One day I almost broke $200: AdSense!

India (SANEPR.com) July 17, 2008 -- 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 I just wanted to get some free traffic to my website so I could start selling the it.

Triple Your Income with Ad Layout Changes

I had been making about $600 per month from Google AdSense for a long time. As I was researching traffic and revenue techniques, I ran across a tip on how to triple your adsense income (by tripling clickthrough rate).

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

I then wrote keyword-optimized articles on 90 keyphrases I had found. This led to a 150% increase in traffic - no small feat considering that my website already had 300 articles.

The following month, I averaged $98 per day from AdSense - I had some days above $100, and one day I almost broke $200. I was getting pretty excited. I felt I had broken a code, 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 had ranked well against those that hadn't. I also compared those that brought in traffic as expected and those that didn't, despite ranking well.

I 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 overvalues demand and only reflects the 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 darned vulnerable, and 99% vulnerable is nearly a done deal. Using this equation helped me reduce inefficiency and increase my success rate with rankings, thus increasing traffic and revenue opportunities.

Partner with Writers to Increase Volume of Web Pages

The next major development was my response to discovering there was an immense number of vulnerable keywords to write about. I couldn't possibly write about all of them. So I found freelance writers who were willing to profit share with me. I gave them 50% of the adsense earnings on any article they submitted. But they could only write on 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 in your web page. I worked on this quite a bit as well. 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 that occurred, I kept tracking statistics, rankings, success rate, etc.

I fine-tuned the vulnerability equation. I discovered which topics get advertisements that no one clicks on. And I learned some things about what kind of writing leads to better click through rates.