Does Google Adsense Keyword tool work for fiction?

1. 84

   Aya Katzposted 14 years ago

   I thought I might try to monetize a very old hub of mine, which is a short story (The Punky Wunkies).
   Currently, the keywords I am using are:
   "arts, Israel, short story, musicals, circumcision, freedom of religion, ATF, the first amendment, Branch Davidians, Establishment Clause, how to find friends, the Mount Carmel Massacre, the perfect marriage problem, Israelis and Jews."
   
   None of that has gotten me any traffic for that hub in a long time, so I went to Google Adsense Keyword tool to get better keywords. I used the "website content" option and input the Punky Wunkies' url. I was really surprised that most of the suggested keywords were about making money, while a small minority were about getting an ex back. (Examples: how to make money, how to make money at home, how to make money fast...how to get rich quick, get my ex back, get my boyfriend back, get my girlfriend back, etc...)
   
   Should I heed the advice of the Google Adsense Keyword tool? It's not what the story is about. But it might get traffic. My question: is it ethical? Will it backfire? Does the Tool give the same advice for every short story?

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   1. 72

      livewithrichardposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I have to tell you Aya, it's going to be very hard to target any relevant ads for that story.  First off, it's over 10,000 words on part 1.  To get relevant ads from Google you'll need a keyword density of 3% to 8%  That means, for any keyword you want to target it has to appear in your story 300 to 800 times, unless I did my math wrong..lol  Run your keywords through the Adwords Traffic Estimator https://adwords.google.com/select/Traff … torSandbox  find the top 2 paying keywords and then write a 50 word unique summary to replace the summary you have. Don't make any changes to the content of the story and don't try to go back and stuff some keywords in the body of the text.
      
      You may want to break it up too into several text modules and use those keywords as the module header.  You can make these changes without it affecting its indexing by the search engines. 
      
      Would you mind sharing what your daily traffic is on that hub? I only ask because you might want to consider another way to monetize other than adsense.  Amazon, perhaps, or self publish a book on Lulu.com and direct your readers on how to purchase it through your hub.

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2. 63

   Mishaposted 14 years ago

   did you mean Adwords?

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3. 84

   Aya Katzposted 14 years ago

   Misha, yes, I meant "Adwords"

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4. 63

   Mishaposted 14 years ago

   Cool, that's what I thought, just wanted to make sure
   
   Well, as any tool this one may be tricky, and you should use your discretion when analyzing the results. If your hub is not about making money, you just discard related words.

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5. 84

   Aya Katzposted 14 years ago

   Misha, it's also not about getting an ex back. So... if I use my discretion, I'll have to discard just about everything they suggest. Except possibly this one: "outrageous mastery". I've no idea what it means, but it sounds interesting!

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6. 63

   Mishaposted 14 years ago

   I just went and took a look. Yeah, looks like the tool does not have a remote idea what your hub is about. No, definitely don't use the words it gives you now.
   
   I am still puzzled to why, cause usually it is more or less accurate, but in this case it is completely off, and I have no idea where it takes those words from.

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   1. 84

      Aya Katzposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Misha, I've never tried the tool before on fiction. It just might be the case that the semantic analysis the Google linguists have built into their tool is not sophisticated enough to make out what the topic of a fictional work is.

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      1. 63

         Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Well, if you try to copy and paste the text of the hub into the tool (it has such an option, too) and filter out money and work, you get much more useful results
         
         And sorry, I have no idea why they are bullying you about your money making hub.

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   2. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Possibly because there are no advertisers on those subjects?

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7. 0

   EmpressFelicityposted 14 years ago

   Hi Aya
   
   A while back, someone posted a link to this YouTube video on the forums:
   
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJIAh9uCt4c
   
   I found it REALLY helpful (not that I've seen any financial results to speak of yet though LOL).  From what I can gather, the key thing to do is put a high-paying, low competition and reasonably high-traffic keyword/phrase in your title (and also the URL if you're creating a hub from scratch). 
   
   Other, more expert people than I will be able to provide supplementary info I'm sure.

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   1. 84

      Aya Katzposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Empress Felicity, thanks for the video. I watched it, and I think I understand the reasoning. But it works better for non-fiction, I would imagine, than for fiction. It's not a good idea to spell out exactly what a story is about in the title -- not even possible to do so, most of the time!

