There is little doubt that the Make Money Online niche has a horrible reputation – so bad in fact that I would have nothing to do with it except that it does have a huge selection of keywords that draw traffic. It is an ideal Adsense niche for that reason alone but when coupled with the amount of advertisers available it is proving to be an exceptional Adsense niche. Compared to my best niche it doesn’t have the CPC but it has almost unlimited potential for adding keywords. When I say “adding keywords” I simply mean it has an unlimited number of terms that I can rank on top of the serp’s with. Take the 4 word term “Make Money Online with…”and add anything after the “with” and you have a new keyword phrase that can be targeted. The point is obvious – the more keywords you rank on top of the serp’s for the more search traffic you will get.
There are not a lot of niches that can grow with such ease. Most niches have a small core group of terms that garner traffic and once you have topped the serp’s for them you are done growing. They can be profitable but your profit is limited.
The MMO niche unfortunately attracts a lot of social bloggers who jump in with the intent of selling crap that will supposedly make people money. This is nothing new and the cumulative effect has been to give the entire niche a bad rep.The sad fact is that most people with an ounce of skepticism in them now assume that anyone claiming to make money online by any means other than selling advertising is full of bullshit. I can’t say I blame them. The vast majority of people who claim to make money online really only make a few dollars and it comes in haphazardly and usually at the expense of someone else without giving value in return. The odd affiliate sale for a product that is worthless would be the norm here.
I like to think I’m different from 99% of the people involved in the MMO niche. The big difference between me and everyone else isn’t my willingness to give out free information or my willingness to help others out. That is nothing more than my shtick – it is an easy way to produce content. The difference is that I use the niche to make money with Adsense and can do it with or without readers.
Having readers is a double edge sword – they provide me with great links (having subtly explained how to use anchored keywords in the links) and I try and repay their generosity by writing useful content that really will make them money if followed. On the other hand having readers curtails my ability to target keywords. Simply put – I have to optimize my posts for various terms without being too obvious. I would love to create a post a day on my beginners blog with titles like – “Make Money using Twitter”, “Make Money using Digg” and “Make Money using Stumbleupon” but my readership would quickly evaporate. It’s not that the posts would be accurate or useful – I just want to rank for those terms which would bring in yet more search traffic in order to increase my Adsense revenue. The same goes for writing posts about every piece of crap affiliate product that comes online. I don’t want to sell any of it – I just want the search traffic. I make money online by driving a lot of search traffic to my sites and there is no niche that I have found that has the potential for search traffic like the MMO niche.
If I could make more money without readers – why don’t I? There are a couple of reasons aside from links which I can rustle up on my own if need be. The biggest reason is that I like having readers – I have made lots of friends and we help each other out. I also haven’t given up on the idea of selling Advertising – at some point with a large enough base of readers I may be able to command enough Ad revenue that it will outperform Adsense. This has happened with my best earning site. I have 3 Corporate advertisers who pay me far more than I was earning with Adsense. The site has no readers per se but it sits atop the serp’s for a highly searched set of keywords and I outrank the 3 corporate giants for their own products. They couldn’t outrank me so they joined me. I should point out that it’s only in the MMO/Blogging/Social Media niches that you need RSS subscribers to attract advertisers – you just need to dominate the serp’s in any other niche.
Okay – aside from blabbering on and stuffing in a few keywords there is a point to this. Yesterday a fellow left a new comment on an old post on Court’s Internet Marketing blog. His name is Jim Green and he left the following comment;
What difference does it make? Attempting to make money from Google ads is an exercise in futility. You can write brilliant articles, get a high ranking and subsequently get a crap load of traffic to your site, but at the end of the day while you make have a crap load of impressions, your ad clicks will be low for two reasons: 1. Google’s algorithms are seriously flawed when it comes to matching relevant ads with content (Their Competitive Ad Filter is a joke). 2. People have simply stopped clicking on ads or banners.
Face it, the days of the average site owners making money from Adsense are over. The only one who is making any real money is Google and a modicum of business owners who have always used the internet to marketing their products or services. If any site owner or blogger tells you otherwise, ask them to show you a copy of their last tax return.
Jim’s impression of Adsense is by no means isolated – I see comments like this almost daily in one forum or another or in the comments on one blog or another. If you click on Court’s link and scroll down the comments you will get a pretty good idea of just how ill-informed people are when it comes to making money online. The post had to do with everyone’s favorite topic – “content vs links”. As usual all the comments come from bloggers and not internet marketers and with few exceptions they all feel that content is king because it will get you readers etc… I won’t rehash my feelings on this except to say that none of them mention “making money”. The goal of bloggers is obtaining readers. None ever seem to ask if readers will make you money – they simply assume that they will. This doesn’t bother me in the least as they can find out the hard way. Jim’s comment did bother me though and it did so because he actually addressed the issue of making money online.
It bothered me because he came to the conclusion that Adsense doesn’t work because of all the crap he has read and from his own trials. He is a skeptic and rightfully so. He added several more comments in response to others telling him he was wrong and the end result is that unless he sees a tax return he can’t be convinced that Adsense is a viable way to make money online. There is no chance in hell that I’ll be forwarding my tax return to anyone but he got me thinking that there has to be a way to convince a skeptic. Normally I wouldn’t care but I liked how Jim wrote and I read his blog posts and my impression was that he is a decent intelligent fellow that is simply fed up with all the crap he’s come into contact with. I don’t know who he has been reading but it took 2 seconds to see where his problems lie. His posts are fine but his site is a SEO nightmare as far as Adsense goes. His site is not unlike all of the sites my readers have ask me to review – sites that I glance at and sigh because it will take posts as long as this one to explain what is wrong with them. Stuff that I have written about at length in my blogs. Stuff that new readers don’t bother to read. (Hint! – it would be quicker to read Make Money for Beginners than wait for me to review your blog – the answers are all there)
In Jim’s case I want to point out a basic fact about Adsense. If you are optimizing your site for the benefit of readers you will not do well with Adsense. You have to optimize your site for a machine (Google) and always remember that a machine is stupid compared to a human brain. Everything about Jim’s site is written for a person to read and absorb. If you want to write for people that is fine but you can’t make money with Adsense doing so and this doesn’t mean that Adsense doesn’t work – it works fine but not if you think you can just create a blog and write whatever you feel like.
Jim’s blog makes the following errors.
- his url has no keyword in it. (He uses his name – nothing that the bot can asign ad relevancy too)
- his blog title is “Demystifying Internet Technology” – Drop “Demystifying” – no ad relevancy.
- he has 5 separate unrelated posts on his home page. Use only one post per page for Adsense unless all the posts target the same keyword.
- the Adsense bot uses your post titles as the main indicator of what ads it will display. Give it five unrelated post titles on a page and yes you will get irrelevant ads. The bot is a stupid machine – it doesn’t know what the home page is about. If Jim checks his post pages (only 1 post on each page) he will see that he has relevant ads on them.
- put the large adsense block in the money spot – top left corner above all the content. Who cares if it looks ugly or that nobody reads your blog – you want to make money with Adsense. If you want people reading your posts then forget about Adsense – you can’t have both. (okay – yes you can but not until you understand how optimize for Adsense while writing for readers)
- Jim’s content is perfect for Adsense – it’s relevant to the post titles and it is real and well written. It would pass a visual inspection with flying colours. (International spelling 
)
- last point and this applies to everyone. Quit trying to use adsense on your precious baby – you know the blog that means so much to you and conveys your true passions. If you want to make money then make money – if you want to be a writer be a writer. If you want to be a famous blogger be a famous blogger but quit assuming that you can make money with Adsense just doing what you feel like. I’d really like to make money just sitting on my ass sipping Rum in the sun but Google won’t give in and send me a check. The buggers actually require me to work for it.
