Traffic

• You offer what others offer, thus not being unique
• You don’t have a good SE placement
• You have a good SE placement for “random” keywords, keywords that don’t (if ever) get searched
• You’re not frequently spidered, thus your website not so often updated -> No new content = No No
• You do not have enough content to attract the masses > More content = More visitor

CTR

• You have a too broad niche, thus the advertisement on the page doesn’t match the subject
• Your articles are not calling to action (enough)
• The subject you’re writing is not meant for advertisement, ex: cows
• You have bad ad placement (did you know that ads in the middle of the page don’t work as good as you thought?)
• The ad format is not good (ugly banner work best, they kill ad blindness)

How to improve? Well, do (or get) the opposite of every line and you should get a really better result.

With over 88 days of accumulated statistics using Adsense with almost the same template from beginning to end, I’ve got as a result an higher CTR and eCPM on the top ads banner. Those results lead me to think that ads which are in the center of the page SHOULD be poping out instead of being blended with the rest as users will not bother with following links. They are already reading an article, there’s no reason to follow the link until they have finished reading the article (or if the ads says to, but it’s forbidden in the Adwords TOS).

So give some separation to those banners (generally the 468×60 form) and maybe try various background and style. You might hit the jackpot soon or later.

That being said, I would also assume that the top ads does better because there’s nothing else around it (except the menu and the beginning of an article). I should add that when the page is fully loaded, the thing you see just above the center of the page is that top ads. Good placement isn’t it?

I’ll now be removing those ads like I mentionned and I’ll lead a 3 month test to verify if this modification will improve or not my incomes. If it doesn’t well, you know what’s next: some more testing.

You should test both these option:
1) Top ads only, try applying different color schemes, with border/without border, with image above, etc.
2) Top ads AND ads “blended” in the page, testing the “blended ad” with different color schemes, with border/without border, etc.

You can also do step one then step two. If after many trials you get a lower earning from having both ads showing compared to only showing the top ads, well, just use the top ads.

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.

From the results I’m currently talking about, I would say that the top banner outperforms the one in the middle of the page in a 6:1 ratio which is quite big. As new “techniques” develop to give those big format banners more power, Adsense users will be able to give to the advertiser more clients as people will be more interested in the ads. Google as been saying it’s inflating the advertisers cost and they are right, especially when the webmaster uses images which are really targeting too much the attention like using arrows pointing at the ads or even flashy images but if they are done well, in a manner that makes the web visitors interested in looking at the ads, then there should be nothing wrong about that.

Just think about the ads on TV. When you know it’s commercials time, you generally go get yourself something to eat or you start talking with others or you even change of channel. But what if the ads just blended with the rest and was interesting. The use of images to get interest from the web visitors is just a tactic to make sure they see the banners and don’t act as adblind like many of us call them.

And please, don’t tell me that by using image to get them to look at something, that it’s immoral. Come on, if they read the text on the link, they’ll click if they like, otherwise they won’t. It’s not like people click deliberately on those ads just for fun…

There’s not many tricks you can use to get better results for adsense. Best one is to make sure your ad blends with the background and that you don’t have borders. Use your ads with some common sense and you should get good results.

The article which Falco85 has written is in my opinion, a good reference for everyone who’s starting is own “money generating stuff” online. Many come with the wrong mindset expecting to get amazing results from their ads without doing any work. You have to take making money as a business if you want it to work like a business.

The important idea is that you NEED to create unique content. The content should not only be unique but it must be good. If you’re just writing junk, no one will ever read it. Who reads junk anyway? Search engine might, but they are getting quite good a removing all those crappy websites.

Take your time to write your articles, no need to rush. It’s not by making more “light content” that you’ll get a good amount of steady visitors. By giving enough information to your visitors and showing them you take the time to actually review your articles, check for references, your visitors will see you as a good reference and might spread the word.

Resume: give them what they are looking for and they’ll give you what you’re looking for.

First of all, you will need a radical change of mind. Yes, stop thinking to make money from your sites and to rank well in the search engines. Your first and only aim must be to build a quality site, with quality and original content. You will need to add real value to your pages, and make your visitors happy to have found you. When evaluating your pages, you must say to yourself “would I be happy to see such a page? would I find valuable and good information? would I come back here to find more?”. Thus, you must think to your visitors. Stick in your mind that you must rank well in your visitors head, and not in the search engine rankings.
This is my golden rule.

1. Do what other don’t

Being different from everyone else will give you a clear advantage. People always want what isn’t given by those who they actually take from. If you’re able to provide things from a different perspective, people will come to you so they can see that additional information you give. And since you’re the only one to do it, you get the most out of it.

2. Do the opposite of what others do

This aspect is pretty much similar the the first one but this is even more specific. If a company doesn’t offer certain things because they might cost a bit more, offer them. It might seem counter-intuitive, but doing so generally gives you better results. You must take risk in order to increase your popularity.

