Evaluation of Keywords for an AdSense Oriented Website

Evaluation of Keywords for an AdSense Oriented Website By F. Terrence Markle The Google AdSense movement is gaining momentum every day. The driving force in the system is Google's AdWords ads. The AdSense program enables website owners to monetize their site and make additional income. Although Google has made it simple and easy to implement AdSense on your website, you have to spend your time and effort to develop a central theme and the supporting content-rich web pages for your website. You should develop your website around a specific keyword phrase that has a high potential to monetize your website through AdSense. The content and theme of your website should be centered around the keyword phrase that you are targeting. AdSense Factor -------------- Refer to my article on The AdSense Factor for an overview on monetizing your website with AdSense at: http://www.QuikSystems.com/Article/The-Adsense-Factor.htm Objective --------- The purpose of this report is to show you one method that I use to evaluate a keyword phrase relative to other keyword phrases for use in an AdSense oriented website. It is not intended to show you how to select a list of keyword themes for evaluation. That topic is covered adequately in many different other ebooks and reports. As a valuable resource, I use the following keyword research tool to help me locate extremely profitable keyword phrases waiting for AdSense content or niche products: http://www.QuikSystems.com/adsense/sn.htm Example ------- The following example illustrates the potential ranking of keyword- oriented websites based on keyword phrases previously selected by me (or you) for consideration as a keyword-oriented AdSense website. You must always remember there is no one best method to determine the potential profitability or viability of any specific keyword phrase when building a website geared towards AdSense monetization. It takes careful and methodical research followed by in-depth testing. The terms used in this example for a specific keyword phrase are: * Searches = number of searches made by search engine users for a specific keyword phrase in the previous month as determined by Overture at http://www.Overture.com * Top CPC = the current maximum bid (cost per click) by an advertiser on Overture for a specific keyword phrase * Competition Pages = the number of web pages indexed by Google when you perform a search for a specific keyword phrase on Google's search engine * Competitive Ratio = Competition Pages / Searches * Value Index = Competitive Ratio / Top CPC Keyword Phrase Searches Top Competition Comp Value CPC Pages Ratio Index -------------- -------- ----- ---------- ----- ----- hardwood floor 167,461 $3.02 4,010,000 23.9 7.9 bridal registry 102,568 $4.68 2,210,000 21.5 4.6 auto towing 109,893 $0.51 4,020,000 36.6 71.7 commodity broker 126,552 $2.71 1,890,000 14.9 5.5 hair replacement 105,996 $1.17 13,500,000 127.4 108.9 adjustable bed 100,295 $3.97 2,750,000 27.4 6.9 consolidate debt 105,651 $4.57 6,320,000 59.8 13.1 credit card debt 171,737 $5.00 17,800,000 103.6 20.7 health insurance quote 161,322 $3.00 13,600,000 84.3 28.1 criminal lawyer 165,156 $4.10 22,500,000 136.2 33.2 Note: Information obtained for this evaluation in November, 2005 can be found in the following excellent websites: * Overture: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/ (see Keyword Selector Tool and View Bids Tool) * NicheBOT: http://www.NicheBOT.com The guidelines to look for in building an AdSense-oriented keyword phrase website includes the following items: * You need the ability or resource to generate fresh quality content centered around the central theme of your website on a regular basis. * You want a relatively high amount of targeted traffic (visitors to your website) * You want to minimize when possible the number of competing websites * You would like to have your website optimized for high-paying AdSense ads Analysis and Evaluation ----------------------- First, let's assume that you have the ability and desire to generate fresh quality content for any of the keyword phrases on the list of potential keyword phrases under consideration. This can be done by writing your own articles, hiring someone to write the articles for you or using information generated by other individuals that can be freely utilized without copyright infringement. Second, I have purposely selected keyword phrases in my initial search that had searches exceeding 100,000 in the most recent month. There is no magic number to use as the minimum search amount. However, the probability decreases in being able to get a portion of the traffic to visit your website as the number of monthly searches decreases. Search engine optimization may play a vital role in generating traffic to your website. If you like, raise the number to 200,000 or higher and see what results you obtain. Keep in mind that at some point the number of available keyword phrases decrease as the minimum search volume requirement is raised. It is a matter of trial-and-error research to find your desired search number. Third, the competition tends to increase for the more popular keyword phrases. The popular keywords usually have a lot of AdSense- oriented web pages that are trying to "win the AdSense clicks" of a limited number of visitors searching for quality content on a specific keyword phrase. This competition is usually expressed as the "competitive ratio." It indicates the number of indexed web pages that exist for each search by a search engine user for a specific keyword phrase. The ratio increases as the competition for a keyword phrase increases assuming a steady level of visitor searches. Not every web page indexed for a specific keyword phrase is trying to get AdSense clicks. However, the non-AdSense oriented web pages are still competing for the search engine visitors. Fourth, the top bid price (or cost per click) paid by the individual CPC advertiser (i.e., the amount paid by the advertiser to the search engine for every click on their search engine ad) also tends to increase as the popularity of a keyword phrase increases. As an AdSense oriented website publisher, you want to maximize the CPC value of the AdSense ads that are displayed on your content theme website. As a side note, you would want to minimize (or optimize) your CPC value if you were searching for a keyword phrase centered around a product of service you wanted to advertise on Google AdWords. Using the above guidelines, I have classified the list of keyword phrases as follows (in order of preference as a keyword phrase to design an AdSense oriented website around): Keyword Phrase Top Competitive Value CPC Ratio Index Rank Rank Rank ---------------------- ---- ----------- ----- bridal registry 2 2 1 commodity broker 8 1 2 adjustable bed 5 4 3 hardwood floor 6 3 4 consolidate debt 3 6 5 credit card debt 1 5 6 health insurance quote 7 7 7 criminal lawyer 4 10 8 auto towing 10 5 9 hair replacement 9 9 10 >From this list of rankings for each keyword phrase, I would probably select "bridal registry" as my first choice and "commodity broker" as my second choice. In a similar manner, I would probably put "hair replacement" as my last choice and "auto towing" as the next to last choice. Everything boils down to how comfortable you personally feel about this ranking system or your own ranking system. I use a ranking system that tries to remove the subjective "guess work" and thereby focus on the objective benefits of each keyword phrase. I hope this methodology has value to you in your selection and utilization of keyword phrases in your own AdSense oriented websites. The primary objective is to select a keyword phrase that you can use to build a quality and content-rich monetized AdSense website. ======================= Resource Box ============================ Copyright