Google Adsense Section Targeting

Get the most out of your content -- ROI tip for blogs and how-to websites

Let's face it, whether you are writing your own content, or having a professional write it for you, effective content for your web site isn't cheap, and we really need ROI on every page of content we have on our web site. The big brains at Adsense realize this and have a solution called Adsense Section Targeting.

Most of the time, when you are blogging or building up a How-To website your content is on topic... most of the time. But there are days, and times, when the topic doesn't seem to translate to relevant (or profitable) Adsense ads.

The solution to fix this, occasional problem, is fairly simple. If I want to make sure that the ads for this article are still in the SEM, SEO, or Internet Marketing area of the topic, then I put a paragraph like this one in the article, and then put in the HTML tags alerting the Adsense filter to the keywords I wish to be used for advertising on this page.

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

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
you put in your focus keywords between these tags i.e.

SEM, SEO, or Internet Marketing (as in the paragraph above if you view the source code of this article
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

While this helps keep ads which are not relevant from showing up, it can also help monetize a web site so that it utilizes high profit ads. A good example of this is a current client of mine (2nitelife.com), and the new acceptance of liquor ads by Google Adsense. Let's face it, liquor ads in the right context are going to get clicked. And 2nitelife.com is, certainly the right context. However, it is likely that the Adsense filter may not put liquor ads on every page of the web site, so, we use some Section Targeting, and give the content filter some hints.

Even with the Section Targeting, the right ads aren't going to show up all the time, but it allows us to see a higher percentage of good, profitable ads for our content pages.