It would do a lot of you some good to understand this – Google is not concerned about publishers. They are only concerned about giving value to their advertisers. They make money from them – not the publishers. They let anyone publish Adsense but if your site doesn’t provide quality traffic that converts for the advertiser they will pay you a cent a click. Jim mentioned in Court’s comments that Google isn’t very good at explaining how to make money with Adsense. He is correct – they don’t tell you how aside from a few vague references to producing quality sites. There is a reason for this – Adsense and SEO run hand in hand. If they told you how to optimize your site for Adsense they would also be giving away the farm on how to optimize your site for top serp rankings. They can’t tell people this or everyone would quickly be gaming the serp’s. I’m the one telling you how to do it.
Every thing I just mentioned about optimizing Jim’s site for Adsense will also optimize his site for the search engines. The last ingredient to making money with Adsense – and the hardest – is ranking on top of the serp’s for your keyword. It’s search traffic looking for your keyword that produces the best Adsense results. It’s a numbers game that can best be understood as follows;
1000 people find your site using stumbleupon – they see your post title “I Got Rich Overnight”. The stumblers read your post and find out you got rich overnight because your “Rich Uncle” left you a fortune. Most read and leave but a few click on an ad for a get rich quick product. They are just curious and don’t buy. The advertiser is pissed at G so G says – “don’t worry we will only charge you a few pennies for those visitors”.
1000 people find your site searching for “I Got Rich Overnight” in the serp’s. They read and most leave but a few click the get rich quick ads. They are more than just curious – they came online specifically looking to get rich quick. These people are far more likely to buy the advertisers product and a lot do. The Advertiser is happy and Google says “We will charge you a buck a click for those visitors”.
In either case Google doesn’t give a damn about you the publisher – you can provide the advertiser with traffic that converts or with traffic that doesn’t. If they convert Google gives you a better CPC. If your traffic is crap then you get pennies or worse – PSA’s (public service ads). If you really screw around you get banned.
Jim this post is for you and everyone else that thinks Adsense is crap. If you read my beginners blog and follow my advice you will make money using adsense. I’m not going to show you my tax return but I will ask you to use some common sense. My Make Money Online for Beginners blog is two years old, it has 2400 subscribers, it ranks on top of the serp’s for a lot of keywords. You can query a few to confirm – “how to make money”, “how to make money online”, “make money”, “make money online”, “making money online”, “earn money online”, “make money blogging” and dozens more if you are really bored. The point is my site gets traffic – a lot by most standards. So why don’t I sell anything? Why am I using Adsense on the site if it doesn’t make me any money? Why don’t I have ads above the fold? Does it seem logical to you that I would keep producing the kind of content I do and not be making money with Adsense? Would you continue for two years and not try and sell crap to a readership of 2400 people? There must be a logical reason as to why I only use Adsense.
You can click the link below to see my Adsense earnings for my beginners blog for the month of December – could I fake it – probably but I ain’t selling you anything except my integrity so keep that in mind. (Plus I am far to lazy to sit up all through New Year’s eve photoshopping a meaningless screenshot… and I don’t own Photoshop. lol )
Make Money for Beginners Adsense Earnings for December 2008 (removed)
Below is a comment Jim left for me on Court’s blog and the motivation for this post.
Grizzly-
I’m not disillusioned but rather skeptical. I only put those ads on my site to prove a point regarding Google’s flawed algorithms. I wrote Google’s support asking for advice regarding the mismatch of ads to my content only to receive a form response giving me a list of links leading to explanations that I found to be far to complex for the average person to comprehend. I find it absurd that people like yourself have to explain Google’s Adsense model as obviously their own explanations are convoluted and that their support team is inaccessible.
Being that I am not a know-it-all, I will pursue your advice and if it works or doesn’t work, I will write an article about it down the road. Until that time, in all due respect, I remain somewhat dubious as to your claim that you make a lot of money from off your ads. Although I don’t doubt your sincerity, I think you are selling a pipe dream to bloggers.
-Jim
I don’t sell pipe dreams – I don’t sell anything actually to people who bother to read my posts. I make money from Adsense and search traffic and I tell others how to do it. Jim you have found someone willing to show you how. I hope you give it a try – the right way and drop by one day and tell me how you’re doing.
Oh for those of you who wrote to ask me why I used link bait on my New Year’s post – I did it to find out if my site is fully optimized for my keyword. The post title was The Death of the USA. If my blog wasn’t fully optimized in Google’s eyes I would have got some gruesome ads from Adsense. As it turns out I got a mixture of gruesome and MMO ads – this means I still have work to do optimizing the site as a whole. If done right you can get away with off topic post titles and still retain your primary keyword ads. Sorry for the change of pace – I told you it’s hard trying to optimize for a machine while keeping your readers in the loop!
Cheers to all and have a great year!
Griz
That’s good that the last post didn’t give you all public service ads. I was wondering if it was some sort of test. Really nice of you to lay this out for Jim as well; people (that aren’t Jim) can really learn alot by reading this if they pay attention. The title of this post doesn’t seem very MMO friendly though; maybe there are enough Kws in the content to make up for it. Or maybe, your New Years Resolution is to chase social traffic!!
I’ve been making some changes to one of my sites recently and following some of your leads; one post per page, bold/italic keywords repeated often, and I’ve been trying to push more PR to my inner pages by nofollowing certain links. It seems to be helping as I had my first $10 day (AdSense) a week or so back. The site also sells affiliate stuff, and that seems to be increasing a bit as well.
Unfortunately, it won’t last as I fear the niche will die fairly shortly. What should I do? I tried an experiment a month or so back; putting up a few posts & getting some links on a new but related subject. EPC fell off pretty bad. SE visitors were showing up searching for the old content, but the index page was now new words. You can imagine the gruesome ads that showed.
Do I have any option at all, or do I just have to ditch the site completely next month? I know this is an awful comment as I haven’t shared TONS of details, but I’m sure if you had time to worry with it you could find me. =) If not, a quick “you’re screwed, give up” would be OK too.
Sorry for the book like comment; maybe I’ve spent too much time reading your sites. =)
Aaron,
Nope not chasing social traffic just seeing what my limits are for post titles. ie. can enough relevant keywords in the post over-ride the post titles regarding Adsense. As for your question you can morph from one keyword to a less relevant one as in multi-niche blogging but this should be done on a blog with a generic title and url. Frank’s Op-Tempo blog (check the Friendz of Griz page for a link) is a prime example of a site that targets a wide variety of keywords.
If you are just changing focus from one keyword to another then take adsense off the site until you build up authority for the new term. (or simply remove it from the allowed sites list in G while leaving the ads on site – this way you can see how G reacts to the changes without suffering smart pricing).
I wondered why the clicks on my guitar site went down from around .45 to anywhere between .4 and .6 cents. The ads are all relative. Maybe the clickers aren’t buying.
@ Ben – I have noticed a small drop in earnings, but I believe it may be because advertisers are paying less. If you see a large drop though it’s time to start digging for a reason.
Ben, it sounds as if you aren’t getting targeted traffic if the CPC has dropped that much. Your visitors aren’t converting as they did when G paid you the higher rate. Or you are smart priced due to another poor performing site?
Well laid out Griz, as always I learn a lot from and enjoy your posts very much.
Thanks Josh – didn’t think anyone would make it through this one! lol
Great post. I agree, the majority of MMO blogs are crap. They have a horrible reputation, yet they still seem to suck in newbs who think you can make fast money with a blog.
Like anything else, it’s hard work, there’s no magic bullet. I wish the people with dollar signs in theirs eyes, and the MMO bloggers that feed on that, would give their heads a shake.
Stevo it really is a crappy niche in so many ways. Unfortunately the big names push crap and everyone else follows suit. It doesn’t surprise me that people like Jim can’t get a straight answer.
Chock full of gold post once again griz, I have gone back and read all the posts from your 3 blogs I know about and it has been an amazing free education. I have 2 main blogs and the new rank gave me a 3 and a 4. Thanks for the information as it was a great help to me.
