AdSense Best Practices: Keyword Targeting For Improved Earnings

Your potential earnings through the AdSense program are hugely dependant on the ads that are selected to sit alongside your content. With earnings per click running from a few pennies to tens or even hundreds of pounds, the importance of getting ads to appear that pay well is paramount to a successful AdSense campaign.

The key to finding the best keywords to develop your content with is in the research, and there’s lots of it to be done. The nirvana that we’re all searching for is that particular keyword that has a very high market value associated with it, but a low competitive index, meaning that placing our content and getting it highly ranked in the SERPs will not be too difficult a challenge. Of course life is seldom as black and white so we make our choices from the grey area where competition meets ad value.

The first thing to define is what we mean by keyword. When you read articles about keywords you could easily be mistaken by believing the author is referring to individual words (as the name suggests) when more often than not what they’re actually referring to would be more accurately described as Key Phrases; groups of between 2 and 5 words that make up the “keyword”.

When we’re starting out looking for new keywords to work with there are a number of determining factors that we use in our decision making processes regarding the value of the term. The most important of these are:

• Volume of searches using the keyword

• Market value of the keyword

• How many competitors are targeting the keyword

Once we have this information we can evaluate which keywords are worth pursuing, weighing up the attractiveness of the keyword (volume x market value) against the difficulty of being effective with that keyword (competition + effort (and skills)).

It’s all too tempting to cherry pick the high value keywords and start working on them in the hope that even a few clicks will bring great rewards. The problem is if you’ve found a very high value term, chances are lots of other people have too and the effort involved in trying to access those few clicks is an inefficient use of time.

The most effective strategy is to hit some reasonably priced keywords where the competition is lower. The market will be much easier to break into it and you should be able to pick up some traffic much more easily, freeing up some extra time to rinse and repeat.

The other very important factor that must be mentioned here before finishing is to focus on keyword areas where you can create strong content on a subject that you have a very good knowledge of. It stands to reason that if you’re trying to compete in a market area where you aren’t an expert you’ll be at a distinct disadvantage as there will certainly be experts you’re going up against. Not a reason to not try, but working with content you know understand better will give you much greater successes.

A good starting point to begin the practical exercise of researching keywords is my related hub, Tools of the Trade for Keyword Hunters which provides links to some of the best free keyword tools available and should help get you started in the right direction.