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      1. 0

         EmpressFelicityposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         I take your point LOL - I have a hard enough time creating titles for my hubs, all of which (apart from one) are non fiction!
         
         Purely as a reader, I prefer titles that make one guess and pique one's curiosity.  However, having titles like that is one thing that AFAICT is *not* a good idea when it comes to monetisation.  Oh, well.

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8. 84

   Aya Katzposted 14 years ago

   In a related story, I just got an email from Google saying they've disabled ads to my "The Secret to Making Money on Hubpages" hub. The reason they gave:
   
   
   "As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted toplace Google ads on sites with content related to programs offering
   incentives to click links or ads, read emails, or surf other websites.
   This would include, for instance, auto-surf sites, pay-to-read email
   networks, and sites comparing various pay-to-click programs."
   
   Did I do that?

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   1. 72

      livewithrichardposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Aya, I went to the hub in question and your hub is fine, its the hubs you link to that may be in question.  The second one on your list tells people to click on the section of the ad that says "google ads"  Now part of google's software tells the spiders to search for words like that just to see if publishers are trying to cheat the system.  The spiders cannot read the context of the content only the words.  That author is not telling people to click the ads to cheat, he's telling them to click the portion of the ad that will reveal more information about the advertiser.
      
      Personally, I would delete those links as they add nothing to your hub other than a reason to click away to earn for some other author.  I would also change the title of the hub by adding the words "What is" to the front of it.  As it is right now, searchers are looking for your "secrets" only to find out you have none.  Also, if you don't change the title, that's fine too as it will still give people a reason to click away, hopefully through an ad and not another hub link.

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9. 84

   Aya Katzposted 14 years ago

   Livewithrichard, I'll take your advice and try to eliminate the offending link. Should I notify Google that I've done this? Or will their spiders automatically decide that all is well and reinstate me?

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   1. 72

      livewithrichardposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      After you have made your changes, you might want to contact Google to let them know the offending links have been removed.  If that does not work then another route to take would be to remove the hub completely and start over with another URL. Just change up some text so it wont trigger any duplicate content that will remain in the search engine cache for a while.

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10. 84

    Aya Katzposted 14 years ago

    Livewithrichard, what is the best way to contact Google? I would just reply to their email by it's one of those "noreply" emails, where they talk to you, but you don't get to talk back. ;->

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    1. 72

       livewithrichardposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       The best way to contact them is through their Adsense Forum.  https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py

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11. 84

    Aya Katzposted 14 years ago

    Livewithrichard, thanks!

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12. 0

    shazwellynposted 14 years ago

    would this be appropriate... short stories, short stories online, fiction, stories for, (theme of the story)?

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13. 84

    Aya Katzposted 14 years ago

    Shazwellyn, yes that might be good.
    
    I was just so surprised that the keyword tool came up with such off-topic keywords. I can, of course, come up with "short story" and the correct theme or topics of the story. I've done that, in fact. But Google's keywords tool had helped me in the past to find unexpected but perfectly appropriate keywords that I would not have thought of myself. It was a shock that it failed so miserably in identifying the topic of my story.
    
    But yes, your suggestions are good, and I'll include the variations on short story that I hadn't thought of. Thanks!

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14. 69

    Jerilee Weiposted 14 years ago

    I think of the tool as more of a "possible suggestions" and somewhat like a translation program, in that it is going to most certainly misunderstand, especially on topics that aren't clear cut and pretty much useless when it comes to most fiction, poetry, etc.
    
    Then, there is another factor -- the whole topic of friendship, friends, etc. on the Internet is one of those areas that is way too popular and too commercial -- leading to low $ words.
    
    If I had been choosing tags from the tool, still I would have gone for the simpler concept words and tried:
    
    Israel
    Ann Arbor
    Village Green
    mutual understanding between friends
    how to find friends
    definition of friendship
    find a friend
    friendship gifts
    find friendship
    real friendship
    friend
    looking for a friend
    find fiends
    the meaning of friendship
    mutual understanding
    
    I could be way off and I'm also real sure that you'd have to be careful that some of those words didn't give you ads that you don't want in terms of inappropriate.  I'd be interested to see what adsense words others would suggest to you.
    
    
    BTW I still think that this fiction was some of your best on hubpages and so much more deserving of higher traffic.  Still think it should be broken up with pictures for easier reading.

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