I look forward to reading anything you write. Including posts about the end of the US because it is instructional to try to figure out what you are doing.
wishing you a happy and prosperous New Year.
Thanks Andy – I do appreciate you folks putting up with my little experiments and the repetitive topics. I get so much email from new readers that I have to keep repeating the basics over and over. (easier than writing everybody back)
Damn Griz, that’s a great defense of AdSense. It’s true too…I have a website (listed above) for readers, and others for SE traffic alone. Adsense works for the SE traffic, but not the readership. I’ll bookmark this page so I can have a quick response if someone tells me that adsense won’t convert. Thanks!
Thanks Shaun – it appears that akismet has you in the spam folder. Contact them and ask to be removed.
Grizz , hers is the sad part, “Jim” or others like him will take this advice and refuse to apply it , or refute its accuracy. What you have said is not only accurate but has been applied by myself. Let me keep it real, I’m not quite in the Major Leagues of Adsense as you are, more like a AAA minor leaguer at this point. However I know for sure that day is on the horizon. I haven’t had a day job since June, Adsense has a large part in that situation. As for skeptics , they are born that way and seldom change, my thinking is Jim wont either
Don you are most likely right but I figure if I try and a few people succeed then it’s all good. I have learned that most don’t even get started and it irks me when they make blanket statements about something they really haven’t attempted properly. Always a pleasure seeing you drop in Don – hope all is well and have a great 09.
Im sure 09 will be fine, I have a question for you some day about “he has 5 separate unrelated posts on his home page. “Use only one post per page for Adsense unless all the posts target the same keyword”. Ill hook up with you one day, TTYL
Thanks, I’m almost sure that it’s not another site. I removed the ads from all of my sites for a day then put them back up on only that one site. All of the ads on all of the sites are relevant to the key words.
I just noticed something as I write. I recently added a new key word to the subheading and the ads are targeting that key word. That could be the problem. Should I try removing the new key word? Or maybe block those ads?
Ben – remove the keyword and give it 24 hours and see what happens with the CPC. If it doesn’t improve block all of your adsense ads for a full week and then un-block them. (Smart pricing can be removed in a few days to a week)
One of Jim’s other comments hinted at the source of his skepticism…
“all in the hope of enticing people to become devoted readers who will eventually click on their ads.”
It does seem as if he got disillusioned when this didn’t work out for him. I can’t say I blame him though. I would have probably felt the same way if I hadn’t found you and Vic with Court essentially making the introduction. Maybe he’ll figure out or maybe he won’t.
BTW, I’m trying out Google’s new Adsense for Domains. I setup 20 pre-owned, good keyword, domains with it. I figured I might try to make some money off of them rather than letting GoDaddy have all the cash while they’re sitting around waiting for me to get to them.
Frank – I noticed his comment as well. Another social blogger led down the garden path…
I’m busy with Adsense for Domains as well – not much luck yet but you really need the right keyword domains and a lot of parked sites for it to pay off – or so I understand. I guess we will find out as this isn’t something I have played with before.
Thanks, and a happy New Year to you, Grizz. I just read the post, and liked it as usual. I learn something from every post of yours. You’re really an inspiration to those of us who’re trying earn from Adsense.
A very happy new year to you as well Mrinal. I’m glad you find the posts useful and hope you’re making some headway with Adsense.
Thanks Griz,straightforward, simply explained, detailed, as always. As soon as you write it I’ll read it!
Hope you have a great 09
Thanks for that Jerry and a happy 09 to you as well. (we need a party hat smiley guy blowin’ one of those noisy doohickeys for this time of year – hey you code monkeys, make yourselves useful wouldya?
)
First Grizz I want to say your screen shot inspires me. I have been following you and Court for about a year and I am up to 100 dollars a month. AdSense does work…just not overnight. It is like anything else, it takes time, planning and the ability to execute. I can vouch for your teaching…it produces results.
I have seen posts like this before (Jim’s that is). It was actually a similar post in my early days when I was exploring the idea of MMO that led me to Vic’s site. Needless to say, he was less cordial with the gent that recommended tossing AdSense aside.
Thanks for the article and Happy New Year.
Hey Larry,
Vic? Less cordial?
I can’t imagine that…
Thanks Larry, I hope you can increase those earnings substantially this year – you have the right attitude, it takes time but it does work and it does grow with a little effort. All the best in 09!
Thanks Griz,
I always pick up something new.
Was just thinking if that Russian guy is right we’ll be neighbors. Also, noticed a few PR jumps this weekend.
Happy New Year!
Hi Norm – yup the old Google PR update is upon us again. I have noticed that people are getting much less excited about it these days. I don’t really pay much attention to it as PR really has no effect on serp rankings – it could if you could get high PR inbound links that had keyword authority for your term but this is rare. Lots of low PR links using your anchor is just as effective for ranking. Another thing is that the PR update isn’t a serp ranking update. We had the serp update a month or so ago and that’s the one that gets everyone a bit antsy.
As for the Russian Nostradamus… lol.
As always, reading your posts are like eating candy Grizz. So much fun my teeth hurt afterwards. I should be doing some experiments of my own on adsense, that’s a good idea testing the title importance.
Looks like enough KW’s will override a generic title.
Brawnydt,
It appears to work but I did go long on the post and the site is pretty clearly defined for the keyword – I was actually surprised the last post title pulled the gruesome ads and think the short post was the reason. I have done this before with mixed results but it seems that a well tailored loooong post can manipulate the ads in spite of the other on page SEO factors. I was able to get “Payday Loan” ads on my other blog by writing enough posts and targeting the keywords. I make it sound like I test a lot because I’m studious but the truth is I just get curious about things and I “just have to know how things work”. I left a lot of watches in pieces around the house growing up. lol.
Hi Griz,
I know this is a no-follow blog but any link is a good link, right? Hope you don’t mind. I have been reading your stuff long enough that when I saw the title of the post and read the first paragraph, I pretty much knew what you were going to say. That is because you have said it all before on your other blog about making money online for beginners. I am a beginner in this crazy make money online world I now call home. You are one of the sunshines in the middle of a dark cloudy sky full of scamming internet marketers who pretend to be authorities and are not but teach and take the new person’s money anyway.
Ya know if I had one site making that much money I would not have to have too many other sites. Thanks for sharing your income from Adsense and I believe you when you say those are the real numbers. But I am not a skeptic, so what do I know?
I have noticed that since Vic came on the scene and has been teaching many people about how to make money online, he often has said that it is a lot of work, that we cannot make money online overnight. That is one of the things that signaled to me that he might be telling the truth about how to make money online. Now a year later this idea is being used to draw in new people by new scammers. The new make money online scammers are now all saying that making money online is a lot of work. So this phrase has become just another phrase in the toolbox of scammers.
You know something? I hate blogs. I really really hate blogs. The blog has got to be the absolute worse form of online literature for anybody who is interested in actually teaching anything to anybody. The only way I could ever learn anything from a blog would be to print out the whole damn thing, cut and paste it with scissors and glue into some organized fashion, and make an index for it. Hell bells, that is called a book, isn’t it!
I am starting to make money online on a daily basis. I have not tried Adsense yet, but I see it in my future. Just not sure when. A few years down the road when I have a large enough knowledge base to actually help others, I will look forward to paying it forward. I am not sure what form that help will take, but I can tell you one thing. I am not going to use a BLOG!!
Thanks for the anchored link and good luck to all of us in 2009 as we try to make even more money online.
V-Smile
I just gotta say – nobody gets better comments than I do! You made me laugh because I kinda hate blogs too – at least as a learning tool. I like books – I’m a dinosaur!
The only problem with just having 1 blog making a decent income is that you could get dependent on it and suddenly find it drop in the rankings and poof – your income gone in a flash. You have to build more than 1 viable site – in fact you never stop building them.