3. Think about new concept

Invent. Be innovative. People LOVE new things, especially if they are well done and useful. If you’re creating a website, try to impliment new features often so people can enjoy better their navigation. But don’t go to the extreme of making a huge amount of features where people will only get lost.

4. Everything can be sold but you need the right technique to do it

Take eBay as an example. You can fine many defective things, things that are not even worth selling and are getting bought. I don,t say eBay as the right technique to sell it, but as you can see, everything can be sold.

5. Show the avantages of you product

If you were to sell something, what would you generally do? Show it’s advantages. Show why it’s worth buying. Give examples that would apply to your targeted audience. Explain them how using your product would enhance their life. This is a basic in selling and everyone does it instinctively.

6. Use it’s flaw as booster

This is a marketing “secret”. If you were to sell something you knew had a bug/not working feature/flaw, you should use it as a kind of booster. It sounds weird but here how it goes: the flaw is so evident that everyone knows it so you use it as a weapon. What you’ll do is make some kind of joke out of it. If you were to sell a product with a weird name like Izukarkda which would be a car brand, you could use some sort of slogan: “The car you never remember/pronounce the name”.

7. Don’t focus only on selling, focus on your client’s need

If you’re focusing to much on selling, you’ll lose your selling. Trying to hard to get only lead to failure. If instead you focus on what your customer is looking for, you’ll be able to provide him exactly what is asking for and maybe even more. An happy customer is a returning customer.

8. Always improve your products

You have to make sure your product don’t come obsolete except if it’s what you want. If you can add new features which might interest new potentials clients, work on it. The better your product is, the bigger your chances are you’ll sell it.

9. Keep a log of those changes

Make sure you keep track of your changes. Being able to show your customers you’ve been working your way to this product can be a good example that your company is trustworthy. If you are developping a computer product (script, application), this is pretty useful especially if you fix many bugs in your product because it shows your customers you’re working hard on your product to make sure it’s the best it can be. But there’s a side effect to this: if you’re fixing dumb errors, this might show the client your not working really hard to make sure your releases are the best they could be. So do your best before releasing a product, make sure it’s ready for most of the job.

10. Wait for enough changes before selling out a new version

Don’t start selling out new versions of your script/applications or whatever you might be selling if you’ve just fixed a bug or added one additionnal feature. This will make the “old” customers angry because you weren’t able to provide them this feature when they bought it. If you’re coming with a list of 10-25 new features, that’s a good reason to release, but don’t be the guy who release a new version every new bug fixed.

Following these 10 aspects will give you good results. Try them out and see what work the most for you. If you think there are other aspects that are essentials, please mind posting them below.

First, you’ll want to have specific keywords to look for. If you have already a lot of content on your webpages, great, it gives us less work to do.

Second, load up the tool and search every keyword you though about. Every time you get a result from the pages, take the highest results and copy & paste them into notepad so you can have some sort of result in the end.

Here’s an example of what I took using 6 keywords (music, technology, science, humour, fun and computer).

29003444 music
5864934 music download
1203283 free music downloads
825310 music video
576684 music site myspace.com
500424 download online music
485258 free music
458825 yahoo music
395103 music code
381976 dowload music
342967 music lyric
303865 music video code
223494 aol music
214569 live music

327299 educational technology
247687 technology

271915 science fair project
229760 science project
220109 science

313332 humor
185656 college humor

136312 fun
114968 fun game

3392579 computer
1116201 notebook computer
285766 dell computer
277906 computer repair
204033 computer software
194565 computer game
185903 desktop computer
156206 computer tech support
143620 computer store
139197 computer desk
119258 computer training
111202 beach computer background
103046 computer electronics

As you can see, all the results I have are over 100 000, which is why I don’t have a huge list. You don’t want to lose your time on keywords that aren’t that searched because you won’t get anything from them.

Then, there are the results about the max bid I could get for each keyword

music : (Advertiser’s Max Bid: $2.00)
technology : (Advertiser’s Max Bid: $0.65)
science : (Advertiser’s Max Bid: $0.29)
humour : (Advertiser’s Max Bid: $0.10)
fun : (Advertiser’s Max Bid: $0.16)
computer : (Advertiser’s Max Bid: $1.51)

As you can see, the results are okay. Don’t expect making 15$ on each keyword, otherwise you’ll be dissapointed. Those keywords are paying good enough, but could we get any better price? Sure we can, we just need to do a bit more work.

For example, if we want to get more money for the keyword computer, we’ll check at our list of keywords (check at the top) and search for every keyword that is near computer (like computer notebook and Dell computer).

Here are the results for those two keywords

computer notebook : (Advertiser’s Max Bid: $3.02)
Dell computer : (Advertiser’s Max Bid: $1.66)

See. Using computer notebook instead of notebook we can get the double of our initial keyword bid. We just doubled our profit by two!

When you’re done with this keyword, you do the same for each and every keyword until your done. When it’s over, congratulate yourself. You’re okay for a certain period of time, because those keyword max bid might change later (6 months later for example) and you could get 10$ for computer instead of computer notebook. But until then, just check the cash flow in your account and send me some email about the article.