After you are done choosing the right format and location for your AdSense ads, don't sit back and wait for the money to roll in just yet. The next important step is to choose the right keywords for your web pages. These will influence both who visits your site, and how AdSense assigns ads to you.
The number one mistake most website publishers make is to constantly choose high-paying (i.e. expensive!) keywords assuming that it will yield them more income. While it is tempting to choose such keywords to get higher rankings on search engines, be prudent when it comes to selecting the right keywords that go with the AdSense ads that are to be displayed... Remember the goal here is
Clicks, not SEO rankings. This is a case where you often do not get what you pay for.
Consider this scenario. Your webpage talks about wine tasting courses. You review search phrases and keywords with "wine" in it and you find "wine rack" is
In the top three and available, so you buy it. The corresponding ads also focus on buying wine racks online, wine storage and building your own wine racks. After a week when you check on the statistics of your webpage and AdSense account, you see that you are losing visitors and your income is dipping! The keyword selection is faulty in this case even though it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Why? The visitors to your webpage were actually looking for wine racks and have landed on your webpage talking about wine tasting courses instead. The wine course types want to sign up for the courses, maybe buy a book on wine, or a wine of the month club. They don't want to build a wire rack. Think Strategically, not tactically.
Just because a keyword is high paying and is seemingly related, does not mean it is totally relevant and you need something relevant. Relevance is more important than value! In the above case, you could have - and should have - chosen wine tasting tour, wine tasting party, wine tasting event, wine tasting class, wine tasting school, course tasting wine and so on. You are interested in relevance more than popularity. Tasting is a match. Racks are not.
Let's look at some of the ways in which you can research your keywords for AdSense ads:
Your click through rate will be boosted tremendously by including the right keywords in your web copy, of course. Keywords occurring in your ads are usually highlighted on the search engine results page. This also helps in drawing additional attention to your ad.
The URL of your webpage is also an integral part of achieving success on the Google AdSense program, as it is on the Web generally. Current wisdom holds that the keywords in the URL are equally if not more important than the ones featured in the actual webpage content or in metatags. lf you change your ordinary URL to a keyword rich URL relevant to your market, it is possible to raise your CTR as much as 200% or more without doing anything else.
Obvious domain names with the keywords that you want might be expensive to purchase from a broker, but you can also buy used domain names that are no longer active, often for just a few dollars per year.