AdMoolah News and Views

AdSense Tip #8: Effectively using High Paying Keywords

How can webmasters make the best use of high paying keywords? In the last tip we saw how to find high paying keywords, in this tip we will examine ways to use these keywords.

Have real content

The most important tip is to not create a website just for to display AdSense ads. The Google Program Policies specifically prohibit this:

No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.

Basically, if you have real content on your site that people want to read, you should be fine.

How to let Google know what a page is about

To know what a page is about, Google’s robot crawls the page. It looks for keywords in different places, including the title tag, the URL, and the content of the page. Words in different elements on your page may have more importance than other elements. For example words in the title tags, header (h1, h2, etc.) or bold tags will be seen as more important than regular text. Also, words at the beginning of the content will be more important than words near the end of the page. A complete explanation of this is beyond the scope of this article, but a search for “on page SEO” should provide a good starting point for getting more information on this topic.

Use Better Keywords

As we saw in the last tip, different, but related, keywords are worth different amounts per click. For example we saw that the maximum bids for “house” was $1.41 while the maximum bid for “real estate” was $3.77. So, if you have a page about “buying houses”, it might be a good idea to say “buying real estate” instead. Again, make sure you put this keyword in all the important places on your page such as the title, url and headings to make sure the ads will match these keywords.

Focused Pages

It is a good idea to have pages that are focused on single topic. This way, you know that the people visiting the page are interested in the topic and that the ads will match the visitors interest. If you have a topic that is several pages long it could be a good idea to to break it into sub-topics, each of which are focused on one particular keyword.

As usual JenSense has a some great advice for AdSense publishers. This time she is clarifying the compliance of the technique of putting images above ads.

If you use this technique or are thinking about it be sure to read this. It basically comes down to not making the images not look like part of the ad. Google usually suggests putting a border between the images and the ad.

JenSense has more details on the workings of the Yahoo Publisher Network. She has lots of screenshots to show.

It looks like anyone who is comfortable with AdSense will have no problems switching over to YPN. Now they just need to approve my application.

JenSense reports that AdSense has an updated to their system that will vary the number of ads in an ad unit:

To increase monetization on your site and improve the relevance of ads, AdSense now varies the number of text ads that appear in a given ad unit. In cases where we determine that increasing the size of the most relevant ads will improve performance, we’ll drop the lowest-performing ad or ads and expand the remaining ones to fill the entire unit. Showing fewer ads works to your advantage, allowing the better-performing ads to draw more user attention and click-throughs. Google AdSense technology will automatically determine the optimal number of ads to display on any page and will only show fewer ads when doing so will make you more money!

This is from the AdSense support pages.

Google needs to get an AdSense blog to report these types of things!

I have seen some differing opinions about ads in RSS feeds lately.

In an interview on JenSense, Jason Calacanis said this:

How successful have the AdSense for Feeds ads in your RSS been? Have you had a problem with readers not wanting ads in their feeds from you?

Like three folks were upset about RSS ads. Now, we have millions of people coming to our sites every month so we’re not going to stop the revenue for three freaks who want free content without advertising (don’t we all want that?!?!).

If you did a survey and asked people watching Desperate Housewives if they would consider paying to have it without commercials people would say yes. You could ask the same group if they would like to save money by watching the Sopranos for free with ads in it and they would say they would consider it!

Ads in RSS are no big deal. They are just like banners or text links on a web page. If you produce great content people will deal with the ads, and if you produce really great content a certain percentage of those folks will pay for the content (if you want to go that route). So, it’s important that when you’re running a business you ignore the freaks and listen to the real fans. Real fans of the site understand you need to make money in order to produce free content, and those real fans even visit the advertisers and buy their products knowing that it will support the product they love.