I think you might want to give Video a go if Blogs are out of the question. Or invent the “next” model for the internet. (but tell me first so I can market it!)
Thanks for the great comment and you forgot to leave a name V.
Hi Griz, I just started reading your stuff a couple of days ago. Are you able to offer any mentoring to start my own blog? I have this website that sells a 2 strategy course on Forex trading for a fee. How do I start a blog and combine it with the website that I have up and running now? Eventually I would like to offer a forex trading signal service for a monthly fee.
I want financial and time freedom. I want to make money online exactly how you are doing it. Please help.
Hi Roddy,
I’m afraid I don’t have time for mentoring but I highly recommend Courtney Tuttle for personal tutoring.
You can find him with this link.
Coaching with Court and Mark
Hey Griz,
You hinted at the fact that you can’t just blatantly post your keywords in your post titles as they would easily give away all the terms you target.
That you also write novel posts so that you can pepper your keywords through out the post and have good density.
So, if I am understanding correctly, you make the post, adequately keyword stuff, then get anchored links to the post for the keywords you want, which are in the post….
And then you get ranked high in the serps for that anchored keyword, which may not be in the post title, but in the post content?
Correct?
Matt
Hi Matt,
It’s not so much that I am trying to hide the keywords from my readers – I just don’t want to annoy you with strange posts. Remember my Make Money Online in Canada post? That’s an example of what I mean – I targeted the keyword in the title but the post really had nothing to do with making money specifically in Canada.
As for the rest of the question – yup – I add keywords to the post content and then rustle up anchored links for those terms in order to rank them in the serp’s.
Oh yeah,
One more thing…you mention that lots of low PR anchored links can also get you to rank well…
Does this relate more specifically to low competition longer tail keywords?
Just asking because in other posts you had mentioned that your ablilty to rank this site so well in such short time had to do with a handful of high quality links, as opposed to a large amount of crappy links.
Thanks
Matt
Matt – low PR “anchored” links are not crappy – they are high quality links, just not as high quality as high PR anchored links. Crappy links are non relevant ones using your name/url/blog title etc contained in comments/link directories etc.
I simply mean that there are no PR8 sites to give me a link that have keyword authority for MMO. In that case I can still rank well with lots of PR3 links that have authority.
Thanks Grizz, on point as always. You can’t ever convince true skeptics, I think for many of them it’s an excuse to fail, it’s easier to ask someone for proof and then say AHA! see they are liars when they don’t provide their personal information, than to test it on their own. Too bad, those people will never see much true success in any biz.
JR
So true JR. There is no shortage of excuses when it comes to failing.
Another awesome post, Griz. Thanks for the continuing education. I must admit, I’ve had some of the same concerns as Jim at times. However, I made a decision a few months back to follow your advice and it seems to be working, slowly but surely, across my various blogs. I think I’m doing a fairly good job following your suggestions (with the exception of “long, rambling posts”
I have to work on that).
By the way, thanks for the tip regarding RT’s ConnectContent….it is working out very well, as is your Niche Support resource.
Best to you,
Scott
Scott you said the magic words – “slowly but surely”. There are still a lot of people who think that they can “get rich” overnight. It just doesn’t work that way.
Happy New Year Grizz,
I really do like money shots. It’s inspiring. I wish I could say I learned alot and a shining light came down and the secret was provided from this post. All I can say is I really do learn from repitition.
In 2008 I learned
1) What SEO is
2) The importance of keywords
3) The importance of links
4) The importance of relevant content with links
5) How to build your own network of friends by offering useful information and keyword links.
6) How to optimize a site
7) Test your sites and personal ideas by trying something new.
8) Keyword Research
9) How to use software ( SEO Elite)
10) Funneling traffic( I love this)
11) Using different platforms for setting up sites ( most time consuming since I was new to blogging)
12) This is work!
In 2009.. If I can only remember your teachings and apply them.
Dennis… lol.
Great recap – I’ll have to bookmark this now so I remember what I’m doing!
Grizz,
Wish You A Happy and Healthy New Year
I am like a fly on wall just try to assimilate everything you write on make money niche.
Happy new year to you as well Roger and all the best in 09′
Hey Griz, how long do you think it will take to rank for the keyword “Jim”? Haha, I really hope Jim reads this. Jim, if you read this, don’t be discouraged, a lot of people spent years trying to make money online from social blogging, and then came across a few individuals that actually know their stuff.
Griz, seriously man, stop trying to be so nice and go play some golf, its friggin new years.
Ghuraba, I would love to be golfing but it’s 31 below zero and I keep losing my golf balls in the snow!
I don’t know if I believe this post, I am way too skeptical!
Ha ha just kidding.
Another awesome post Griz! They always are!
I’ve been making money with Adsense for a long time so I definitely know it can be done.
One question though…
My main site has high rankings for hundreds of competitive keyword phrases related to home business, work at home, make money online, home based business, etc…
Almost all the traffic is from Google searchers, and the Adsense ads are relevant to my keywords. However, I am only getting maybe 30 cents per click. It used to be much higher.
Any reasons come to mind why this might be happening?
Oh and happy new year!!!
Trent,
Your site targets the same keywords as me and unfortunately 50 cent clicks are about as good as you get. I get a lot of 30 cent clicks on and around days I post which leads me to think some of the social traffic is clicking and lowering the CPC. A week after a post my CPC is back up to 50 cents. There are occasions when I break a buck a click but it’s short lived – I assume it’s the result of a noob Adwords user who overbids and loses a fortune in short order. PPC can be devastating to new users but a bonus to publishers.
I have also seen a slight drop in CPC over the past two months that could be a result of the economy – the big advertisers in this niche are seeing less competition at the moment and are able to bid lower. Overall it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be but all my Adsense sites are definitely down from a few months ago.
My solution – just keep adding more keywords – not that I needed to tell you.
I’ve also notice a drop in some niches while seeing an increase in others and that’s with both eBay/EPN and Adsense niches. I guess in the case of Adsense it has to do with bidding on particular keywords.
For example, I had one financial blog that ranks well for a few good long tail terms suddenly go from 30 cent clicks to $2.50 clicks for about a week. Unfortunately, now it’s back to normal. I guess it’s like you say, some PPC noob was blowing a wad of cash on that keyword. But, it was a nice boost to my Adsense earnings for December.
Thanks Frank – I get a few surprises like that as well, none more so than my Adsense for feeds. Most clicks are paying 1-2 bucks (why so much higher compared to the content ads in MMO, I haven’t a clue) but at least once a week I get an $8 click and the grand daddy of them all – a $39 click one day a few weeks ago. I haven’t got the slightest idea why. I would like some more of those though!
Thanks Griz, I appreciate it!
Well, Griz, seems I stirred a sleeping giant or two and in the process have been mislabeled being oddly lambasted by someone who calls himself “Boss”. I think that perhaps you as well a couple of others here are confusing the term skeptic with cynic. As a skeptic, I’m doubtful, but still open-minded and logical enough to consider new input and ideas. Like many I’m seeking evidence through the process of asking questions. That’s my nature and it serves me well. Of course, I did not expect you, or anyone else for that matter, to actually provide a tax return. That statement was more for effect. As you implied in your article, “How to convince a skeptic”, it is next to impossible to prove one’s success with Adsense beyond that of taking them at their word or in this case following good advice and applying it.
Clearly, if I were a cynic, then the mere existence of doubt would be immediate cause for labeling an entire concept, like Adsense, as erroneous. I accept the fact that people make money with it, but I still think that it is absurd that someone like yourself has to map it out rather as opposed to getting the same information from Google’s Adsense support team. When I delved into their convoluted explanations that invariably pass me from link to link to link to link,I eventually reached a point where my eyes begin to glaze over. As I said to you, on Tuttle’s site, I am willing to read and take your advice, which I realize now may be more applicable on a completely different kind of blog, domain name and title rather than the one I have now.
