Is Adsense your main monetary weapon on your blogs? How much money are you currently making from your campaigns and most importantly how well are your ads converting? 

A recent look into some of the case studies over at the official Adsense Blog have led me to believe that perhaps there is a way of making some solid income off a large number of highly targeted Adsense blogs.

A example eagerly pushed by Google, which I actually remember reading about a few years back is the site vangoghgallery.com. Of course not the best example but one which G decides to highlight for obvious reasons:

1. Ads are displayed in text.
It’s not difficult to understand why this approach works well, considering the fact that most visitors generally take part in reading content on webpages.

A combination of ads along with in text links(possibly named anchors in the same Adsense format at the top of your page), has the ability to ‘confuse’ readers into believing those links are in fact internal and have nothing to do with the ads on the page.

2. Google Search Bar Used Effectively

Of course this was spoken about in the case study, but you will notice the clever use of the Google Search Bar centered at the top of the page, seamlessly coming across as the sites internal search engine.  

Taking away the regular Wordpress search bar and replacing it with G’s Adsense tool, can have a dramatic effect on improving conversion on Adsense pages. A very simple strategy that I always use on all my blogs.

Sidebar Positioning

Not for me, why? Again take notice of the areas of the page which are most likely to gain the most attention by your viewers. People READ webpages therefore surrounding your ads with content is going to force the reader to consciously notice them, intern increasing conversions.

Sidebars get very little attention from the reader and are therefore unlikely to convert well. I’m sure you’ve been told to blend your ads into the sidebars, with the idea that people will accidentally click them thinking they were actually internal links to other pages in your site. 

First of all you need to remember the key principle, “is this an area of the page that draws a lot of attention?”, the answer is clearly ‘no’. Secondly you’re relying on the stupidity of your audience. Without going into too much detail, how many times have you mistakenly clicked an ad thinking it was an internal link?

Me, I’ve done it about 5 times, give or take a few, and if you compare that to the number of times you have intentionally CHOSEN to click an ad, it still remains minuscule and therefore a poor approach.

Increasing Revenue On Ad Clicks

It’s no secret there remains a huge correlation between low Adsense click payouts and poor keyword research. Consider this as being the fundamental approach that Google uses for their payouts:

1. You type in and run a search for “iPhone 3G S”.

2. You follow through to a blog post which contains a review of the new iPhone 3G S.

3. The keyword term “iPhone 3G S” appears a number of times throughout the content of the post, the page title and the post title.

4. You notice an ad on the page and decide to click it.

Result – A solid conversion

Let’s break this down a little. 

Notice the traffic is coming from a search engine and not through a social media source. If the page is good enough to make it to the first 2 pages of the SERPs then it’s highly likely the content within is suitable for the specific keyword term.

This ultimately leads to a strong relationship between the content on the page and the ads displayed. Fundamentally this is what Google had in mind when first opening up the ability for a Content Network to host their ads.

Apparently another addition which I am yet to test, is to include links to about us, privacy and contact us pages. Of course the only way for Google to register those links is to make them ‘do follows’. As I said I am yet to test to see whether the addition of these links actually does increase click payouts. I have to say I’m fairly skeptical.

Remember the focus here is on increasing conversion for Wordpress blogs, which are designed to provide information in the form of simple, keyword-rich articles.

With this understanding, all emphasis on conversion must be placed on three specific principles: Quality of Content, Positioning of Ads and Selection of Keywords.

I’ve already suggested the most appropriate positioning of ads and the requirement that the content on your pages must target a specific keyword. But what about the Selection of Keywords?

Unfortunately, due to my yearning desire to chi fan(”eat food” in Chinese) you’re going to have to wait for part two to find out the methods I use to discover and select keywords for my Adsense Campaigns.

Start implementing the above approach on your Adsense pages if you haven’t already and remember, TEST, TEST and TEST some more!

Josh Stanton
SEODrift.com

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