How to use Adsense Section Targeting?

What is Section Targeting?

“Section Targeting” is a feature introduced by Google Adsense for us, Adsense Publishers, to suggest which sections of the pages of our website or blog should be given more weights in deciding which of the ads are best suited or more relevant for the pages.

But of course by simply writing quality articles which are keyword-optimized, you are already helping the Google Adsense in deciding which ads should be displayed in your blog. And actually, it’s one of the ways I suggested in my article, “Make Adsense Ads Relevant“, on how to increase the relevance of the Adsense ads.

Why should you need to make Adsense ads relevant?

Well, having relevant ads on the webpages of your website do not only helps you earn money from Adsense but it also makes your website appealing to the visitors.

It’s never been good to look at your blog which is actually talking about computer but then the Google Adsense is displaying dating ads. And besides, you are not the only one embarrassed with this situation. Google and the advertisers consider this as a big “F” as in “Failure”.

I know that you understand that if the ads displayed on your blog are all relevant, then:

1. you as the Adsense Publisher will earn money from the clicks generated,
2. the visitors will be happy because they have found what they are looking for,
3. the advertisers will earn money from the relevant visitors your blog referred,
4. and Google earns more money from your income and from the spending of the advertisers.

Your Blog and the Google Adsense Ads

However, even if your articles have high quality and are keyword-optimized, but then you still found out that Google Adsense is not delivering the most relevant ads into your blog. This problem is not caused by the lack of Adword Content Advertisers but because of the other content found in every pages of your blog that ruin the suggestions you’ve made through the quality and keyword-optimized articles.

For example: You have a blog of which almost all blogposts are about Valentine’s Day. Some of the pages talks about Valentine Greeting Card, Valentine Wordpress Theme, Valentine DVD, Valentine Books, Valentine Gift and Flower Store in the Philippines, etc.. However, if you’ll browse each of the pages of your blog, you will find no relevant ads displayed by Google Adsense.

Now, you don’t have to do any blackhat method of making the ads relevant because this will only lead you to the expulsion from the Google Adsense program. What you only need to do is to make use of the “Section Targeting“.

Section Targeting

In section targeting, you only need to mark the beginning point of a section and the ending point of the section by using this tags:

So, the content enclosed by these tags are the content that will be given more weights by Google Adsense in choosing the most relevant ads that should be displayed in a certain page.

If implemented in your blog, the HTML code of the page should look like this:

This is the Title

This is where the content of your article found

Usually, the sidebar of your blog contains information which are not actually related to the topic of the page. If Google Adsense will include them with the things it considers in deciding which ads are relevant, then Google Adsense will fail.

So, you need to tell Google Adsense to ignore them by using these tags:

Your content that should be ignored will be here….

You can specify as many section as you can. You have nothing to worry about it because Google allows you to do it.

And of course, make sure to consider these words from Google:

In order to properly implement this feature, you’ll need to include a significant amount of content within the section targeting tags. Including insufficient content may result in less relevant ads or PSAs. In addition, please keep in mind that this feature should only be used to emphasize significant sections of your site’s relevant content. It is against our program policies to manipulate the ad targeting to result in ads that are not relevant to the content of your pages.

And another thing that you should take note:

However, please be aware that we can’t guarantee results, and that it may take up to 2 weeks before our crawlers take into account any changes you’ve made to your site.

What is Ad Blindness?

What is Ad Blindness?

Ad Blindness is an ability of the website’s visitors to ignore the ads displayed on a webpage they are reading.

Visitors who are ad blind mostly are webmasters, bloggers, tech savvy users, other online money maker and those users who frequently visit different websites. Most of the users who are ad blind tend to ignore advertisement just because they knew that those are advertisement and not natural links of your website. They simply don’t want to click ads because:

1. They are bloggers and webmasters who are also displaying those ads on their blogs and website. When they visit their own blogs or website, they tend to ignore the ads especially the Google Adsense ads because clicking them is against the Google Adsense policies. So, ignoring those ads at their own website or blog made them acquire the ability to ignore ads even if they are already at the websites or blogs of the other webmasters or bloggers.
2. Users who understand how advertisement works usually ignore ads on the website or blog they visit because they don’t want the owner of that certain website or blog earns money from his visit.
3. There are other users who became ad blind because of trauma they suffered after visiting a website which was being advertised. Maybe he was scammed. Or he might found useless thing on the ads he visited.
4. However, there are also ad blind users who tend to ignore the ads just because those are ads. They simply don’t want to visit any advertised website or product without any reasons.

Reduce Ad Blindness

So, since you want to increase your Adsense income by simply increasing the CTR of Google Adsense, then you need to try to reduce the Ad Blindness of your blog’s visitors. And here’s how:

1. Clean up your blog from Ad clutter. Decrease the number of ad units displayed on your blog.

   Some say that having a maximum number of Adsense ad units displayed on your blog increases the CTR of your Adsense. However, this is not always true because it sometimes lead to the ad blindness of your visitors.

