As you may have realized by now, I like to throw a lot of relevant keywords into my posts. You’ll notice them highlighted in bold randomly throughout the text. Ever wonder why? Well, it’s because I know that AdSense will pay me more if I use the right keywords.

Google AdSense relies on keywords throughout your document as a part of its algorithm for displaying contextual ads. Words in bold are typically given more weight in this decision, therefore I bold them. If, for instance, you wanted to talk about ducks on your website, I would advise you to bold keywords like the following:

• Duck
• Donald Duck
• Duck Unlimited
• Duck Hunting
• Anaheim Duck
• Mighty Duck
• Rubber Duck
• Horny Duck
• Daffy Duck
• Howard the Duck

You might laugh, but it’s true. How do I know this? Because, according to Overture, these are the most searched-on keywords for the term ‘duck.’ So later on when people begin to search for my article, not only wil will my posts come up more often but my ads will be more relevant when they do.

“But where did you get those Overture keywords?”

Simple. I downloaded a piece of software from Softnik Technologies called Good Keywords and any time I want to look up a keyword for its possible inclusion or highlighting, I use the “Keyword Suggestions” feature and up comes a list of relevant keywords (left image).

It will even show you the amount of times each term is searched for per month. This is an excellent feature, and one people usually pay money for. Thank you Overture.

But wait, there’s more. You didn’t think I would stop with one method, did you? The next method I use to generate decent keywords is to use the AdWords Keyword Tool. If you’re familiar with AdWords, great. Otherwise, use the link at the bottom of this page to get yourself an AdWords account.

Now once inside AdWords, find the Keywords Tool under Campaign Management > Tools. Now you can perform a search on your desired keyword. When searching, make sure the “use synonyms” checkbox is checked and you have “Cost and ad position estimates” selected in the dropdown. Next, put $100 in the “Calculate Estimates using Max CPC” box. Perform your search.

When the keywords come up, sort them by “Estimated Avg. CPC.” Now you can see what people are paying for the top positions on Google searches, and therefore what will most likely lead to higher payouts from the ads on your websites. In addition, I also recommend searching by “Global search volume trends” to see which ads pay higher in which months. I recommend playing around with it to get the best results.

Another outstanding service I use to determine where to best PLACE my ads is CrazyEgg.com. With this service, you just place a bit of javascript code at the bottom of whatever web page(s) you want to track and it will not only keep track of your hits but also your clicks. In order to better track your clicks, CrazyEgg implemented an amazing tool called the Heatmap (displayed below). With this tool, you can see which areas are really hot (white hot) and which are colder (blue hot).

This is a recent example from my Adsense-Fire.com tracking. Notice the top right area where the tabs are. Placing an ad in this area is a fantastic idea as people are more likely to see the ad right below the tabs, since it is such a high-traffic click area. Similarly, it would be a smart idea to place an ad under the logo (top left) or in the vicinity of the Mailing List area.

It’s always better to track your clicks over a larger span of time or clicks, like say .. one month or 1000 clicks. With CrazyEgg, you can do it either way and you will be able to more accurately see where the white hot areas are.

For now, I hope that helps you get the better paying keywords for your content. There will be more tips on this later. Good luck!

- Scott

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Adsense, Tips and Tricks, Adwords, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.