Regarding my domain name and blog title, I chose both because I simply could not come up anything that would be exemplary of the intent of my blog and at the same time attempt to make a modicum amount money with it too. Obviously, my priorities lies with the former.
Through all this, I’ve learned quite a lot from you as well as others here and that was ultimately my goal, although admittedly in doing so I went about it like a bull in a china shop. Maybe if I make enough noise, my name will become popular for all the wrong reasons… Just kidding.
Jim, I am glad you dropped in and have taken everything in the spirit intended. Most of us are not much different than you – we all have had our fill of the nonsense and scams. From your comments I sensed that you might appreciate our little community of people willing to help each other out.
I have never had much use for Google talking heads like Matt Cutts or the Adsense team. All too often they provide misleading or outright false info (think duplicate content) as their objectives are far different from mine. I want to dominate the serp’s and they want to keep people from being able to do so (and rightly so). They talk about writing for readers and insinuate that this will eventually get you a good ranking. Never will they tell the truth – backlinks get you good rankings and nothing else really matters. To admit this is to invite everyone to game them. As I mentioned – Adsense optimization is identical to serp optimization and for that reason they have not provided much help for people who want to improve their Adsense performance.
Ironically, they do give out tips if you are an Adwords user – tips that apply just as well for Adsense publishers. If you want to pay less with PPC they mention that your landing page should be highly targeted for the ads (keywords) you bid on. Failure to do so means a much higher cost per click. The same applies to the publisher of those ads but in reverse – a poorly targeted site in relation to the ads will get you low CPC.
Ultimately the trick to Adsense comes down to a fairly simple formula – highly targeted ads plus highly targeted traffic earns the most money. This is why you must get search traffic and not social traffic if using adsense and the SE traffic has to be finding you for the same keywords that trigger your Adsense ads. Sounds more complex than it is – the real battle is dominating the serp’s so that you maximize the targeted traffic.
If you stick around and join us (and I hope you do) you will find that we aren’t the biggest fans of social media or the A-List that promotes it. It has it’s uses but making money with it is not one of them.
In any event it’s a pleasure to meet you Jim and as well as you write and convey yourself you should do fine online whether you pursue Adsense or not. All the best to you in 09′.
Thanks Griz. I appreciate your response and explanations.
I will stay clued into your site’s articles, but I gotta tell ya, when it comes to all this vernacular (I’ve already had to look up some terms you used in your response such as backlink and serp) it appears that I have a thin layer of impenetrable kevlar around my skull, but then that’s the reason for my blog. If I understand things, then I can explain it in simple terms to others.
I’ll do my best to absorb this latest information you’ve generously offered. Obviously, I have my work cut out for me.
And, I agree about social media. I could give two Shiites about it.
Regards, Jim
Jim, It’s entirely possible to implement some of the things you need to do without starting over on a new site from scratch. Not that having more than one site is a bad thing. In fact, it’s good to diversify, but simply changing the title tags of your blog will do wonders. You can also get your keyword in the URL by having it be part of the permalink URL. That won’t help with raw links to the homepage, but it will help for all single posts and pages.
I can tell you that having your keyword in the URL is a BIG help, but it’s not impossible to rank well without it there. The biggest factor of all is the links you get pointing to your site, and what the anchor text of those links are. The anchor text is the text of the clickable link. For example, Grizz points a link to Court and the anchor text is “Internet Marketing.” That helps Court rank for the term Internet Marketing. You’ll note that his URL is courtneytuttle.com, no keyword in the URL. So, with a little work, you can most certainly leverage the assets that you already have.
Fiar-
Thanks for your sound advice. I will most certainly follow it. Along with your and Griz’s suggestions, I feel that I have a better chance at jockeying my blog into more of a viable position for at least a shot a some modicum of revenue.
Thanks again. I really do appreciate your input.
Thanks For the Clarification Griz.
One more question…Vic really likes the use of commenting on high pr related blog posts, with anchored text. Over at the Tuttle camp, they feel that they are a poor use of time and leverage, and I see that you say they are crappy too.
I know that each does things differently, just wondering what your thoughts are that Vic would push them hard if they are not too valuable.
Matt,
It’s not a case of one kind of link or the other – you need both crappy and quality links to keep things natural. If you had nothing but perfectly anchored links coming from relevant high or low PR sites the flags will go up. Everyone has a “click here” or “home” backlink and lots of links using your name or URL. Not having them would be a bit suspect.
Also I say that comment links are crappy only in the sense that they don’t provide the same juice as an “in-post” anchored text link does. If you can get do-follow comments using your anchor on decent PR pages without hordes of other comments diluting the juice by all means get them. In fact get as many links of any quality that you can… backlinks, backlinks and backlinks!
Thanks..I’ll shut up now, and go get some links!
Grizz,
It has been nice to have you sum up all your 2-3 years of posts in the past couple months. Saves time from having to read so much, even though I do enjoy your writing style. Your summaries have provided me more time to build links
I am far from getting ready to quit my day job, but I have followed much of your advice and these past two months have been my best two months of adsense yet.
Here’s to a great 2009 for you and all your readers.
Medic
Hi Griz,
Happy New Year! Nice (lengthy) post as always and a few more keywords added to the collection. Now I have to get back to work on my agricultural stuff…
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Hi Griz,
Thanks so much for your websites – I haven’t been blogging for very long so have a lot to learn. I’m lucky that I stumbled onto your site (and Court’s) early on, so I never got sucked into all those “get rich quick” scams that so many people got tangled up with! 2009 is the year to really push my blogs and optimize them so that they start making some serious money. Unfortunately I’m having to completely rebuild my main blog because something broke and I no longer had any admin control over it. But I’m excited about this area and glad to have you as a resource!
The one thing I’ve noticed about all of you experts’ advice is that its geared toward people who want to become MMO experts themselves. I have no interest in doing that since the field is pretty well filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly already! I want to sell stuff and am really into affiliate marketing. This field has been hammered by G in the last year and its been tough going for many affiliate marketers.
I have trouble figuring out how many of the MMO principles you talk about apply to overcoming the hurdles that affiliate marketers face. I understand the parts about SEO optimization etc but wonder if you could comment on some of the additional pitfalls and challenges in niche affiliate marketing. Is it worth pursuing, or has G’s crazy PR jiggling made this a lost cause?
Also, I’m really curious about why the so-called “thin affiliate” is such a no-no. I’m the kind of person who when I want to buy something, I want to go to a site with lots of choices and good prices. I don’t care if the site offers a virtual campfire for all of us buyers to sit around and commune about what a cool thing it is to be buying that new dishwasher. But Google seems to think I SHOULD want to do this, and it makes no sense to me. Maybe it’s important in some areas (like hobby items) but I can’t figure out why EVERY site needs this fluff in order to gain PR. Do you think this makes sense??
Anyway, thanks for all the great info!
Hi Alice – sorry for the delay.
Don’t let the MMO niche confuse you – I am really teaching basic SEO that applies to every niche. I just happen to use MMO as my subject matter but my system will work for Affiliate sales as well as Adsense and even Lead Generation. Everything you do online needs targeted traffic to succeed and SEO will get you the targeted traffic.
As for Affiliate Marketing – one word of advice. Stay clear of anything that attracts other bloggers. You want niches that are searched by civilians, the kind of people who haven’t a clue what an affiliate niche is. As for thin affiliate sites – don’t get caught up in all the “experts” advice as every niche is different and this is why I tell people to concentrate on relevant content and forget the notion of “quality content”. I am working on a post to explain this further but in general just provide the type of content that you see on the top ranked sites in whatever niche you select. Some niches require lots of posts – some don’t require any article posts and consist of nothing more than aggregated lists. See my post…
Credit Cards Make Money Online to get an idea of what I mean by this.
If you want to sell dishwashers then emulate what the sites on top of that niche are doing. If they use blogs – use blogs. If they use static websites – use static websites. The sites that Google chooses to rank on top of the serp’s have the type of content G deems relevant for that niche so just copy them as far as “type” of content goes. And then get more links than them and that’s it. See – simple!