   Now, try displaying two Adsense units: 1 Adsense unit that will be displayed before the content and 1 after the content.

   Then try stripping off those ads of the other network so that all the attention of your visitors will be focused to your content and to the Adsense ads.But if you think, you’re earning much not from Adsense but from other network, then don’t strip off those ads. Just take away those ads that convert less.

2. Blend the Adsense Ads to your content. Configure the Adsense ads so that they will look like regular links of your blog. Blending Adsense ads into your content can be done by (1) changing the color or the text and the links of the adsense into the color of the content, and (2) changing the fonts of the content into the fonts used by Google Adsense.

   It might be considered a deception, deceiving the visitors so that they couldn’t identify the ads. However, this kind of deception is acceptable according to the Adsense policies.

3. Adsense Placement. Place the Adsense units in your blog’s section where it can blend much.

   However, it would be better if your blog has the ability to place Adsense ad units differently in every webpages.

   For example, in one webpage, the Adsense ad unit is placed at the middle of the content, then in another webpage, the Adsense ad unit is found almost at the bottom part of the content. But I am still wondering if there are plugins for Wordpress blogs available that can be used for this trick.

4. Entice visitors to read the ads. I am not telling you here that you need to tell your visitors to visit or click the ads. We all know that it’s against to the TOS of every PPC ad network.

   What I really mean is that do something in your Adsense ads so that it will attrack the visitors. For example, you can place a picture beside the ad unit. However, it is against the Adsense TOS if you’ll use a picture or photo which is not related to Adsense. So, to do this, just use the Adsense image ads and display it at the side of the Adsense text ads.

5. Make your ads more relevant. And the most important thing is that your Adsense ads should be relevant so that the suggested steps above would become effective. Read my article, “Increase the Adsense Relevance” for some tips on how to increase the relevance of Adsense ads.

How To Increase Your Kontrera Income?

Last week, I received the amount of $169 from Kontera via Paypal. I am not sure if it’s my income in the month of December 2008 or the month of November 2008. What I’m sure is that it’s my Kontera income

Actually, the amount, $169, is not as high as the Adsense income of this blog but it is already better compared to earning nothing from it.

Increase your Kontera Income

Currently, the number of Kontera advertisers is not as huge as the number of the Google Adwords advertisers. In other words, the competition of advertisers in Google Adword is much different compared to that of the Kontera network. So in Adsense you can really earn huge money by simply optimizing your blog’s content with high Adsense CPC keywords even if your blog only has 100 or less unique visitors, but this trick couldn’t be used (currently) for the Kontera.

What I wanted to tell you is that trait Kontera as your extra source of income while you can trait Google Adsense as your main source of income. Even if you are publishing Google Adsense ads, try to publish Kontera ads too. This just a way of maximizing your income through your blog. And you have nothing to worry of regarding the TOS and policies of Adsense because publishing Kontera ads doesn’t violate any of the Adsense TOS and Policies.

Now, what are the trick (they call it secret) in increasing your Kontera income?

Actually, the following ideas are not the trick to increase your Kontera income. They simply are the standard way of optimizing your blog for the Kontera ads.

(1) Increase the number of visitors of your blog.

It is much better to have lots of visitors visiting your blog because it also means that there will be lots of people clicking the Kontera ads displayed on your blog. On other hand, if your blog has no visitors then expect that no one will be clicking your ads.

Then how could you increase the number of visitors of your blog?

Well, I already have written articles on how to increase the number of visitors of your blog. Just read them, “Increase the number of pageviews of your blog” and “Increase the number of unique visitors of your blog”

(2) Optimize your content with keywords used by Kontera advertisers.

Featuring keywords used in Kontera advertising is the most important thing you should do in your blog if you want to earn money from Kontera because without those keywords, you couldn’t display any of the Kontera ads. Don’t forget that Kontera’s In-text advertising is much different from Google Adsense. Read my article, “Making Money Online with Kontera” for you to understand how Kontera works.

To make it clear, even if your blog has thousands of visitors a day if you are not featuring keywords of which Kontera advertisers are using for the Kontera ads, then you’ll never earn money from Kontera.

Read my article, “How to optimize your blog or blog’s articles for the Kontera In-Text ads?”

(3) Invite your Friends to publish Kontera ads at their blog.

Kontera will be paying you $25 for every Active Kontera Publisher you referred into.

You can send the invitation by simply logging in to your Kontera account (click here) then click the “MY ACCOUNT” tab and then the “INVITE A FRIEND” tab under the “My Account” tab. On the email field, simply type the email addresses of your friends. Each email address should be separated by the semi colon “;”. To finally send the invitation, just press the “SEND INVITATION” button.

