Are you using Google AdSense to monetize your blog only to find that the ads are not relevant to your content? If that is happening on your site, you are going to have a tough time making any money with AdSense. The best returns come when the ads actually fit with your content. But aren’t you at the mercy of the Googlebot to determine what your content is? Well, the answer to that question is both yes and no.
Googlebot will look at your content for relevant keywords and determine what ads should be served on your site. However, you can help the bot along with what content is relative and what content to ignore.
First, think about your content. You might need to modify your writing style a little bit to utilize keywords, and to avoid pronouns. The use of the word “it” really means nothing to Googlebot and other bots because they don’t know the “it” to which you are refering. Try to avoid pronouns.
Also, consider how much “extra” content is on your page beyond the post. Do you have a jam-packed sidebar with links and links and more links (coupled with a widget or three)? Do you have a lot of extraneous items on the page? These can throw off the bot as well since they are not necessarily relevant content.
And now, here is the trick you have all been waiting for: you can help Googlebot along to determine what content to consider for Google AdSense with a slight modification to your page markup. I am going to assume that you are a WordPress user, but this technique can be modified for other software, and is a complete snap if you are using straight-up HTML.
Google provides some markup (an HTML comment to be exact) that will tell the Googlebot where to look for content and where to stop looking. My suggestion is to put this markup into your WordPress template wrapping “The Loop.”
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
Use that for any other key sections of content as well (although, I think for most applications, wrapping the Loop should cover the main content for the page). If you have some material that you want to make sure Googlebot ignores completely, you can wrap that with
<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
It may take some time for you to begin seeing changes (Googlebot will need to revisit), but this implementation should help you improve the relevancy of ads shown on your site and, hopefully, more clicks.
Good Luck!
