- you've chosen a colour scheme for the adverts that compliments your page or site, i.e., they blend in enough to look part of the site, but are still noticeable, but not too “in your face.” Sometimes it takes a bit of testing to get this right but the colour scheme for adverts is important. If you're using a platform such as Hubpages (where this article is hosted) you may not have any control over this, as it will be determined by the overall scheme of the site.
- you've chosen the right advert format for your site and placed it in a good position on the page. Generally, it is agreed that “above the fold” i.e., visible when the browser window opens with no scrolling, is preferable. And even better is the top left hand corner of the page where the human eye naturally falls when it starts to read a page top-to-bottom, and left-to-right. Some believe that this top left hand position can be a bit too “in your face” but it is undoubtedly a prime position. Once again, if you're using Hubpages or a similar platform you may have little choice about advert position as it will be predetermined by the site.
- you've targeted your site towards a specific theme or group of closely related keywords so that the displayed Adsense adverts are relevant to your content. Readers are far more likely to click the adverts if they are highly relevant. But if your page is rambling through several different subjects then it is possible that the displayed adverts will cover a range of possibly irrelevant subjects and the click rate will be disappointing.
So, to come back to choosing keywords to improve your Adsense profits, if you've done all the above, and you're still earning cents, you may well be choosing the wrong keywords. Wrong keywords are those which
- are so competitive that you page will never get placed high in the search engines, or at least won't get placed highly enough without a great deal of link building effort
- are so obscure that if the page does get placed well, it won't get any clicks because nobody is looking for it
- are not profitable because you will only get paid a few cents when the adverts on the page, associated with the keyword, are clicked
These issues are very inter-related in that, not surprisingly, the most competitive keywords are the ones which pay most and have the most searches, but are also the most difficult ones to get onto that illusive first page of the search engines. But this is only a general rule, there are exceptions. There are keywords waiting to be found that do pay well, have a good number of searches and yet do not have too much competition. It just takes the time and effort of thorough keyword research to find them.
The place used for a huge amount of keyword research is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This was originally meant for advertisers to see how much keywords would cost to buy clicks but is now used extensively by webmasters for keyword research. I'm not going to go into the detail, about the mechanics of how to use the tool, perhaps I'll write about that another time, but I just want to focus on the results, and how subtle little changes to keyword selection may influence Adsense profits.
Adsense Profits - Cost-Per-Click
To illustrate the point let's look at a specific example based on cheap flights. Suppose you were wanting to create a page around the subject of cheap flights to Europe or something like that.
Possible keywords could be:
cheap direct flights to europe
cheap return flights to europe
cheap airfares to europe
europe flights
cheap atlantic flights
If you were to do no keyword research it would be very easy, and acceptable to use these keywords on a site about cheap flights. They are on topic and you would think they are possible search terms for people looking to fly to Europe. But fill in the detail from the keyword tool and we discover
cheap direct flights to europe costs $0.05 for the advertiser and has only 12 searches per month
(The advertiser pays only 5 cents so by the time Google has taken their slice, the publisher will probably only get paid 1-2 cents) Here are the results for the other keywords
cheap return flights to europe costs $0.05 and has 73 searches per month
cheap airfares to europe costs $2.94 and has 1,900 searches per month
europe flights costs $2.27 and has 201,000 searches per month
cheap atlantic flights costs $0.05 and has 12,100 searches per month
So, it's immediately obvious that there is a huge range in the cost-per-click to the Adwords advertiser, and therefore a huge difference in what you would get paid as an Adsense publisher. From 5 cents up to $2.94, that's almost 1:60 meaning that you would get around 60x more for advert clicks related to cheap airfares to europe compared with cheap return flights to europe. Amazing! Such a subtle difference in keywords can cause a huge impact upon Adsense income.
Adsense Profits - Competition
But there is still the issue of competition. I guarantee that it would be easy to get a good place in the search engines for cheap direct flights to europe because there is so little competition, but there are hardly any searches. Assessing competition for the first page of the search engines can be done in many different ways, some of them quite technical, and capable of filling a book, let alone a page.
So to keep it simple I suggest you look at the Keyword Difficulty Tool at:
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-difficulty/
The keyword phrase is typed in the box and a percentage is generated - the higher the percentage, the more competition for the keyword. Here are the results, along with the cost-per-click and search volume:
cheap direct flights to europe 50% difficulty; $0.05 per click and 12 searches
cheap return flights to europe 60% difficulty: $0.05 per click and 73 searches
cheap airfares to europe 47% difficulty: $2.94 per click and 1,900 searches
europe flights 60% difficulty: $2.27 per click and 201,000 searches
cheap atlantic flights 55% difficulty: $0.05 per click and 12,100 searches
It's surprising. In fact it's very surprising! The phrase cheap airfares to europe has the lowest competition (47%) and the highest cost-per-click ($2.94). Remember this is what the advertiser pays not what the publisher gets paid, but it will still be much more than 1-2 cents! And with 1,900 searches per month it should get a reasonable search volume. Do a search for keyword difficulty check tools and you will find other keyword competition analysis tools. Try a few of them to see how they compare and choose one for your keyword analysis.
So in summary, to improve your Adsense profits, after you've done all the webpage design regarding advert colours and position, remember to seek out the high paying keywords, with enough search volume to make them worthwhile. And then check out the competition using a suitable tool. Spend time on following these straightforward suggestions and you should see an increase in your Adsense profits. But be patient if you can. It takes a while to get to grips with keyword research for Adsense, but you should see the results eventually.
If you're looking to get started making money online with Adsense but are a beginner and have no idea how to build a website, take a look at another of my articles - How to Build A Site. It gives you the basic information on getting started for free using simple online site building systems.