The AdSense system is a great keyword and SEO research tool. With the AdSense Keyword Tool, a content publisher can:

• Identify search trends
• Estimate cost per click
• Evaluate the competition
• Above all - locate great content rich keywords!

In this Hub, we look at all of the above, from first principles, to help new AdSense users get the most out o fthe experience. In addition, we help content producers anticipate targeted keyphrases.

The initial AdSense page invites the user to enter the keyword, and usually some captcha text to avoid abuse by bots and online software. Although it is possible to enter multiple keywords, for beginning users it might be better to just enter one or two.

In the following screen shot, we have entered 'valentine day flower' as our starting point.

In the initial results page, the most useful columns are:

• Keywords - the search terms that AdSense has found that advertisers are bidding for;
• Advertiser Competition - how many advertisers are bidding for the keyword;
• Avg Search Volume - the amount of times the keyword has been used in a Google search.

This is shown in the following format:

Potential Advertisers looking for a good value for money PPC keyword should look for those keywords where the search volume is relatively high, and the advertiser competition relatively low. These will attract the lowest PPC bids.

Site Owners looking to generate revenue from AdSense advertising, should look for those keywords where the search volume is average, and the advertiser competition as high as possible. This gives a good balance between search engine visiblity and average PPC income.

Content Producers using AdSense to research power niches should look for those keywords with high advertiser competition, but low search volumes. These may well be emerging niches that can be easily dominated, thus gaining good search engine positioning.

The initial results page only gives a vague idea about the cost per click, in terms of advertiser competition. To conduct proper research,it is necessary to obtain the actual AdSense estimated CPC.

This is a two stage process. Firstly, the correct column must be selected from the 'Filter my results' area of the screen, as shown below.

Next, an anticipated maximum CPC should be entered (in the correct currency). For those researching actual CPC, then this number should be the value that is available to fund the AdSense project.

For those researching anticipated income through a share of the CPC, then this value can be set as high as the system allows - $100 is a good starting point.

This is shown below.

Finally, having clicked 'Recalculate', the results are displayed. To make evaluation easier, the 'Estimated Avg. CPC' can be used to sort the results.

The user should first click the column heading to select it, and wait until the list reloads, and a little black arrow appears next to the column heading. Then, clicking the heading again will sort the column correctly from highest to lowest value.

This is shown below.

The 'Filter my results' area allows the user to remove columns that they find are not useful. For example, when researching keywords for content, it is often useful to remove everything except:

• Estimated Avg. CPC
• Avg. Search Volume

And to add:

• Search Volume Trends

This last is very handy in spotting seasonal variations. In general, for heavily seasonal items, the content needs to be indexed with high visibility in the month preceding the peak search volume.

For the 'valentine day flower' keyword, this means getting idexed in December/January, as the peak seach volume tends to be in February, as evidenced by the following graphic:

While this is useful, it might also be good to build a content web around a specific theme (flowers, flower delivery, etc.) to make the most of the research done to create the content.

Looking further down the AdSense results, we note the following:

From the above, the content producer might select a collection of high paying keyword terms, with search volumes that are non-seasonal, and create a content web of interlinked pages - following the Butterfly paradigm, for example.

In doing so, the content producer can make the most of the keyword research and articles that they put together to garner a web presence to generate revenue.