3. Targeting


The targeting of ppc ads is very important, because targeted ads perform much better than untargeted banners. Therefore you should make sure all ads on your website show targeted ads which fit to your site’s content. This will increase the CTR of the ads and also result in a better branding of your site, because people only find content and links that fit to your site’s topic.


Many webmaster have problems with ads that don’t show proper text links. Anyway, it’s quite easy to target ppc ads.


The first you should do is to control whether the site has enough content. The more text content there is the faster and more accurate your ads will be targeted by Google’s bots. So you should add additional content to your site to get better ads.


If you still don’t get advertising links that fit to your site’s content and thus to your visitors’ interests, you should implement section targeting.


Section targeting is a very useful tool to help Google find the best ads for your site. It allows you to suggest sections of your text content that you’d like Google to emphasize when matching ads to your site’s content.


You can implement section targeting by adding special HTML comments to your site’s HTML code.


The HTML tags to emphasize a page section take the following format:


< !– google_ad_section_start –>


< !– google_ad_section_end –>


If you want Google to ignore specific sections of your site when targeting ads you need to use the following comment tag:


< !– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>


Here’s an example of how your site’s code should look like after implementing section targeting:


< html>< head>< title>Your Site’s Title< /title>< /head>


< body>


This is text content of your web page.


< !– google_ad_section_start –>


This is the text which you want Google to emphasize when targeting ads.


< !– google_ad_section_end –>


Here might also be some content.


< /body>


< /html>


Please keep in mind a significant amount of content should be placed within the section targeting tags, because insufficient content might result in less relevant ads to appear on your site. Also, it is against Google’s TOS to use ad targeting to display ads which don’t fit to your site’s content, so you only may use section targeting to emphasize content sections of your site which include proper content.


Another way to improve ad targeting for your site is to emphasize specific terms by making them bold (< b> or < em>) or making them a heading (< h1> or < h2>). Google will pay special attention to emphasized terms and phrases within your web page.


4. CPC


The fourth way to improve your total advertising income is to get a higher cost per click on ads displayed on your site. But how to increase the CPC?


First of all, you should do some research on different keywords which fit to your site’s topic. Go to Google and perform searches for these keywords. The more AdWords ads appear in the right bar of Google’s search results the likelier it is that ads for the regarding keyword have got a higher CPC. In addition, you can take advantage of Overture’s Bidtool to determine which keywords pay well in terms of PPC advertising. Although the Overture tool is a direct indicator for the YPN, you can still use it to get a good idea of the keywords’ click prices.


Now that you know which keywords AdSense should display ads for on your site the only thing you need to do is to target ads for the keyword(s) you have chosen. You can do this by adding additional and targeted content and by emphasizing words or complete sections of your web page, as explained above.


5. Google Search Box


AdSense also offers the possibility to implement Google Search into your website. Google Search is a useful service for your users, it can search either your site or the whole Internet. The search results pages can be customized to fit with your site’s theme, and you’ll be paid for every valid click on the ads that appear. The search box is also great to earn money from visitors who did not find what they were looking for on your site, because the search box allows them to search exactly for what they have been looking for and it will display ads that are targeted based on the keyword(s) they search for.


So the Google Search Box can earn you some extra money. You should not expect too much from the search box though. I have only been able to increase income by 1 to 3 per cent through Google Search.


6. Optimization tips for forums


While I have already written much about placing ads on “usual” websites here are some tips on how to make more money from PPC ads displayed within forums:


Ad Format & Placement


160×600 Skyscraper ads placed above the fold on the left side of your forum seem to perform very well. However, you should also place a 728×90 leaderboard ad below the forum’s header. The combination of these two ad formats works well and results in a high CTR, in my experience.


This can also be seen in Google’s Heat Map and I can only confirm the ad placements suggested by the heat map.


In addition, you should also place an ad between the first and the second post of the threads in the forum. There already exists a script for vBulletin which automatically displays PPC ads in this place. You should integrate this script to your forum to improve PPC income.


Above I have written that a leaderboard ad directly below the editorial content would work fine. This suggestion also works with forums. Therefore it is a good idea to place a leaderboard ad directly below the last post of the thread, because user’s who read the whole thread might be looking for the next link to click on - and what’s a better link than a targeted ppc link?


Anyway, this would require you to remove the leaderboard ad below the forum’s header, because you may only display 3 AdSense ads per page. I would recommend to do so, because the leaderboard ad at the bottom of the page seems to perform better than the ad below the header, in my experience (and against Google’s heat map). Instead, I would place one of Google’s horizontal link units below the header (a link unit may be placed as an additional ad, so you can display more than 3 ads per page).


Over all you should try to use ads that blend in, because people spend lots of time in forums and the forum design should not be disrupted by outstanding ad colors.


Google’s Search Box can also be implemented into your forum. I’d suggest to place it directly in the forum’s search tool. For instance, dnforum.com offers its members to use both the forum’s and Google’s site search.


Well, that’s it. I think I’ve written everything which came up to my mind at the moment.


I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and at least some of the above information will be useful for you.


Thank you.


Sincerely,
Dominik Mueller

Dominik Mueller is Founder, CEO and Senior Domain Broker of dnbroker.us, a domain brokerage company. In addition, he publishes a blog dedicated to domain names, web hosting and e-commerce (dodo1.com) and is a moderator of the domain name forum DNForum.com.


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Author's PPC / Pay-Per-Click Site


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