Keyword Placement

6.5 Keyword Placement

It shouldn’t really matter where you put your keywords, should it? As long as the right words are on the right page in the right amount of numbers, that should be enough to get you relevant ads, right?

Wrong.

One of the strangest results that people have had using AdSense is that putting keywords in particular places on the page can have an effect on the ads the site gets.

The most important place on your webpage is directly beneath the AdSense box. The keywords you place there could influence your ads.

For example, mentioning clowns in the space directly beneath the AdSense box could give you ads about circuses and red noses!

Keeping that in mind, you could play with your ads in all sorts of ways. If you had a site about camping for example, you might find that you’re getting lots of ads about tents and sleeping bags, which would be fine. But if you also wanted to make sure that one or two of your ads were about Yosemite or mobile homes, then mentioning those keywords once or twice on the page directly below the AdSense box could give you ads for sites with that sort of content too.

Bear in mind though that you’ll often find that you get ads that try to combine the main thrust of your site with the words in that keyword space below the ad box. So if you had a site about gardening and you mentioned “cabbages” beneath the ad box, you’re more likely to get ads about growing cabbages than ads about cabbage recipes.

Experimenting with the placement of the keywords could allow you to control at least one or two of the ads you receive and help keep them varied. That’s definitely something to try.