Jim, Glad you responded and started a dialog with Griz to talk this thing out. I agree that AdSense support is almost worthless. I used to read their forums just for laughs.
Griz, I have a couple of “both” blogs that require quality content for the benefit of the reader but luckily the main key words fit in snugly with any post that I write so the ads are consistently relevant. They get around 80% SE (Google) traffic.
Jim and Griz, one of the sites mentioned above was started last June. I found out today that it went from zilch PR to PR3 today. I can’t think of anyone else to credit for this but myself. Just kidding. The truth is that it would still be PR nothing if I had not read Griz, Court and Terry’s articles. Now I’ve gotta work on getting some serious back links.
Ben-
Thanks. I’m glad too. Sometimes I guess it pays to go back to square one, especially for newbies like me. Most of you guys appear to be veterans in the Adsnese game and clearly I am out of my league (for now).
I had to look up PR and PR3. I had never heard of that ranking. Looks like congratulations are in order for you.
You and others here might find this article: https://www.jimwgreen.com/2008/05/partnerships.html, interesting. I wrote it several months ago and it pertains to gaming Google. As I stated in the article, we (a business partner and myself) didn’t do the dirty deed, but it was fun creating the concept, applying it in a very cursory manner, very tempting to want to follow through with, and above all showed Google’s vulnerability. Considering so much time has elapsed (over a year), I think it is safe to say that the effectiveness of our model is no longer feasible.
Grizz: I just found you, Vic, and Court last week via Frank on a Warrior Forum discussion, and it’s the best damn Christmas present I could have had. Cost of my foolish attempts so far to make money with social blogging: one SiteBuildIt subscription ($299 but I’m getting a refund for my remaining seven months), one series of MMO eBooks from Chris Rempel for $75 (some of it actually useful, but way overpriced), six months wasted in barking up the wrong tree, and more frustration than I can possibly add up.
Advice from four guys who have done the SEO thing long enough to know what works and what doesn’t: priceless.
I’ve taught English for 20 years and it’s funny to hear you and Frank talk about not writing overly well so people will click on your ads instead. You guys are actually very good writers. There’s something about all those keywords and the long, long posts that’s hypnotic…or maybe I’m just easily mesmerized.
I have a few mantras for those of us who have gotten out of the IM matrix and have found our way to the art of SEO (and it IS an art and takes a while to learn):
“Readers don’t click; clickers don’t read.”
and
“Content is the court jester.”
Thanks for all that you do.
-Lorecee
Lorecee – I’m upset. I wish I had coined that phrase…
“Readers don’t click; clickers don’t read.”
Love it!
I usually optimise my site ,for two types of keyword, one that brings in quality clicking & (buying)traffic and another which is optimised only onpage for adsense(usually a keyword which has high CPC),i make sure they are semantically related and that they are optimised on two different articles , and then make sure they have both crap unhelping content ,then i link my first (traffic)keyword article to my second (adsense) keyword article.it brings me huge amounts of traffic + high CPC + high CTR ,which means big big cash…
wat r ur thoughts grizz….
am i brilliant or what
Marco – do you mean you are feeding the adsense site with PPC traffic from the other site? Great if it works but a bit dangerous if not optimized well (both sites). Many try this only to find they spend more buying the traffic than they get from the Adsense. I can work though if done right and well done if you are pulling it off.
Hey Grizz, I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to reply to all of the comments. You always give excellent feedback, and I learn as much from the comments as I do from the post.
I also got on board with contentconnect. You were right, RT did a great job setting it up. I think it is going to provide most excellent ROI.
I’m still mostly on the beginners site but the post title intrigued me. Like many, I’m new to the Court, Griz and Vic show. I don’t mind (too much) that I may have wasted a few hundred bucks on stuff I may never use again. It was the cost of finding these sites.
Buddy
Buddy – I wish I had only wasted a few hundred bucks figuring this stuff out! lol.
Have any of you had any experience with Proximic’s ads program?
Sorry Jim – I’m not familiar with them at all.
All, I know there are many AdSense vets on here. I have a question about smart-pricing. I know that I am currently being smart-priced. My question is this…is this something I can wait out and continue to tolerate the .05 and .10 clicks? What is the downside to letting it run its course as opposed to just shutting the ads off?
Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give.
LarryG-
You may be waiting a long time to escape the smart pricing. You would have to get your CTR & advertiser conversion up enough for the algorithm to reconsider your site. This could take a VERY long time if you just wait it out.
You might be better off removing the ads (or removing the site from your allowed) list instead. Once the EPC comes back up on your other sites, start adding some blocks in a little at a time.
Thanks Aaron – good advice!
Larry – definitely remove the ads. You won’t get clear of smart pricing until all ads are removed, wait a week and then start the long tedious task of adding one site at a time to find out where the problem lies.
Thanks Aaron and Grizz. I took the advice and guessed which site was causing the problem. I removed it and the value per click shot back up on my other sites. I played with the add layout on the site in question and it must have upset the Google gods. DOH! Guess I will give it a week and then add it back in and see what happens.
Thanks again
Griz-
Regarding your statement: “the Adsense bot uses your post titles as the main indicator of what ads it will display. Give it five unrelated post titles on a page and yes you will get irrelevant ads. The bot is a stupid machine – it doesn’t know what the home page is about. If Jim checks his post pages (only 1 post on each page) he will see that he has relevant ads on them.”
I’m getting just the opposite results. On my homepage (with the five unrelated post titles), my ads perfectly match my present post, but when I go to an individual post page, my ads are not relevant. Now I’m really confused.
Hi Jim,
For the best Adsense optimization and ads delivery use one single post per page and work your keywords. Include your main keyword that is targeting those ads of the niche you are working in your post title. Sprinkle some variations of those keywords through your content. This way you should get relevant ads.
As Griz mentioned, Adsense optimization equals SEO – so please get yourself a cup of tea and read Griz posts on beginners blog regarding on page optimization.
Cheers
Ion
Ion-
Thanks for the advice. As I mentioned previous to your comment, I did as Griz (and you) suggested. I reformatted my template so that there is only one post per page. The newest post is effectively returned relevant ads, as it was doing prior to reformatting, but if I click on the older posts link at the bottom, the next post that comes up is returning ads they couldn’t be more irrelevant.
If I go back to formatting two or more posts per page and click on any of them, so that they show up by themselves on a new page, I get relevant ads. Now I’m really confused.
I hope that makes sense the way I explained it.
-Jim
Hi Jim,
Sorry for the delay – I’ve been in transit trying to get home from the holidays.
Give the site a day or two for the bots to re-crawl as you are making changes. Your site probably doesn’t get visited that often by the little buggers and there can be a delay in updating the new/changed posts. Stick to one post per page and if things haven’t straightened out regarding relevant ads let me know.
I haven’t had time to read all the new comments but I think you mentioned my use of tech terms on this blog – sorry about that. I started this site to discuss stuff for advanced users. The beginners blog is written with explanations of all the terms you may find confusing here – take a little time and read through the other blog – the adsense posts in the sidebar if nothing else. They should get you up to speed on the technical jargon.
Glad you are giving things a go – just be patient and you will see things come together fairly quick. You won’t make a lot with adsense until you build up your traffic but you should see an improvement on what each click pays in short order. (provided you can get search traffic of course.)
Let me know in a few days if the ads are still goofy.
Griz
Thanks Ion
No problem, it’s my pleasure, I learned it all from you Griz
Ion
Griz-
Thanks for the response. I can only imagine how inundated you are with request and your need to reply.
It wasn’t my intention to chastise you, or anyone for that matter, for using the terminology. I look up everything I read in that regard. I’ve no complaints about that. That’s how I learn. And I have been reading your site beginners voraciously.
I’ll keep the single post up for a while for the sake of the crawlers.
