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Part Two – The Ultimate Adsense Page: Selecting Keywords

Josh — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:54:00 +0000

This is a follow on from Part One – The Ultimate Adsense Page: Boosting Optimization

In any Adsense campaign a studied approach towards the selection of keywords is vital when it comes to achieving any kind of success. Taking the time to choose keywords based on high monetary returns combined with competitive analysis, will often lead to higher conversions in the future.

So what approach should be taken when working towards finding the best Adsense keywords for your blogs?

Niche Selection

As you may already know, there is mounting evidence to conclude that a balanced approach must be taken to discover a niche based on the three key factors:

A High Payout
How high the current click value is on Ads in Google for a particular set of keywords.
Ranking Ability
The likelihood of you gaining high rankings in the search engines.
Number of Searches
The number of searches must be high enough to gain substantial traffic.

We can of course break down the above criteria even further.

What are high paying keywords and what’s the best resource for finding them?

Firstly, there is no requirement for any kind of ‘intuition’ when it comes to finding high paying keywords, as all the data you need can be located via Googles’ Search Based Keyword Tool.

Run a search for any keyword term and a list of related terms will be listed below containing, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the suggestion bid for each term(Sugg. bid).

Generally as a rule of thumb, attempt to stick to a suggested bid ABOVE $1.00. If you discover a niche which is ‘playable’ in terms of your ability to rank for it quickly in the SERPS, but it obviously has no ad competition, it’s usually better to steer clear from building a site based around it.

The ONLY exception to this would be if you were certain the niche you have in mind has the ability to draw in ad space in the future. In other words, “are there are large number of products in the niche, likely to be sold via Google Ads in the future?”

Basically it’s just common sense not to waste your time targeting a non profitable niche in general.

Finally a decision has to be made in regards to the number of competitive keywords in the niche. If there are less then 5 keywords with suggested bids over $1.00, I tend to stay away.

Again the only exception would be if I was CERTAIN it was a new niche and competition was sure to grow in the future.

Finally to finish off, the third point I mentioned above is deciding upon a niche based on it’s number of searches. I think too many people get carried away with making sure the keywords involved in a niche have a dramatically high number of searches/month.

It’s important to remember that although a niche may get searched alot, it doesn’t necessary mean it’s going to firstly contain high paying ad placements and secondly a high CTR(click through rate) on those same ads.

If you come across a niche with a small number of search results, however the suggested bids are high, same with the rankability, chances are it has the ability to make you some solid, long-term capital.

Just make sure there are enough keywords that fit the criteria, which brings us onto our next point…

What would be considered a niche worth targeting in the search engines?

Again there is a rule of thumb when it comes to deciding whether or not a certain niche has a desirable list of Adsense keywords ‘rankable’ in the search engines. This is the criteria I generally like to use:

Are there at least 30 keywords with competition in Google(Number of results) less than 50k?
Can I write informative articles on each of them?

Once a suitable niche is found, the next step is to choose the top 5 keywords determined by the ratio between the highest bid and search engine ‘rankability’. These are in affect your money keywords, which you can read more about in my post on Backlink Concentration.

The remaining 25 keywords will still have posts written on them, however the SEO campaign you create will NOT be directly targetted towards them. Over time page rank will naturally filter through to their pages, resulting in a slow rise to the top of the search engines.

Systematizing the selection of Adsense niches

I felt this process could would be a little hard to express through words, so I decided to create a short video tutorial on a process which I feel has the potential to help anyone find a niche worth getting started in.

Of course it’s not hardcore by any means and I’m certain there are better resources for finding such niches, but this one seems to do the job nicely, best of all it comes straight out of the knowledgebase of none other then Google themselves(when in doubt go back to the source ).

Josh Stanton
SEODrift.com

Technorati Tags: adsense keywords

Part One – The Ultimate Adsense Page: Boosting Optimization

Josh — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:12:00 +0000

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

Technorati Tags: adsense pages