Get Personal
There is no denying the importance of keywords. They are the backbone of the internet, and therefore, the backbone of your website. If you are not creating content with keywords that users are searching for, your site will see no traffic. If you don't target high paying keywords, you'll never make any money with pay per click advertising programs such as Google Adsense.If you do a search for keywords, you'll see sites that sell keyword lists. The competition is fierce, with each competitor offering larger and larger keyword lists. I've purchased a keyword list before, and found it quite helpful for my clients sites. While it was interesting to note what keywords advertisers were willing to pay big bucks for, its not surprising that these same keywords draw a lot of competition. You'll need a big advertising budget, or a lot of inbound links to garner much traffic.
However, further down the list, the topics get more varied, and that is where the keyword list gets interesting, and several potential themes for a new site pop up.
However, what if your site already enjoys traffic and has a theme already in place?
What you need is a customized keyword list. Need new content ideas? These custom keyword lists help direct successful sites towards keywords that are both popular and are higher paying.
For one of my clients, it was simply a matter of exchanging the word investor with the word trader which made all the difference. They created a whole section on foreign exchange trading, as well as technical analysis to target higher paying keywords, and directed their current high level of traffic to that part of the site. As a result, the site enjoyed an increase in page views and adsense revenue.
If you have a successful site, a keyword list of 50 000 keywords wont help you target new and original content like a list of 500 keywords that are specific to your sites theme.
Its not surprising that insurance themed keywords are the highest paying. There is a lot of money to be made insuring people.
However, with competition so fierce, unless you have a large advertising budget, you will find it difficult to drive traffic to your site. Personally, I would rather target keywords that pay even $1 and get lots of traffic, than to target a $50 keyword and get no traffic.
With that in mind, John from AdsenseHeaven told me of a client who bought a targeted keyword list about cooking. The client wasn't happy about getting what appeared to be lower paying adsense revenue. With some tweaking of their menu, the site started to target the healthy aspects of their recipes, since the custom keyword list indicated that advertisers were paying for keywords dealing with health and dieting. Almost immediately, their click through rate (CTR) went up, and more importantly, the amount per click went up.
If you have an existing site, you owe it to yourself to consider purchasing a customized keyword list. AdsenseHeaven.com (http://www.adsenseheaven.com) has a growing number of customized keyword lists. If you dont see one that goes with the theme of your site, contact them to request a customized list. You'll be surprised at the number of opportunities to increase your adsense revenue.
About the author: Christopher Smith writes for Northern Source web design, which specialized in small business web design
