Chris Brandrick

Over the last week or so the current round of Google page rank (PR) updates have been rolled out. And ChrisBrandrick.com went from a 0 to a page rank of 4.

For those of you unfamiliar with page rank, it is Google’s method of rating the importance of a website within the web as a whole. So for example a site with more presence and links will supposedly be ranked higher than those without. Google explains Page Rank like so:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Now many debate that the Google Page Rank may not be as important as it once was, especially to advertisers, but it still holds value and is a small indication as to whether your site is making an impact on the web. With this in mind, I’m celebrating the fact, so for the month of August advertising on ChrisBrandrick.com is only $10. $10 gets you one months exposure on the right sidebar in the available 125×125 spot. Interested? Just drop me an email at chrisbrandrick@gmail.com or leave a comment.

I recently posted about my domain, gtafour.co.uk and the plans to advertise it via Facebook. Due to me having doubts as to the viability of Facebook as an advertising platform and me having read mixed results on other blogs, I approached trying Facebook as more of an experiment, testing the water to see what results can be gained on a small scale.

For those of you unfamiliar with how advertising on Facebook works, you of course need a Facebook account to begin with, from here navigate to Facebook’s advertising section and follow the on screen instructions. Including such obvious data as your destination URL, target audience and so on. You also get the chance to choose between pay per click or pay per view. I chose pay per click. Also within this section you get to set a price on how much each pay per click will set you back, and your daily limit, this enables a control on your spending and is a good way to get the most out of your budget.

Designing an advert is somewhat limited on Facebook, but keeping in style with the site, this may be deemed positive or negative, that just depends on your views on advert effectiveness. As can be seen on the left is the advert which I created and ran on Facebook, I included the games boxart as the advert image, along with some relevant text. Once you have completed this advert creating process, the advert must get approved by Facebook staff, mainly to see if the adverts content is suitable for age range I targeted (18 - 30 UK Males). To my surprise the advert got approved very quickly.

I ran the advert for two days with a tiny budget of $5 per day. The advert gained 34,462 impressions and out of all those impressions a mere 21 clicks. That’s (a rough) average of 1 click every 1,600 impressions. Personally I think that’s pretty poor, but I expected the results to be far from great, as I go on Facebook to catch up on what my friends are up to….

I doubt I would use Facebook again for advertising, but I think this advertising model sure could work for other types of sites. Do any you have any experiences with Facebook advertising? If so just drop us a comment.