Brewing Up Profits With Herbal Tea

25.10 Brewing Up Profits With Herbal Tea

Some of the most effective optimization strategies are very simple. Some are very creative. At TeaHerbalTea.com, we get both types.

The site has three ad units above the fold: a banner ad immediately beneath the header; a horizontal text link above the content; and a large rectangle embedded in the content.

But look at how each of those units is blended into the site. The banner’s background is lime-green, the same color as the site’s background, the titles match the color of the site’s header and the URL is kept just a tone or two above the background to make it almost invisible.

The unit embedded into the article follows a similar strategy. The title of the links match the title of the article, the description is kept black and the URL is a light color so that it almost disappears into the background.

It’s in the text links though that things get really interesting. The site has been designed so that it looks like there are little tabs above each of the links. That’s great idea. Would Google like it? It’s hard to say. So far, it’s not doing this site any harm, and it’s not an image, but you might want to clear it with your friendly AdSense rep before you put in your site.

Fig. 25.12 Three superbly blended ads at TeaHerbaltea.com...

It’s worth asking about.

The site’s ads don’t end there though. There’s another ad unit below the fold in the middle of the page, a Google search box at the bottom of the page and even a couple of referral buttons and an Amazon ad on the left. And with that second square ad unit turning up such well-targeted ads, there’s a great chance that they’ll get clicked.

If you’re wondering about that “Ads by Google” logo in the first embedded ad unit, Google does have a habit of testing different approaches on its ad units. It looks like they were doing a little experiment here. Let’s hope they keep it; it looks a lot better than the long “Ads by Gooooooogle”.

Fig. 25.13 ...and rounding it all off with a search box.