Right now we're in Stage 2 of my AdSense case study featuring my short Invisible Fence Guide. Stage 2 is all about optimizing the pages for AdSense, or AdSense optimization for short. Much of what I'm describing here is also discussed in an article I wrote for InformIT called Keyword Optimization for Google AdSense.
AdSense optimization is really just a special kind of search engine optimization (SEO). That means you start with the basic SEO techniques of placing keywords in the page title (aside: have you ever wondered how many people forgot to title their pages? try this Google search), in the headings, in bolded text, in italicized text, in lists, near the top of the content, etc. In general, what's good for the search engine is good for AdSense.
After you've made sure the keywords are mentioned in various spots, it's time to check your keyword density. If you page is public, you can easily do this using the free Keyword Density and Prominence tool on ranks.nl. Or you can buy software to do it for you. Before doing this, however, make sure to remove any AdSense code on these pages. You don't want the AdSense crawler to visit your page until you've finished optimizing it. (See the first of my Google AdSense tips for the reasons.)
Using a keyword density tool, rewrite the content of the page until the right keywords are more prominent. It's not just how many times they're used, it's also where they're used (title, headings, and so on) that determines their density. Don't go overboard, though — too much density and you'll trigger red flags and your page may be considered spam.
Pay particular attention to the density of the two-, three- and four-word phrases in your text. Remember, people often search with more than a single word, and advertisers can also tie their ads to keyphrases, not just keywords. You'll get more relevant ads and high search engine results if you can target the right keyphrases.
Though it seems simple enough, this step can actually take a lot of time. Why? Because you may have to rewrite the content to put the emphasis on different words. But you don't want the writing to sound awkward, and it still has to flow. If you wrote the initial text carefully, though, hopefully you won't have much tweaking to do.
Don't forget you can use the AdSense Preview Tool (for Internet Explorer only, unfortunately) to see what kind of ads a page might generate after you put it on your web server but before you enable ads.
Once you've adjusted the keyword density, there are a few other details to worry about:
- Have you missed any obvious subtopics? Are there are other pages you should be adding?
- Have you created descriptions and keyword lists for each page using the appropriate META tags?
- Does the site flow well? Are there any broken links?
- Is there an “about” page and a “sitemap” page?
- Do you have copyright messages on your pages? Although they're not technically needed — copyright is implicit — it doesn't hurt to remind visitors they can't just copy the text for their own sites.
Again, all these things take time. This is why I haven't revealed Stage 2 yet, I'm still working on the pages! But that will come shortly.
In the meantime, have fun with the keyword density tool. Look at the keyword density of some pages ranked first in Google and see if you can determine how important keyword density is to those rankings. It's not the only factor, but it's definitely not unimportant.
Eric Giguere is the author of Make Easy Money with Google, a real (printed!) introductory AdSense book for non-technical people, available at all fine bookstores. Be sure to download the free sample chapter for more information about the book.