The Content Is King

Content is king! Bet you’ve heard that a few times before, right? It’s an overused phrase that’s lost some of its impact. It’s still true though content is king. And without enough content (and enough of the right kind of content) on your Web site, you might as well toss the keys to your Web domain down the nearest sewer drain because the domain will be worthless.

Think about what’s really motivating you when you surf the Internet. Go ahead pay close attention to what you do the next few times you go online. To help you remember, keep a list of the Web sites you visit and what you do while you’re there. I bet the search for information is the unifying theme to all your Internet sessions. Information is content words, pictures, audio, and video that relay the information you need when you’re online. That’s one of the reasons why search engines like Google have grown exponentially in size and popularity. People want information, and they want the best possible way to get to exactly what they need in the least amount of time.

You can tap into that desire for information and use AdSense to generate a decent income, but only if you have the content that draws visitors to your site in the first place. Your site visitors care about content (or information),and you should, too.

Content draws visitors to your site, and keeps them on your site or causes them to return. Content equals traffic but here’s the catch. Content only translates to traffic if the content is relevant and fresh. Old content or completely unrelated content doesn’t do you any more good than old fish it stinks up the place and makes people want to be somewhere else.

Good content is a good thing I think we can all agree on that. You may ask how good content ties in with AdSense and your desire to turn your Web site into a handy little income stream. It turns out that content is also what Google uses to target ads on your Web site. In fact, Google uses the same technology to target AdSense ads that it uses to create search results. A software program — called a Web crawler, a spyder, or a bot literally counts the number of times different words are used on your site and examines the words surrounding them (the so-called context). Then, using a mathematical equation that would probably take an entire ream of paper to write, the program determines the probability that the site is related to the words used most frequently on the site the site’s keywords. (Smaller, common words, such as a, an, the,and, nor, or, but, and etc., are completely ignored by the crawler.)

Then the content on your site broken down to the keyword level is used to determine which ads are appropriate for your site. The keyword value how much someone is willing to pay to have their related ad shown in your ad space determines how valuable the ads for your site are to you, howappropriate they are, and how valuable they can be to your site visitors. Run a site that’s largely graphical in nature lots of images, in other words and Google has a hard time placing the right ads on the site. What you end up with instead are public service announcements, which are nice enough,I suppose if you’re not interested in making money, because they take up space but generate no income.

My sense is that your interest in AdSense might be tied up with making a bit of green on the side. If that’s so, keep the following mantra in mind: “Content is a big deal. Content is king. Content is site traffic. Content is money in your pocket if it’s done right.” Content done right starts with building the right type of Web site.