-Jim
Good stuff Jim – the bots can take some time to crawl all your posts – often only the home page gets a timely visit especially with new sites. A tip – add links from each home page post to relevant older posts/pages to entice the bots to dig deeper each visit. (just one or two links per post – don’t over due it
)
Will do. Sounds like excellent advice.
Thanks,
JIm
Jim,
I’ve just added your blog to the OpTempo randomly rotating blogroll using the keyword term “Internet Technology”. That should help send the Googlebot your way.
Frank, I have idea what that is (I’ll look it up), but thank you. I appreciate it.
-Jim
Hi Griz
You make an interesting point about the MMO niche being infinitely expandable with a nice suffix to the basic phrase. The thing I’m wondering right now (given the importance of post titles) is….how much money is in the phrase “how to convince a skeptic”
lol
Lol… none what so ever – but I did manage to keep my MMO ads appearing in spite of the title. (see my reasoning earlier in the comments…)
lol…well that’s cool about the ads but damn! there I thought maybe there was a nice long tail phrase worth something….of course you now rank number 1 in my data centre for how to convince a skeptic how to make money online.
Don’t get confused Underdogblogger.
Just because Grizzly says there isn’t any money in “how to convince a skeptic”, don’t think that there aren’t any longtails in his post that don’t make money.
You always have good information on your blog. However, I do understand people’s frustration with adsense. I think there are still problems to using adsense that can arise, even if you do all of the things that you listed.
Here’s an example.
See This Blog Post
Now out of the 5 ads on the left of this blog post, the first ad is for a “personal injury lawyer”, 3 other ads are for “brain injury lawyers” and 1 other ad is just for “brain damage” info (from my datacenter perspective at least). None of the ads are currently for “brain injury rehabilitation”. So the ads are fairly off target for this post. I didn’t mention “lawyers” at all in this post nor in my blog, but adsense plasters the page with lawyer ads. Also google doesn’t even display any text link ads at the top of this post for some reason as well. It just has a “View ads about” search option button.
I’ve played around with the title of the post, doing other terms like “rehab” instead of rehabilitation and “TBI”, “traumatic brain injury”, “traumatic brain damage”, “brain damage” etc. I’ve also changed the keyword density in the blog post to see the resulting effect. I got it to the point where the adsense on the left showed one or two “TBI rehab” links out of 5. Now, though, it is currently not showing any “brain injury rehab” links so for some reason, so it seems to be somewhat variable. If I put more “rehab”/”rehabilitation” keywords in the post, then I get ad links to drug/addiction rehab or something else that is unrelated to brain injury rehab. I’ve done just about every combination of keyword density imaginable with varying numbers of the key terms “TBI”, “rehab”, “rehabilitation”, “brain damage”, “brain injury” etc. Nothing seems to matter. The ads still are fairly off target. The blog post is specifically written to target the right adsense ads but it fails to do so. I’ve seen this happen when I try to target a bunch of other advertisements. I rarely get extremely targeted ads.
Here’s another example Now in this one, the ads to the left of the blog post are for “anxiety remedy’s” and one is for “psychotherapy”. I didn’t mention “anxiety” or “psychotherapy” a single time in the post. The ads should be more related to stroke, but none of the ads have anything to do with strokes. Now I didn’t really play around with this post that much. I’m sure I could get some stroke ads if I changed a few things, but they still would likely not be very targeted ads. Also, I want to emphasize that the ads in this post are not the generic ads that come on a post before the google adsense bot asseses the page (those ads are usually of the “make money bloggin” nature). These ads are AFTER the google adsense bot has assesed the page, as “anxiety”/”psychotherapy” are obliquely related to brain perhaps.
Okay, back to brain injury “rehab”. Now if you type in “brain injury rehabilitation” into google, this is what you get;
Google Brain Injury Rehabilitation
Now here google has no problem serving up highly relevent contextual ads for brain injury rehabilitation/rehab. Also typing in “brain injury rehab” gives you fairly relevant ads as well. Obviously they do this to make money.
The fact that adsense does not serve up highly relevent ads on my blog indicates to me that google doesn’t want to increase the relevancy of some ads on blogs for some reason. Perhaps it affects google’s bottom line. People who click on ads on your own blog/website are less likely to click on google ads offsite (like when they are searching). If a person clicks on an ad on your site google makes less money, as they have to share the money that they get from the advertiser with the blog/website owner. So its possible that decreasing the relevancy of adsense ads on a person’s blog causes an increase in the amount of adsense clicks offsite, which is more profitable to google. That’s only my own theory, though. It seems rather sneaky of google if that is the case.
So I must stress that all of the information that you give on this blog is amazing. However, adsense ad targeting does suck in certain instances. I have a nagging suspicion that is done on purpose too.
In the last post I said the ads are on the “left” when I meant to say they are on the “right” side of the blog post.
Mike,
I’m experiencing the same problem my blog. My site’s title is Demystifying Internet Technology. All of my posts are in one way or another relevant to that subject, although as Griz once mentioned, who is going to search for ‘Demystifying’ in regard to internet technology. But, traffic, for now, is not my biggest problem.
Like your site, that are far too many of my articles delivering ads selling cars and language translations for content that is solely about the internet. There are no references to languages or automobiles in my articles. I’ve also written a few posts about search engines and the ads I get for those are for, yep you guessed it, small engine repair, gasoline engines, etc. Your suspicions my be right, but I tend to think that Google’s algorithmic system is inefficient.
I have started getting much better traffic and I’ve implemented to the best of my abilities all the advice I’ve gotten here and from Griz’s beginner’s site, and my ads are much more relevant as a result of that, still what has worked for those posts should work for all of them.
Sites that address SEO, keyword choice and how to get content and ads to match may be more profitable than Adsense itself.
Yeah I see the same thing with your site Jim. For instance look at the ads for this post on your blog;
Ever Hear Of The Term Cloud Computing?
The ads showing up have nothing to do with “cloud computing”, but are for “information technology”.
Now if you do a google search for “cloud computing”, you get this;
Google Search “Cloud Computing”
When you do this search, google serves up highly relevent contextual ads that actually have to do with “cloud computing”.
So does this mean that google can’t decipher the “Cloud computing” term that is inside Jim’s post? Is the google adsense bot (or whatever scans the post) really that dumb?
I realize he has IT twice and “information technology” once, but he mentions “cloud computing” 3 times in the post (bolding it once), and mentions it once in the title. None of the other words in the title really lend themselves to any specific type of ad. Why can’t google figure out the post is about “cloud computing”. With all their sophisticated algorithms I find it improbable that they really can’t figure out a fairly specific string of two words with a definite meaning.
I’d be interested to see what type of ads would be served on that specific page Jim if you removed the reference to “information technology” or IT. It probably wouldn’t matter, though. I consider myself lucky somtimes if I get 1 contextually relevent ad on certain posts. Other posts are just fine and the ads are relevant. On my main page I’m fairly happy about the type of ads shown by adsense. It’s just when I’m trying to get more specific that it seems to get much more difficult to trigger the right ads sometimes.
I also just wanted to add that at least the “information technology” ads in Jim’s post is somewhat related and not totally off base (like having ads about cars). However, it’s somewhat useless when you look at the ads in relation to what Jim’s specific post is about. If people happen to find that post searching in google, it seems less likely that they will be clicking on ads for “Information Technology degrees”. I’ve seen this happen far too often to make me suspcious about google. Especially when the ads are often very close but no cigar. If google can serve up “brain injury lawyer” ads on my post, then why can’t they serve up “brain injury rehab”. It doesn’t seem to be due to them serving up “cheap” ads on my blog. The overall keyword of my site is brain (my blogs title is “brain stimulant”). So why does adsense have difficulty serving up long tail “brain” ads (brain injury rehab) on specific posts?
