It’s hard not to believe in those who say you only have to target specific keywords in order to earn big with advertising. This idea is caused by our need for quick results, fast solutions which will lead to what we’re looking for, money. But it’s not that simple. Many who earn a lot are hard workers and do whatever it takes to earn what they currently earn.
If you stop targeting keywords and you take time to write about stuff you’re passionate about, you’re going to get better results from the process. Targeting keywords not only make your website look weird but it removes any reputation to it. People generally know when you’re just doing this for your personal profit and you don’t have interest in what you do. What you write in not personalised, the content is boring to read and redundant.
As blogging has become easier and easier, we (the internet community) are overflooded with blogs which are simple rehash of what is currently available on wide-known websites. What is sad though is that search engines aren’t yet able to remove every pages that contains the same stuff if it’s not unique in some way. They try the best they can, but people always find way to get around the restrictions.
You have to understand that keyword writing won’t give you the ads containing the targeted keywords. You might have bigger chances though by writing this kind of website, but it’s hard to get any clicks when the stuff you’re writing about doesn’t interest many people. Take those 5 examples:
5 top paying keywods of March 2006 (in CAN$)
$54.33 mesothelioma lawyers
$47.79 what is mesothelioma
$47.72 peritoneal mesothelioma
$47.25 consolidate loans
$47.16 refinancing mortgage
In April 2006 (results from overture.com
75468 mesothelioma lawyers
no results(less than 781) what is mesothelioma
5918 peritoneal mesothelioma
13360 consolidate loan
804328 mortgage refinancing
There are problems:
1) You have to compete with all the already available websites on the same subject. It’s hard to get good placement especially when there are lots of others who are actually having the same goal you have. You’d have to work really hard to get good placement in various search engines in order to get visitors going to your page.
2) The price those keywords should pay are actually interesting when you see them but Adsense won’t actually only show those ads. There’s actually not a lot of chances to get ads which show those high paying keywords and even less chances of them being clicked when they appear. This cut your chances in to a really low amount. Let say for example
1. The ad must appear (1 time out of X)
2. The user must click (1 time out of 2) (that’s being very generous, you should get a 1 out of 20-100)
It’s almost like playing lottery, sometimes you win something, often you lose.
3) It’s been reported by many that Adsense generally gives you a 0.5%-25% CTR. I’ll give you an example that will make every keyword writer happy:
Let say we have 100% of our ads showing a 50$ paying keywords. If we have 0.5% CTR and we have 10,000 visitors, this would mean 50 visitors would click on the 50$ paying keyword. Wow, that’s 2500$!
But in reality, it’s much more like you have ~<5% of chances to get 50$ paying keywords. That would then turn into
10,000 visitors * 0.05% of chances it’s a 50$ paying ads * 0.005% CTR * 50$ = 125$
Well, that’s still some good money. But I don’t think those ads are going to get you that 0.5% of CTR because it’s not the kind of stuff 1 person in 200 is looking for. It’s more likely to be 1 in 1000 or less. Well, maybe for the mesothelioma terms. The loan and mortgage terms would get more results, but your page/website would have to target this subject in order to attract people looking for this stuff and like I stated above, you’d need to be a reference in the domain. Any webmaster that has a bit of knowledge in the advertising field knows that mortgage and loans is quite filled already. If you want to go into that market, I wish you good luck and hope you have a lot of creativity in order to win over those who are already established.
On a final note I’d say you shouldn’t think about the keywords but more about the subject you’re writing about. Take something which passionnate you (everyone say it, so it must be true?) and stop thinking too much about the ads. If you have the right content that is interesting to your visitors, they are more likely to be interested in the stuff you’re talking about and then clicking on the ads that are related to the subject. Never forget that a visitor which is interested is a visitor which pays.
