4 replies to this topic

[laura]

I'm not sure why this might be important if at all, but my client who is doing optimization on his site with AdWords wants to know how Google crawls the site for AdWords information.

I've learned some things from the article Jill pointed to:
Monetizing Non-converting Traffic with Adsense
http://www.highranki...ue097.htm#guest
(very insightful)

and I know that the pages need to be optimized well for highly targeted, relevant AdSense ads.

So, in an effort to appeal to my client's curiosity, and just in case I need to know for any other reason:

Does Google go through the page looking at the title, H1, copy. etc for AdSense relevancy the same way it does for search relevancy?

Does it matter?

[Jill]

I believe it's strictly looking at the words on the page, and nothing else.

[projectphp]

My short answer is that this bot is very good. Just look at how well targetted ads are on un-optimised sites.

The best way to "improve" AdSense payouts is to just use traditional SEO strategies, IMHO.

With AdSense, gaming the system, to me, just seems wrong. Never mess with those that provide you with direct income, aka never bite the hand that feeds you.

I reckon that, rather than better ads, what will probably work better ois simply more page impressions. Best way to achieve that is with more pages...

[cline]

I believe it's also looking at some of the other factors used in SEO, such as title tags and H tags.

For certain it looks at CTRs. So if the right ad can be coaxed to the page, and a high CTR achieved, the ad will tend to stick to the page following a subsequent change to that page. In other words, if you want to speed up the process, write the page in an overoptimized style to quickly attract the appropriate ads for your traffic, then quickly begin toning the page down into something you'd rather present your visitors with.

I had to do this type of Adsense bot training with a page whose terms were synonyms with terms used for unrelated products. When the unrelated products showed up in Adsense, I loaded the page with more specific vocabulary. It was a bit of overkill, but it got Adsense to deliver the right ads. Then I changed the text back to something very similar to the original and the appropriate ads remained on the page.

[laura]

Yes, I'm definitely recommending optimizing the pages to a T, at least to the point that they can without changing architecture since they dont wish to.

It's good to hear cline's experience - I may suggest that, although I'd be a little hesitant to go overboard since I wouldnt want the site to be penalized.

I'll have to keep an eagle eye on the optimization.

Thanks