"How to Optimize Blog Articles for Kontera?"

In my article, “Increasing Your Kontera Income“, I gave you 3 ways on how to earn more from Kontera: (1) By increasing the number of visitors; (2) By optimizing Blog Articles for Kontera; (3) By referring other bloggers to use Kontera.

I already told you on that article how to refer new Kontera publishers. And also, I already have written articles on how to increase the number of visitors of your blog. Try reading my articles: “Increasing the number of Page views“, and “Increasing the number of Unique Visitors“.

And what you need to know now is on how to optimize your blog’s articles for the Kontera ads. But just in case you don’t know yet what Kontera and how Kontera works, please read my article, “Make Money with Kontera“.

So, how would you optimize your blog’s articles for Kontera?

Here’s the steps on what to do to make your articles optimized for Kontera:

1. Collect the keywords used by Kontera system in displaying the Kontera Ads and list the keywords into a spreadsheet or MS Excel file and save it to your harddisk for the future use. Read my article “How to Collect Keywords from Kontera System?”
2. Identify the most accessed article or webpage of your blog. You need to know what are the webpages of your blog or the articles in your blog that are frequently visited. Read my article, “How to identify the frequently visited webpages or articles of your blog?”
3. Rewrite those articles (popular articles or those frequently visited) by utilizing the keywords you collected on the first step. You already have the list of keywords used by the advertisers of Kontera In-Text, so use them in your frequently visited articles. This is to make sure that the visitors of those articles would notice the ads, thus increasing your revenue if they’ll click them.
4. Write more relevant articles and utilize the keywords you collected.

Try these steps and you’ll see the result.

"How To Collect Keywords from the Kontera System?"

This article is supposed to be part of the article, “Optimizing Articles for Kontera ads“. But I decided to write it separately.

Collecting the keywords
is actually the 1st step in optimizing your blog or blog’s article for Kontera. In optimizing for Kontera, you need to collect first keywords
, then identify the most popular articles, and rewrite or edit those articles and utilize the relevant keywords
that you have in the list.

So, how can you collect keywords used in the Kontera system?
Collecting the Keywords

FYI, before writing this article I tried to check again if there are other ways on how can we know the keywords currently used by Kontera’s advertisers, but it seems that the ways that I already knew are the only ones we can do for us to collect keywords.

Here’s how:

(1) Visit the official blog of Kontera.

The long list of all keywords used by the Kontera advertisers is not made available for us by the Kontera Team. However, they reveal what are the most popular keywords in the Kontera system through their official blog.

For example: Just recently, Kontera Team revealed these popular keywords or most clicked keywords in Kontera system:

Consumer Electronics: iphone, nintendo wii, portable media, player, Bluetooth

Entertainment: red carpet, Golden Globe Award, Rebecca Romijn, The Pussycat Dolls

Computing & Internet: windows XP, windows vista, DVD Decrypter, laptopr

Health: side effect, medical condition, breast feeding, face lift

Society & Culture: zodiac sign, sun sign, horoscope, astrology

Sport: quarterback, workout routine, Manchester United, Junkyard Dog

Real Estat: affordable housing, apartment finder, apartments for rent, home loans

But of course, these keywords are not at all times used in Kontera advertising. There will be times that some of these keywords don’t have advertisers. But what I am sure of is that most of these keywords are still used by Kontera advertisers.

(2) Visit your Kontera Publishers Center

Kontera Team wants you to earn more from their In-Text advertising system because as you earn more money from the in-text ads, Kontera is also earning. That’s the reason why they let you know what are the most clicked keywords in your account. And it is done weekly.

What I mean is that the most clicked keywords list in your Kontera Publisher Center is updated weekly.

Just login to the Kontera Publisher center by clicking here. Then click the “KEYWORD REPORT” tab and you’ll see the top 20 keywords in your Kontera account.

(3) Collect Keywords from the competitor

After you have collected enough keywords from the Kontera Official blog and from the Publishers Center, you can also spy your competitors’ blog.

When I say competitor, I am referring to the blog with the same niche of your blog. Even if those blogs are owned by your friends and you and your friends did not consider each other as competitor as long as the blogs is in 1 niche or the same niche, then those blogs are competitor or competing with each other.

Since you know much what is the niche of your blog, then I assume that you also know what are those blogs in your niche.

Now, try visiting those blogs. View the “Page Source” by clicking the “VIEW” tab in your browser and then click the “PAGE SOURCE” and after that a window of a browser will pop out containing the page source.

Usually, the Kontera code is placed on the bottom of the page. So, scroll down the page souce and look for the Kontera code. If you found it, then start checking each of the webpage of the blog you are spying and take note of the double-underlined words. List the keywords you found for future use.
Collected Keywords

Now that you already have collected enough number of keywords, then do the next step as suggested in my article, “Optimize Blog’s article for Kontera In-Text ads“.