This is the question I have been asking myself when it comes to SEO and Adsense earnings. I have searched the internet and read a ton of articles trying to figure this out. Then, the other night, the light bulb came on and for me; the difference between tags and keywords was illuminated.

First of all, I am going to throw out my understanding of keywords and tags along with the difference and how they are or should be used.

Keywords: When writing for article posting sites or blogs and such, you do not list keywords in the submission of the article. Keywords are, in my opinion, a hit and miss thing contained in the article itself. It took me a while to realize this. You can optimize your article with keywords that you have researched in Google's Keyword Tool by using the high paying or most common words in your article though. Let me explain how I believe this works; Google scans your text, does its magic and decides what words are keywords and what keywords to attach which ads to. You are not in control, you can aid in the process, but Google is in control.

Advertisers choose keywords based on the search popularity of the word. The advertiser budgets for Adwords. This budget is analyzed for best income to expense ratio, after the analysis the advertiser decides which words to link their ad to and how much they are willing to spend for that ad link, if clicked. Depending on that analysis, advertisers may pay little for popular words and pay more for less popular words, but words more focused on their product or information. The thing is, higher paying does not necessarily mean more earnings. If only one person is looking for something, your potential for earning the pay per click is one, however, if 10 people are looking for the same thing, you have the potential to earn that pay per click 10 times!

The goal is to get the keywords that you believe will bring the high paying or most often paying ads to your article or blog by using them in your writing. There is a rule of thumb I have read in several different places and that is; use keywords at least three times in your article, preferably in the beginning, middle and end.

Tags: Now, some people use tags as keywords or vice versa, but they really are more than keywords. Tags are an identifier; they help identify what the article is about.

Think adjective; descriptive words, words that add information to a noun or pronoun. Tags are article adjectives. They are words or phrases that describe the contents of the article. Sometimes tags and keywords are the same word or phrase, but Google identifies them differently in its use for Adsense ad placement and search engine optimization (SEO).

For example, I have written an article called "Where Do We Learn Morals", one of the keywords used in the article is; morals, which has high advertising competition, (more ads available for the word) a CPC of $.71, which is actually an average payout of what the advertisers are willing to pay for clicked ads attached to the keyword. Also, the search volume is in the hundred thousands. However, the word moral is in the millions for search volume, and the CPC is $.58, so even though the CPC is lower, there are more searches for moral than morals. This tells me I should use both the plural and singular forms of moral for maximum earning potentials. I may need to adjust a sentence or two to change the word to singular form to accomplish the keyword use "rule of thumb" though. This is the tweaking of the article that people talk about.

So, you have your keywords chosen and have them maximized in your article, used at least three times, once in the beginning, middle and end of your article. Now it is time to post your article.

In most content-posting editors, there is a box for Tags. This is where you use your adjectives to describe what the article is about. This also has to be in a sort of "shorthand" fashion because you cannot use paragraphs, words and short phrases only. They need not be contained in the article itself, but describe what the article is about. For example, using the above article, I can use the learning morals or moral lessons as a tag. This describes the article and also contains a keyword.

Now that I have a better understanding of the difference between keywords and tags, I'm going to try to tweak my articles in the future and watch my earnings soar! : )