The hardest part in getting a website off the ground purely for Google Adsense, known as a ‘mini-site’, is coming up with a topic that hasn’t already been done to death and then researching your keywords with the likes of WordTracker and Overture, and so on. In comparison, writing the content is a doddle…relatively.
Google Adsense is great; it’s basically free money once you have invested some time. If you already have a website that is selling a product, pasting some html code into the pages only takes minutes and you have paying ads immediately. But what we’re talking about here is Adsense targeted pages.
Perhaps the best advice for copywriting for Adsense is to not provide the entire skinny on the topic you are writing about; simply give people a taster so that they will hopefully click a related ad on your page in thinking that the site they are clicking through to will teach them further.
Google doesn’t actually care how your copy is written. It doesn’t penalise you for not mimicking the writing prowess of William Shakespeare. Google works by looking at the distribution of your keywords on the page, keyword density, is the keyword in the title and page name, and originality, and so on.
Aesthetically-speaking, the reason you want your site to look good is for the visitor, whom on pondering your site for the few nanoseconds it takes for the human brain to decide whether your site is any good or not, will stay there, browse the content and click on an ad if they feel enlightened.
You don’t particularly need to worry about making it pretty for return customers, as people who keep coming back to your pages are less likely to click on an ad anyway; which is the whole purpose of making the site in the first place. What you want are unique visitors to the site and to get them to click through.
A few basic tips on copywriting for Google Adsense:
The first couple of paragraphs are the most important, particularly the very first one. It’s great that you have written thousands of words on the subject that you know inside out, but unless you sound convincing on the first paragraph, there is a greater chance your visitors will hit the back button.
The first paragraph should be a catchy intro/overview of the entire article in about 50 words, or two or three sentences. Aim for originality as the search engines love fresh content, and besides, there are copyright issues that may see your site banned when caught plagerising. The odd generic sentence won’t really be an issue, but if you copy entire paragraphs and pages of unique and high-profile content, then watch your back.
About 300 words per page is a good amount to aim for, which is about the optimum for getting the correct keyword density on a page. Any less than 200 words and Google, et al, will give that page less weight as it assumes, perhaps incorrectly, that you cannot possibly describe a topic with this meagre amount of words.
Your chosen keyword phrase should appear several times in the text, but not too much as that is considered spamming and will likely fetch you a penalty. A ball park figure is about twice in the first paragraph, twice in the last one and perhaps once in the other paragraphs; one or two of which should feature your chosen keyword phrase rewritten slightly differently.
Target only one keyword phrase per page – it’s not a good idea to target single keywords, unless unique, as they are already very highly contested. Bold type the keywords a few times throughout the content; this will help the search engines and may also halt a roving eye. Use bullet points when listing several topics to break up the monotony of sentences and paragraphs; unlike the way this page is written.
Punctuation and grammar should be kept fairly tight, although, again, don’t kill yourself on this as Google won’t mind if you miss a comma here and there. As long as the copy is flowing and the reader doesn’t think you are a complete amateur. Just be mindful of your ‘your’ and ‘you’re’, and your ‘it’s’ and ‘its’, and so on, as faltering here really will make your site look amateurish.
Refrain from putting too many graphics on your pages, as many people are still on dial-up and any longer than a few seconds for your page to load up and it is likely the visitor will hit the back button. The same goes for those pages with the likes of ‘Enter Site Here’ once you have already clicked through from the SERPs…annoying to say the least.
Following these basic pointers will help you construct copy for attracting Google Ads more efficiently. If you are selling a product on your site, however, you will need it to sound as enticing as possible to attract visitors and to keep them coming back.
Many people will even struggle with copywriting for Adsense, let alone for a site that needs to sound professional and refined. By far the easiest way to get your site off the ground in this case, is to acquire the services of a professional copywriting website and also have them do your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to help boost your pages up the rankings quickly.
Good luck…
