It’s hard to find a website these days that isn’t running Google ads. Even major corporation websites use Google ads to provide an extra dimension to the user experience (and to monetize their content). Even if yours isn’t a multibillion-dollar, multinational corporation (yet), it’s still important to get the most out of your monetization efforts.
Monetizing With Ads
Many of the people our copywriting company works with ask for content that they intend to directly monetize. If you’re thinking, “What does that mean?” it’s probably something that you’re doing already.
If you write content for the purpose of driving traffic to your site and subsequently making sales, you are monetizing your content. For companies with a physical product or a real-world service to sell, the primary focus of the copy might be to raise awareness of the product or service and to engage in good SEO practices so people find you in a Google search.
Another example of monetization comes in the form of what many industry leaders have started referring to as “content discovery.” This is when you buy cost-per-click traffic via targeted ads that leads back to specific content on your website.
Every time you click on an article on sites like Yahoo that are designated as “sponsored,” you are clicking on content that someone has paid to be advertised on that site and on partner sites.
Companies like Yahoo Gemini, MGID, Content.ad, and advertising.com all sell ad impressions and get paid when they either show your ad (cost per impression) or when someone clicks on the ad (cost per click).
“So What Does This Have to Do with AdSense?”
AdSense is such a prolific ad network, you are likely seeing 10 Google ads for every one you see from another site or service. I would say that’s a very conservative number, actually.
Google AdWords is the branch of the company that serves AdSense ads: a very precise, very targeted ad delivery system that allows its advertisers to have a comprehensive picture of where their ads are going, who is seeing them, etc.
AdSense employs intricate algorithms for geotargeting (showing ads from local advertisers) and retargeting (showing ads that reflect your interests based on searches and browsing habits) and also serves ads based on keywords in your content. This is where it becomes necessary to understand how to make your content “request” the right ads.
Making It Happen
So now we come to the part where I reveal to you a few valuable secrets for getting this right. The most useful resource you have at your disposal is AdWords itself. If you simply Google “adwords keyword planner,” you will be directed to the exact page you need to start researching. If you don’t already have a Google account, you will be prompted to create one. If you’re using AdSense already, you have an account already, too. Log in with that account.
Next, click where it says, “search for keywords using a phrase, website or category,” and type in the title of your article or a small description of the content. Five to ten words should be about right. I do not recommend just typing in your website URL, since, I assume, you will have different content on different pages and will want to keep things as relevant as possible on every page.
Once you type in your search parameters, click “get ideas.” On the next screen, click the tab that says “keyword ideas.” In here, you want to look for three things:
• Average Monthly Searches
• Competition Rating
• Suggested Bid
The average monthly searches tell you how many people are searching for a specific word or phrase within the context of your subject. You want to zero in on the highest numbers here.
The competition rating tells you how many advertisers are vying for clicks for a certain keyword. You want to try to target “medium” for these since those keywords with “high” ratings will actually be more difficult to capture unless you are spending insane amounts of money per click.
The suggested bid represents how much money the average advertiser is spending to capture clicks with that keyword. Here you want to select the highest numbers possible, since Google pays you a percentage of the advertiser’s cost per click (CPC). If that CPC is 30 cents, you won’t get a big cut of that, but if it’s $12, you stand to make a good commission for facilitating that click.
Once you have a core list of five or six keywords, see where you can fit them in organically with your content. You can’t just slap words into a web document – the message has to make sense and it has to be relevant, and, believe me, Google knows the difference.
If you do this right, within a few hours you should notice that the ads your content is served start to increase in relevance. If the ads are relevant to your content, it is more likely that people will click on them, and when that happens, you have successfully monetized your content with AdSense!
So here is my short list of ways to make the best use of your best keywords:
1. Incorporate the highest-bid keyword into your headline or article title, especially if you are creating paginated content.
2. Seed each page with a 1.5% density of your keywords. If you are creating paginated content, stick to one or two keywords per page. For long-form articles, scatter them throughout and don’t over-use them.
3. Check the relevance of the ads being served by viewing in a browser that hasn’t been optimized to your browsing habits. I find that using Google Chrome in Incognito mode works well for testing ad relevance, but bear in mind that everyone who sees your content will also get geotargeted and retargeted ads as well. This is why your content needs to be good: the longer people stay on your site, the more likely they are to find an ad they want to click on.