Dave Winer, on the other hand, expressed the totally opposite viewpoint:

Taegan Goddard asked me to say when I re-subb’d to the Political Wire feed after he removed the ads, so it only seems fair to say that I unsubbed today, and that’s the last time you’ll hear about it here. He brought the ads back, without notice, without permission of the readers. It’s pulling my attention into his stuff, and dammit that’s my aggregator not his, and not FeedBurner’s and not his advertiser’s (who I won’t name here). I think advertising is so over, and it really pains me to see a visionary like Goddard go this way.

So that leads me to the question: Should I put AdSense for RSS ads in my AdMoolah RSS feeds?

I think I’m with Jason on this one. The feeds are supplying some free information, so the readers should be willing to put up with a little advertising.

This is part 2 of the question and answer session of the AdSense Optimization Webinar. The first part was posted here.

Q8. I have a bilingual French/English site. 2/3 of the pages are in French and 1/3 are in English. All of the ads that appear on it are in French.
A8. The sites are targeted by individual URL so the English pages should get English ads. If you are using sessions or cookies to show the English pages, this could be a problem for the Google bot. We also do Geo-targeting so that could affect things as well.

Q9. What is the relationship between the AdSense “MediaPartners” crawler, the Google Search crawler and Sitemaps.
A9. The AdSense and Search crawlers are completely independent. The Sitemaps are for search only, they don’t affect AdSense.

Q10. Can publishers influence which ads are displayed on our sites?
A10. No. It’s probably not in the best interest of the publisher to try to do this by hand, Google algorithms do a good job of keeping the best ads on a site.

Q11. If there are multiple ad units on a page, do the ones closer to the top get the highest paying ads?
A11. Yes, the one that appears first in the HTML will get the best ads.

Q12. How are custom channels different from URL channels?
A12. Custom channels need the actual ad code to change. URL channels do not.

Q13. Are banner ads done on a CPM ($ per thousand views) basis?
A13. Most image ads are done on a CPM basis, but some are done on a CPC (cost-per click) basis as well. Some text ads are CPM but most are CPC.

Q13a. Does CPM on these ads go up with higher value content?
A13a. Everything is calculated by Google’s algorithms and the ad that has the best chance at making the most money will be displayed.

Q14. Can AdSense for Search be set up to search three different domains?
A14. No. Can only search a single domain.

Q15a. Which keywords have the highest payout?
A15a. There are resources on the web and books where you can find out about this.

Q15b. Can I somehow query this information through Google?
A15b. No. Since prices are set by an auction they are always fluctuating.

Q15c. Does having AdSense on my site help my PR or help get my site indexed quicker?
A15c. No. These are independent things.

Q15d. Is it possible to overdo keywords and have too many on the page.
A15d. I wouldn’t worry about this, just concentrate on having good content. Don’t create a site just for displaying AdSense.

Q16. We have a news site that does get crawled regularly by Google News. When we do get crawled by Google news we see a 5 or 10 times increase in AdSense revenue.
A16. Google News and AdSense aren’t directly related.

Again, they were constantly stressing that they wanted people to email them questions and feedback.

The third part of the AdSense Optimization Webinar was a question and answer session. This was the longest part of the webinar and I have split this into two posts.

The phone lines were opened for participants to ask questions. I haven’t listed any names in the questions, because I didn’t catch most of them. My notes aren’t completely accurate and I’m sure I have my own spin on the answers or questions. I am also paraphrasing and shortening these a lot, but I hope I get the main points across.

Almost every answer ended in the Google team members saying: “But if you’re still unsure, email us at adsense-support@google.com with your question”. They were really encouraging people to send feedback and questions.

Q1. I have multiple ad units on my page and ads only appear on the first one.
A1. Chances are there are not enough ad units in our inventory.

Q2a. How much does the topic of an ad affect its click price?
A2a. It varies quite a bit.

Q2b. Do you have any information about what the current rate for different keywords are?
A2b. No. But there are third party sources that this type of information is available from.

Q3a. I am having problems getting targeted keywords to subdomains.
A3a. It could be a problem with crawling or with determining the context on the page.

Q3b. Would you recommend using subdirectories vs. subdomains?
A3b. It shouldn’t make a difference. Ads are determined by individual URLs.

