A few days back I wrote a piece called What are the most expensive search terms? and talked a bit about the Google Keyword Tools which allows you to see how much keywords are worth. It’s designed to allow marketing professionals gauge the value of an ad campaign by allowing them to see which words are valuable and the volume of traffic which searches for a given keyword or key phrase but it can also be used by online publishers to make money online by understanding how to traffic shape our blogs for better keyword performance.

How does it work?

The tool allows you to select a number of factors when reviewing the value of a website or keyword pattern, first you may select the specific countries or language of traffic, this allows you to focus on a particular market when posting ads to potential blogs but that’s not what we want … after all as a blog owner I don’t mind if I make money from people surfing in Australia or Austria right? So the first thing you’ll want to do when setting your sights on new keywords is change the default settings from United States to All Countries and Territories. This will allow you to see the whole world’s value.

Next, as you can see from the graphic above you’ll want to review your existing website content for keywords. Specific descriptive words and phrases are great for people who want to sell something but as a blog publisher, you to understand what Google currently thinks your website is about so that you can assess how to steer your blog in the future.

For example, when I search for keywords on thisismyurl.com, I receive a list of keywords that Google believes I am blogging about. They are: make money on the (7), how to make money (6), way to make money (6), make money online (6), work at home (7), work from home (5), make money (30), to make (5), how to (8), at home (7), money making (18), from home (6), data entry (9), earn money (7), money (19), online (8), blog (10), business (6), website (7), Miscellaneous keywords (23)

Ironically, if you’d asked me what my website was about I’d have told you that it was about organic marketing, wordpress or even SEO before I’d have told you it was about making money online, so it just goes to show how cool this tool really is.

Making money with the data

The next part of the puzzle is to look at the Estimated Cost Per Click (CPC) for keywords on the site but there’s a trick here, by default it’s not shown! Once you have the Estimated CPC column showing, you’re almost done. The next key to truly understanding the value of your keywords is to switch the Match Type to Exact (you can just see it in the graphic here). That will make sure the data you’re looking at is for exactly what you think you’re looking at.

The resulting list will provide you with a breakdown of both the estimated value per click and the number of times that keyword appears in Google’s search results for a given time period. For example, the phrase how to make money on the internet is worth $4.01 and is searched for 9,900 times globally in a given month. Sounds pretty good right? Well it is, except coming soon (which I just put up a free template for) is worth $1.30 and is searched for 201,000 times. Which is worth more? Luckily I’m pretty good with basic business math so here’s a comparison:

1. $4.01 x 9,900 = $39,699 
2. $1.30 x 201,000 = 261,300

So using basic high school math, it’s easy to determine that a website would be much better off focusing it’s content on lower value keywords with a higher search percentage unless the total accumulated value of a keyword family outweigh the value of an isolated phrase. Let me explain. while an isolated keyword comparison would imply that coming soon is a superior subject to blog about (and earn money from) the phrase appears only once in the hundred phrases Google analyzed vs. dozens of variations of the phrase how to make money on the internet which while independently do not add up to much, combined far exceed an isolated phrase.

Looking at how to make money in Numbers

To compare the real value of key phrases and the true potential for making money on the Internet it’s important to look at numbers outside the Keyword Tools, for that I export the data into Apple Numbers, a spread sheet tool which allows me to group key phrases and do rapid data modeling to determine the most profitable avenue for an online site. In the case of my own blog, the top ten keyword patterns shape up to look like this:

While the above graph doesn’t group keywords and phrases into select groups it does provide an immediate and staggering visual tool to truly comprehend the value of some keywords over others. While combining keyword phrases would lower the impact, the keyword AdSense is clearly the most substantial value at nearly $10 million per month in AdWord placements.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this rather basic breakdown of my own website and I hope it gives you some insight into how to make money online with Google AdSense yourself. As always, I’m rather shameless in my self promotion and would love to remind you that I’m available for onsite consultation anywhere in the world assuming the temperature there is between 82° and 96°.