I’ve increased My Adsense eCPM By 50% Using Section Targeting

January 20th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

It’s amazing how sometimes how even when you know better you can forget the most basic things, and you can be your own worst enemy….

This site has been extremely successful making money with Adsense in the past making around $4-4.5k per month. In November my adsense earnings plummeted by around 50%, which I thought was due to Google changing the clickable area in the ads.

However, last week I realised that what had also happened was that November was also when I started experimenting with my new Eureka theme, and my Adsense Section Targeting was missing. Literally the second I added Adsense Section Targeting by eCPM started to increase and 4 days later it’s up 50%!

Adsense Section Targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you’d like Google to emphasise or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content. This helps Google match ads to your content, increasing your clickthrough rates and hence your eCPMs. It can also drag your eCPM up further thanks to Smart Pricing.

Adding Section Targeting to your pages is easy. Even if you think you have implemented Adsense Section Targeting correctly, it’s worthwhile going back and double-checking that you’ve added the codes in the best place. On my pages I have added the start tag:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>

just before each post title as this should include important keywords. I’ve then added the end tag code:

<!– google_ad_section_end –>

At the end of the post. You can add these tags as many times as you think is necessary, but it’s not a good idea to add this code to small chunks of text as you may do more damage than good as it might be hard for Google to get the gist of the content you’ve tagged.

I’m glad I decided to go and see if I could do something about my falling adsense earnings! Hopefully now my eCPMs will stay strong again, and all I have to worry about is growing my traffic.

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About the Author

Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

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There Are 15 Responses So Far. »

#1

Comment by Dave Starr on 21 January 2008:

Excellent advice, Everton. I saw a similar tip just this morning elswhere in an item I had had sitting in my ‘to review’ box for way too long.

We bloggers are all to prone to play follow the leader. A general theme for some months now has been, “AdSense Sucks” and so a great many of us have been ignoring AdSense and jmping into new forms of monetizing.

new avenues of income are essential, and we virtaully all need to diversify … but AdSense does _not_ suck at all … I’m beginning my preliminary work for my tax return and I certainly see how nicely it has performed over 2006.

There may be other ’stars’ on the ‘money team’ and it’s always good to work on new talent, but a wise coach doesn’t neglect the tried and true players who come through consistently.
#2

Comment by Joseph Plazo on 21 January 2008:

Superb advice! Admittedly, it’s my first time to hear about this technique. I’ll implement it on my job board’s adsense account.

Have you read about the Secret by the way? I believe I successfully implemented it to raise my adsense revenues on a new site using rather fringe methods. No SEO.

Check it out
http://www.xtrememind.com/blog/288/why-google-paid-me-1707/
#3

Comment by Everton on 21 January 2008:

@Dave

I think there are things you can do to improve all schemes. Once my designer finishes this theme and hands it over, I’m going to spend a week trying to optimise everything. I used to do that every month in my early days as I was always tinkering, and I think now I’m paying for assuming ‘I know it all’
#4

Comment by Everton on 21 January 2008:

@Joseph

I’m surprised you’d never heard of section targetting. Please share your results as I know you’ve got a lot of sites available to experiment with.
#5

Comment by The Critic on 21 January 2008:

Hmmm… is there a tutorial for the adsense targeting on the Google account? I can’t seem to find it in the FAQ
#6

Comment by Mark from Bloglyne on 21 January 2008:

@E - I have never heard of this technique either… great article.
#7

Comment by Brown Baron on 21 January 2008:

So that’s what caused the plunge. You were a bit too busy to remember to put it back in heh.
#8

Comment by Everton on 21 January 2008:

@Critic

http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2005/12/15/double-adsense-ctr-use-section-targetting/ and https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23168

@Mark

Again I’m surprised you hadn’t heard of this! Let me know if you see any improvements

@Brown

Not all of the drop, but some of it. I reckon my oversight has cost me about 1.5-2k
#9

Comment by Zath on 27 January 2008:

Thanks for posting about this again Everton, I’ve had this set up on Zath Games Tech since I implemented your original theme, but since then I’ve started a few other blogs which hadn’t had this tweak made to them, hopefully that will help them too, cheers!
#10

Comment by pchere on 27 January 2008:

I have tried it many times before over the last year, but somehow my cost per clicks goes down each time. I guess I have better paying keywords in the sidebar which I block.
#11

Comment by Mark from Bloglyne on 28 January 2008:

@E - when I went to make the changes in my template code, it was already there. So, I think that you and Ajay must have made the changes to TypoXP before you released it last year.
#12

Comment by Everton on 28 January 2008:

@Mark

Yes, it’s already in TypoXP - it’s one of the reasons it’s such a great theme for adsense!
#13

Comment by Robert on 20 February 2008:

What do you need to do to add it in a theme itself? I like to do (what little I can figure out ) things simply instead of on a “each and every post” level.
#14

Comment by Roel on 20 May 2008:

there’s an error in your code:

just before each post title as this should include important keywords. I’ve then added the end tag code:

needs to be:

it neds to have “-” instead of the funny chars I think
#15

Comment by Everton on 20 May 2008:

@Roel

Thanks Roel you’ve just done me a massive favour. For some reason the site has changed all special characters today, so my targetting had gone from my theme as well as in the post. If I hadn’t corrected I would have lost cash!