All of my keyword research/analysis and search engine optimization skills suddenly came together in October 2004.

I had just written my first book and just wanted to get some free traffic to my website so I could start selling it.

Triple your income with ad design changes

I had been earning around $600 per month from Google AdSense for a long time. While researching traffic and earnings techniques, I came across a tip on how to triple your AdSense earnings (by tripling your click-through rate).

I implemented the change (relax, I’ll put all the tips below) and it worked! I went from $20 a day to $40, $50 and $60 a day, with the same amount of traffic! My click through rate actually quadrupled in 10 days.

I then wrote keyword-optimized articles on 90 keyword phrases I had found. This led to a 150% increase in traffic, which is no small feat when you consider that my website already had 300 articles.

The next month I averaged $98 a day from AdSense – I had a few days above $100 and one day I almost broke $200. I was getting pretty excited. I felt like I had cracked a code, I finally developed a cash system that worked. Google was my new favorite sugar daddy!

Get better rankings and more traffic by targeting only vulnerable keywords

I got into the math of keywords: I looked at those 90 keywords and compared the ones that ranked well with the ones that didn’t. I also compared the ones that brought traffic as expected and the ones that didn’t, despite ranking well.

I have developed a keyword evaluation equation that I believe is superior to KEI. I’ve written elsewhere about the weaknesses of KEI: It can tell you the value of a keyword, but not every site can compete on every keyword. Because it overestimates demand and only reflects exact match supply, it doesn’t help new websites identify their most vulnerable targets.

My equation, which calculates the “vulnerability” of a keyword. Vulnerability is expressed as a percentage, so 95% is good, 97% is pretty vulnerable, and 99% vulnerable is almost a done deal. Using this equation helped me reduce inefficiency and increase my success rate with rankings, thereby increasing traffic and revenue opportunities.

Partner with writers to increase the volume of web pages

The next big thing was my response to discovering that there were a huge number of vulnerable keywords to write about. I couldn’t write about all of them. So I found freelance writers who were willing to share the profits with me. I gave them 50% of the AdSense earnings on any article they submitted. But they could only write about the keywords I gave them, and they had to include the keyword in specific places.

That’s the other key to website ranking success: putting your keywords in the right place on your web page. I also worked quite a bit on this. As time went on, I got more and more writers, some of whom were very prolific, writing 100 or more articles in a few months.

With everything going on, I kept tracking stats, rankings, hit rate, etc…

I adjusted the vulnerability equation. Find out which topics get ads that no one clicks on. And I learned a few things about what kind of writing leads to better click-through rates.

Follow me for huge online profit boosts

In just 6 months, we published 2,000 articles, increased monthly page views more than 5x from 100,000 to 525,000, and increased earnings to $21,398.85.

How did we do it? There are so many details that it would take a whole book to cover it all, which is why I’ve been writing one on this topic, but here are some helpful tips to get you started:

1. Get gold with more precise keyword targeting: make sure the monthly demand is at least 300. I’m withholding my vulnerability equation right now for those who will buy my ebook when it launches, but I’ll tell you the gist: check the existing page supply on Google for the keyword in quotes and not in quotes; this takes care of exact match and partial match, respectively, and both are essential. If one or the other is too high, the keyword is likely to be too competitive.

The thresholds I put into the vulnerability equation are based on my PR5 site, but for newer sites you can only use the 99% or higher vulnerability keywords.

2. Increase traffic with more extensive keyword optimization: no spam or stuffing, write the entire keyword phrase (exactly as search engines write it) at least 5 times in your article. Include it in the meta keywords, meta description, 1 or 2 alternative images and in the tag. Write a tag that not only includes the keyword (just once) but also looks interesting to searchers in the search results. It’s also a good idea to have your keyword in an h1 tag and bold somewhere. Finally, if you aim for a word count of about 566 words per page, you will please 4 of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista).

3. Increase profits considering the profitability of the keywords: Not all niches and not all keywords are equally profitable. For example, I found that sports keywords didn’t drive many clicks, presumably because when fans search for game scores, they probably aren’t looking to buy a baseball cap. Also, famous people (perhaps with the exception of musicians) generally don’t generate profitable clicks, because people generally just want news or free images. The most profitable niches will be those in which the best information is not easily available, that require some specialized tools or services, etc. I found that health and electronics keywords were above average in profitability. Again, there are ways to get numbers for the monetary value of keywords. Can you guess what? I’ll explain this in more detail in a special report after the ebook is fully resolved.

4. Increase profits by improving ad placement: Google has added many new options to the layout code; I suggest you try multiple channels to see what works best. Regardless of what I suggest below, testing is the key to all online success, whether you want rankings, traffic, or profit. The Internet offers precise and detailed metrics: use them.

The tip that initially tripled my AdSense earnings was: Place a 250 x 250 ad in the horizontal center of your page, above the fold, and make sure the border is white.

I’ve found that it’s important to make your ads look like any other part of your site. Ads are valuable, but if they look like ads, people will ignore them. So make sure the color scheme of your ads is the same as your site. Since you can put 3 ads on a page, I would suggest one in the center (as mentioned above), a skyscraper on the left or right side, and a wide banner at the bottom of the page.

That’s a lot of meat to sink your teeth into. I’ve learned a lot more, but another time, another article… Good profit hunting!

🙂