Q4a. How do you make sure your site is available for site targeted ads?
A4a. Make sure image ads are selected. Relevancy and size of the site are what helps you get targeted.

Q4b. Do link units pay differently than regular ad units?
A4b. No, the pay is identical.

Q4c. In the case study you showed for HybridCars.com the Google search box doesn’t have the Google Logo. Why not?
A4c. We’ll have to look into that.

Q5. What future improvements will you be making to the user interface?
A5. We’re trying to get the best information as quickly as possible, that’s what the new reporting changes were about. Send us your feedback for more suggestions.

Q6a. I am using 3rd Party tools like AdSense Tracker (a click tracking tool) and a desktop report tool. Will Google come out with these types of tools?
A6a. We can’t comment on what is going to come out in the future. Lots of publishers have been asking for better reporting.

Q6b. Are these types of tools compliant with the AdSense Terms of Service?
A6b. We can’t recommend any specific tool, but generally yes, these tools are compliant. If you have questions about a particular tool, feel free to email us about it.

Q7. I have been seeing the same ad on my site all the time. Are the ads always rotated?
A7. Google’s algorithms are always trying to show the best ads possible. Ads are rotated, but successful ads will appear more often.

The rest of the questions and answers will be in part 2.

It appears that YPN has now gone beta. I applied for the beta, but I was hoping it would be fully launched today so I could start experimenting right away.

To apply for the beta you can go here. Participants of the program must be a resident of the U.S., with valid U.S. Social Security number or Tax ID.

More details about the beta program can be found at Jensense.

The second part of the AdSense Optimization webinar was three case studies.

HybridCars.com

The site gets about 25,000 views per day.

Initially Hybridcars.com only had ads on a small percentage of their pages and they were making $80-90 dollars a day. They managed to increase this to $200-300 dollars a day by putting ads on the majority of their pages, and improving the positioning of the ads.

Advice from HybridCars.com was to put content first to keep visitors and to experiment with different ads.

www.geekzone.co.nz

Geekzone gets about 75,000 page views a day and has 7,000 RSS subscribers.

Originally the site had ads on the top right of the page. They increased their AdSense revenue by about $20-$30 a day by moving the ads to be positioned between the title and the content.

Changing the ads from ones that stood out to ones that blend in caused their revenue to go from $30-$40 a day to $90-$100 a day.

Their advice was to focus on content to bring in traffic and use good navigation to keep users on your site.

AskTheBuilder.com

They get about 100,000 page views a day.

When they switched from having ads at the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen, revenue increased by about 60%.

In one experiment, they went from using blend-in ads to ads with a yellow background and revenue dropped about 65%.

Their advice was to concentrate on having good content. Having 500-600 pages is far better than having 20-30 pages. Experimentation was again mentioned.

The first part of the webinar was a best practices presentation. Most of these tips have been talked about on many blogs and discussion groups, including my own AdSense tips series. It’s always good to have a review though.

Positioning

They showed the AdSense heat map and discussed how you should consider how visitors read your site and where their eyes are drawn too.

Format

Generally, wider ad formats are better than narrow ones. They have fewer line breaks in them so they are easier to read. The best ad formats are 336X280, 300X250 and 160X600.

Ad Color

The best ads often blend-in with the rest of the site. Ads that don’t blend in tend to cause ad-blindness and visitors will ignore the ads. Another trick is rotating several color palettes, each of which blend. This can also help fight ad-blindness.

Which Pages Should AdSense Go On?

As many as possible. Consider putting AdSense ads in places like forums, shopping and search results pages.

Tools

There are several tools which AdSense provides which can help optimize ads.

Channels
Channels are useful for experimenting with different positioning, formats and colors.

Image Ads
Most image ads are run on a CPM basis (which pay per impression), this can be good for sites that have low click-through rates.

Link Units
Link units can be good because of their small size; they take up less screen real estate. Link units can be placed in addition to the three regular ad units allowed per page.

AdSense for Search
This is another option available to help monetize a site.