One thing that happens, and I have no idea if this is what your issue is, is that the ads Adsense serves up are based on the PPC campaigns that advertisers run. If I was buying ads for my law firm, I might buy ads for keywords on brain injury. That might not be what you think you want, but it might be what I think I want as an advertiser.
I really don’t know. Also, not everyone trying PPC is knowledgeable about what they are doing. They could buy the wrong ads, they could pay too much or too little. They could target keywords that won’t convert well for them. There are many variables. Google provides a service that is intended to play matchmaker between publishers and advertisers, but if the advertiser doesn’t know what he’s doing, there’s not much G is going to do about it. They
re just going to let ‘em spend the money.
As for me, my CPC is bouncing up and down. I think some advertisers are not paying much right now, and others want to use the downturn to grow faster, so they are paying more than normal. It’s a little weird. Don’t get caught up micro analyzing. See what happens, and see if maybe there just aren’t enough advertisers to give you a full block of ads, so other crap gets thrown in. If adsense isn’t working, then dump it for that site, but it can be great if you have the right niche that attracts PPC advertisers, and follow all of Griz’s tips on optimization.
I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re absolutely right about how relevant ads are returned on a few words in a Google search versus the ads returned based on those exact same words used in the title of an article, much less the content that speaks to it in depth. If Google has a reason for that, I would love to hear it.
Makes me wonder what kind of ads would be returned to “Cloud Computing” used as the title of a post and the content. No doubt, at some point, Google algorithms would remove the ads from the post altogether. Still it would be interesting to see.
Yeah I’m not sure about that (Les James?) from “Fiar | Conservative Satire”. But certain ads are impossible to trigger no matter what I do. Even if I just do “brain rehab”, I can’t get most of the ads targeted for brain rehab (usually one or two at best). I either get “drug addiction rehab”, or something related to the brain. Doing a google search, though, there is no problem in the ad targeting. Type in “brain rehab” and you get ads for “brain injury rehab”. So there is definitely a disconnect between onsite blog vs. google search. The targeting of ads is always poorer on my blog compared to the search engine targeting (on the right hand of the search engine). It doesn’t seem to matter what keyword it is. This is especially true if you are targeting long tail ads. Of course if you write a post about “brain injury” google could just serve up ads about the “brain” based on what advertisers run their PPC campaigns on. If you do a post about “brain injury lawyer” google could serve ads for “brain injury”. Or in my case, writing about “brain injury” or “brain damage” seems to serve up “brain injury lawyer” ads.
So I would hope this is not google’s intent. It is still fairly annoying, though, either way. I’m pretty sure I have not received a single click on the “brain injury lawyer” ads even though I do get some traffic to those types of posts. The cost per click of “brain injury lawyer” is like $21 dollars, so I think I would notice even if my blog was smart priced. So I don’t see what the purpose of them showing up on my blog. Oh, and having google serve highly irrelevant ads seems like a recipe for getting smart priced too.
Les is one of my other authors. I have 3 plus myself.
The search results are different ad campaigns than the content ads. As an advertiser, you can target search results only, content only, or a combination of both. That is probably one of the reasons why the SERPS have different ads than you are getting.
I’ll also second what Aaron said.
You’ve also got to factor in how people create their adwords campaigns. The default is broad match for all the keywords that you put in. So if I’m trying to get business for my clinic and bid on “drug rehab”, G will broad match that to all kinds of crazy stuff related to drugs & rehab. That’s why the ad shows up in your post about brain rehab.
And, maybe the advertisers that are targeting “brain rehab” aren’t advertising in the content network; I’ve run several campaigns where I don’t as I find that as an advertiser lots of times the clicks don’t convert as well.
The law firms also have huge ad budgets; they cast a wide net hoping those clicks will convert. So they are very likely to have HUGE keyword lists bid at very low prices; kind of a shot gun effect.
Hi Guys – sorry I haven’t chimed in but I’ve had nothing but problems since getting back home. (Frozen water lines, the plow truck is buggered etc and have been playing catch up at the lodge)
I figured someone would get around to the answer – the advertisers can choose not to have ads placed on content sites as Fiar said.
Another factor and this is just from observation – G tends to only give the best ads to aged sites that have a record of quality traffic. (and a high volume)
I haven’t had time to read all the comments yet – just glanced so if I have missed something vital please forgive me. I’m hoping to get the lodge up and running today and should be back online tomorrow. I’ll go through the questions more thoroughly then.
Griz
What’s up with google? you’re on page 3 for me from google.com.
Splork here. Griz, what you say about your “precious baby” is right. When I finally stopped trying to Adsensitize those websites that I “cared” about things became a lot less stressful. I discovered that it is far better to use WordPress.com for those blogs that you feel like you have to have readership and notoriety. Why? Because it is geared for collecting readers. If you make good use of tags you will get more readers than you can stand. AND you will also get some amazing PR…that you can use for meaningful backlinks. I’ve got a handful of PR 3-4 WordPress.com blogs that I have been using to yap about stuff I like, not worry about monetizing, but still drive traffic, quietly (don’t want to wake up WordPress), to monetized sites.
I think it is cool to have a few babies that you like. Just don’t expect to make money off of them, like you mention. But used correctly you can still get a lot of use from them. These WP.com blogs each now get around 2-4,000 pageviews a day. Bandwidth, storage and hosting is on WP.com. They are on topics that I know and love. A couple I update everyday. Others, a couple of times a month.
I got the idea from Vic during the Ebay/.info fiasco last year. I kept working them and have now got a ton of subscribers on all of them. Granted I can’t monetize them directly, which seems a waste, but I still link out. Maybe one outgoing link every third post. Every little bit helps, no? And the best thing is I actually like my readership and the blog topics.
Splork, you just convinced me I’m not insane after all for posting on my PR3 WordPress.com social blog from time to time. Back in October I sent a sip of the blog’s link juice to a hosted site that I did everything wrong with from day one, and after less than two months it’s out of the sandbox and PR1 despite adding AdSense the same day I put it up and other no-no’s.
Well, I might still be insane. But not because of my WordPress.com blog.
Grizz, beware, this post is going to have 1,000 comments by the time you get around to the next one in February.
About choosing a niche: I’m feeling timid about going after a general niche (not long tail phrase) where the primary keywords are dominated by a site with PR5 or 6 and solid SEO. I know I can take first position page 1 for a long tail, but if that long tail has a lower number of monthly searches (say 2,000), I’m afraid the big guys will stop me cold before I can get some real traffic. If I’ve understood Grizzly right on the beginners blog, he likes to start with the least competitive long tail and build on his momentum to move up the food chain until he beats the PR5 and 6 guys (which is what he’s done in the MMO niche).
I suppose I could just work on general niches where the primary keywords are all PR3 or less, but they all seem to be a dead end–the supply of traffic and related keywords is so low that there’s no room to grow.
I’m trying to find the right compromise between competitiveness and traffic potential. (I’m monetizing with AdSense.) What do the rest of you do?
It will be tough for you to unseat those top sites no doubt, but with time & persistence (and maybe a bit of cash for some good links) I’d bet you could do it. If you concentrate on the long tails, I’d bet that the big dogs won’t even notice you; until it’s too late. This would also be the easiest method for you too as you are building your own personal momentum and doing your experiments on less competitive phrases. Much better to slip up with a small link building campaign with a long tail than screw the pooch with a mistake for your main keyphrase.
I can’t speak for Griz, but it sure seems like this is the way he operates even with what I’m sure is YEARS of experience. Or it seems that way to me as he hasn’t hopped right in with this site trying to rank for “money”.
I’m personally using Micro Niche Finder to do my keyword research. There are several tools available to do it (many free), but it saves me time. I can find phrases that garner a good bit of money, but have very little (organic)competition. This makes it easy for me to rank with a few decent links, or even some bum marketing so I can hopefully get the best possible adsense clicks on my site. It seems to be working so far, but I’ll admit that I haven’t scaled it up beyond a handful of sites yet.