Using Google’s Adsense program is a good way to add some extra money into your pocket. That is if you know what you are doing.
The Basics
Adsense is a very simple PPC advertising program. You place text and/or media ads on your webpage and you are paid every time someone clicks on your advertisement. Once you reach the $100 payout minimum, Google will pay you by either sending a check or electronically depositing the money into your verified bank account. Signing up for Adsense is very simple so I won’t be walking you through that. Click here to go to the Adsense website and get signed up.
To make sure you can get the most out of Adsense, I’m going to provide you with 6 tips to using Adsense.
Target A Specific Audience
When it comes to PPC advertising you must have a target audience. You can’t have a blog or website dedicated to a various amount of topics, you need to pick a specific crowd/product to promote. I would suggest picking a very specific niche instead of a general topic when you first start out. It’s important that you get to know your demographic and when it is a smaller group, it is easier to target what they need. Covering a very broad topic could lead to more new visitors, but they may be looking for a specific topic only. When you target a topic that is within that broad category, you can have traffic coming back and still attract new visitors. Once you get that niche or micro niche audience to return, you can then start to branch out into more topics, attracting more visitors.
Word Optimization in PPC Advertising
One of the basics of SEO (search engine optimization) is to bring attention to your keywords. Google Adsense and their indexing/ranking system likes when you properly use bold, H1, H2, and H3 tags correctly inside of your content. This helps Adsense find better advertisements targeted towards your topic, but also helps your content get indexed better AND faster.
Choosing The Right Keywords
Keyword targeting is an internet marketing basic. You have to pick your keywords intelligently so Adsense will choose the absolute best advertisements to show to your audience. Make sure your target the popular and highest searched for keywords because those keywords are the ones advertisers pay more for. For example, this blog is about internet marketing in general, but this article covers PPC advertising and Google’s Adsense program specifically. If someone searched about either of those two keywords you want to make sure the advertisements match up to that, increasing your click through rate.
Easy Navigation
Plain and simple. That’s how you want to keep your site. Make sure that your entire site is easy to navigate. You don’t want the browser, and money maker, get lost in the navigation process causing them to leave. If I feel that a website is sloppy it easily turns me off and makes me want to close the tab to find a better link. When it comes to PPC advertising you have to make everything very clear. If the navigation confuses the browser they may not even have a chance to look at the advertisements.
Advertisement Placement
The placement of the advertisement is very key. You do not want to put it somewhere that doesn’t make sense and confuses someone. You don’t want to plaster your entire page with advertisements (the max is 3 per page), but you still want them to be visible so they aren’t simply ignored. I’ve seen some websites that like to place a small square near the top of the content body, but sometimes I feel it could make a wall of text look confusing. It’s also been said the most important part of a paper is the introduction, so if the introduction is very compelling they might read passed the advertisement completely. This is something you will have to play around with to see what gets you the best results. Keep testing!
“Content is KING!”
This has been said many times in the internet marketing business. Your current and up-to-date content is VERY important. You do want new visitors, but you benefit just as equally from your returning visitors. Make sure your content will keep them coming back and clicking on your ads, not to mention better indexing and higher ranking over time.
Conclusion
Be sure to play around with all these tips and see what works best for you and your blog/website. You may find something works better in one blog rather than the other. Keep working at it and don’t give up if you have trouble starting out, it’s a learning process for almost every new niche.
