A recent announcement by Google has begun to make waves among the blogging community – especially those that are monetizing their properties and making an income via their blogs:

We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content.

This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page.

This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.

The bottom-line here is that Google will start to penalize (reduce search engine results and ranking) those blogs and sites that really abuse their advertising channels above the fold. What is “above the fold” do you ask? It’s any content that your readers can see before they have to start scrolling down your blog.

The picture above shows what content the typical visitor can see when they encounter my blog.

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At this point in time you’ve done a great job of working through how to understand some of the fundamentals of keyword research for your blog and for Adsense. What I want to walk you through very succinctly is how you might do this from the very beginning.

In other words, I’m going to give you a process and/or method for making your blog keyword rich and highly competitive. You can use these principles today in your existing blog or you can apply them to a new one that you’ve been thinking about. What this can do for you is be a method or step-by-step launch checklist for an Adsense-powered blog.

Why is this important? Because if you’re interested in being competitive than you have to be keyword rich so that you can rank high so that you can be competitive so that you can win your market. You’re going to want to make sure that your content is extremely focused and that your entire website oozes these keywords day-in and day-out.

Why is focus so critical? Because it’s how you’re going to beat out the larger sites and long-standing competitors that have been lapping up the keywords (most of which is generally luck or simply being first to market) for a long time.

What could you generally expect from a niche blog? You could make a few dollars a month to a few thousand. The possibilities are really limitless. Ready to get started?

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Fascinating!

It’s helpful to know that Google is continually making Adsense better for both publishers and advertisers as well as for the end consumers – and of course the natural next step is to make advertising social.

Starting last month you may have encountered Google Adsense with Google +1 on them, like the advertisement on the right – have you seen them or encountered them in your browsing experience?

Google shares their thoughts with this new implementation:

Starting in October, the +1 button will begin to appear on display ads on your site. With a single click, people will now be able to endorse specific ads and make them more likely to appear to their social connections.

We believe that these recommendations could lead your readers to notice ads on your site more, leading to more clicks and higher returns for you over time.

Hmm. Really? They continue on in their example:

For example, take Susan, who sees an ad for a good deal on flights.  She +1’s the ad, thinking her friends might value this deal. Now, when Susan’s friends and contacts are signed in to their Google accounts, they’ll be able to see Susan’s picture across the bottom of the ad, with a note saying she +1’d it.

Susan’s friends and contacts will also be more likely to see the ad. While the dynamics of our ad auction aren’t changing, the ad will now be included in the auction for the pages Susan’s friends visit, as we know recommendations from friends can be a strong signal of an ad’s relevance.

Pretty neat if you ask me.

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Maybe you like pennies...

We’ve spent some time on analyzing the keywords that you should research or how you can tell what some of the high value keywords that you should target are but sometimes it’s good to know what you shouldn’t aim for or research as well.

These aren’t catch-all strategies and things to note, however, since you could find yourself starting a new trend or a new pairing of keywords that have never really matched, but these will help you formulate at least some guidelines for you to stay on top of things.

So, here are three that might just be a complete waste of your time:

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The next challenge that you’ll have as you begin to optimize your keywords for Google Adsense is making sure that you’re choosing the right ones that’ll get you ranked and subsequently paid.

See, the problem is that most bloggers are highly uncreative and highly unoriginal – what I mean by that is that most people (the vast, vast majority of bloggers) use the most common keywords available to them instead of coming up with more exact or creative ways to rank.

Competition is not low in demand for these keywords and as a result the existing competition make it near-impossible to rank well in SERPs unless you have the time, resources, money, and wherewithal to execute on them well.

The answer to the keyword ranking problem? It’s quite simple: Do what only you can do and do it well.

What does this mean? It means that you can simply take a look at your existing competition, the strength of your brand and blog, and get a firm grasp on how strong you can compete in the existing ecosystem and environment.

A natural question that most will ask is this: “If it’s that simple then why don’t most bloggers knock it out of the park?” The answer is simple: Most people don’t have the time or patience to do the research and for those that are interested they short-change themselves by using automated systems without knowing really what they’re doing.

So what must you do? A little bit of manual labor is all!

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As you already know the potential for earning some serious bucks with Google Adsense is a reality. Don’t be fooled though – it will take time, effort, and a lot of trial and error to get it right so there’s not easy solution or magic-wand mentality here!

And one of the best ways to help you understand the financial potential is to do some research (using one of the better keyword research tools, of course).

To start you have to understand how Google handles SERPs and how this relates to clicks – an easy way of showing this is the following image:

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This will prove to be a very simple, short, and straight-forward blog post: You will need a keyword research tool to help you navigate the elements of good keyword research and that tool is Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.

Sure, there are tons of so-called “premium” keyword research tools out there that will cost you money but I have found myself going back to this free one over and over and over again. As a result, I think it’s the best and most definitely the best bang for your buck.

The number one reason that I feel it’s the best (besides that it’s free) is that it has proven to be highly accurate – in fact, more accurate than even some paid tools that I’ve used in the past, especially when it comes to Google Adsense.

So, there you have it. Have a ball and keep this in your back-pocket as we continue to move forward through the Adsense Series!

Rock on.

[This is part of the Blogger's Guide to Earning More with Google Adsense.]

This was just a really funny picture of 'competition.'

We’ve been slowly walking through the Adsense Series attempting to truly identify the easy ways in which a blogger can get ramped up without getting too bogged down with technical details or going too far as to impede the creation of great blog content.

What we’re going to do in the next few posts as we get closer to the end is head into a little more “technical” area, but not too much. What we’re going to look into specifically is the science of using keyword research to help you and your Adsense efforts.

Keywords are important. You already knew that. But did you know that they not only help you rank very high but they are, in and of themselves, worth tens of thousands of dollars a month? Even more for some really good ones?

Some keywords aren’t worth beans but others – whew! – can literally pocket you millions. It’s a crazy-interesting world out there and if you’ve just begun looking into things like this you could be rapidly surprised!

To make money with Adsense and specifically keywords you need to evaluate and understand three very important things:

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Part of any professional blogger‘s job is to continue to optimize and experiment with income channels and be willing to risk a lower payout (or a drop in advertising revenue) to explore potential.

It can be tough but I’ve learned that experimentation is one of my greatest assets! And with a little help from @RyanImel, the founder of WPCandy, I’ve gotten a sweet invite to test out his new WordPress Ad Publishing network, Pressed Ads.

Part of the reason I’ve decided to try it out is that it’ll provide much more targeted advertising with very qualified and quality partner organizations, especially since I’m such a big WordPress evangelist!

In addition, it makes advertising a whole lot more simple, and much more clean on the sidebar – in fact, it makes me want to rock that redesign that I’ve been planning for more than a year even sooner to give Pressed Ads an even more prominent position!

But, I’ll get to it eventually.

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