be liked by their users or they do not get used.

Hmm… if only there were an enterprising guy creating an ad system catered to gadgets.

Bonus way to make money and traffic from Google gadgets:

Subscribe to this blog and read it. SEOish has gone gadgets.

I am testing hundreds of ways to leverage Google gadgets in manners that are within the Google guidelines, respectful and targeted for advertisers, beneficial for developers and useful for the end user.

You might want to stick around for it

subscribe to SEOish

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 7:32 am and is filed under google gadgets, seo.

 Subscribe