Me and a friend have just started a website at http://www.humerus.co.uk/ and we were hoping to cover the costs of hosting and advertising with a few ads. However I cannot seem to get them to be targeted properly. I get the strangest ads. Thank you for your time. Help appreciated.

Harry Hillier

It sometimes takes a little time for google to start delivering targeted adverts.

Ok thanks for that. I'll start worrying in a few months then if they're still not targetting properly. I'll just keep my fingers crossed until then.

dont google target adds using keywords to ur sites ... i mean i put adds to my friends website about cell phone repair and the adds being showed up there are about hotels .... though i have put adds just yesterday morning .... should i also wait and watch ..... ????
i m new to all this .... but there must be some thing i can do ....

From my own experience it takes AdSense about a week or two to determine what your site is about and start delivering more relevant ads. They won't always be perfect though. For example if I write a page about search traffic or driving traffic to your site I might get a lot of ads relating to driving schools.

You can try using section targeting to direct mediabot a little. Before doing anything though I'd wait a week or two and see if the ads become more relevant on their own. There are lots of times the ads on my site are not very targeted to my page or site, but when I check back a day or so later they become more targeted.

The system isn't perfect though.

You can also try using keywords in your page title, page headings, and in the words near to where the ads are going to appear.

Make sure that Google can figure out what your page or site is about from the content that you have. If you have a lot of graphics, for example, Google can't determine the topic of your site from graphics. Make sure the topic of your site is reflected in your page titles, meta tags, image ALT parameters, and frequently in your content.

Or you should start an Adwords campaing. It's very good for targeted visitors.

True about AdWords, but the question here is about getting targeted AdSense ads on a publisher site. Unless I'm mistaken I don't think it's about getting targeted visitors.

But you are right that AdWords, if set up right, can send targeted traffic to your site.

Oh, sorry ...

Well, make sure to bold your keywords on the page, put them on your title, you know ... make them "in front".

And Google will display targeted ads.

HazzainUK,

From my own experience with Adsense, I noticed that Google ads for a specific block is affected by the keywords surrounding the block itself, in addition of course to the "Theme of your website". What the guys said previously is correct, but I think G provides you with a little space to control the ads on a block by the keywords that are near the block itself.

So you can manipulate the ads (a little bit remember) by messing with the words around the ad block.

I hope this help.

I do think that will help Leonte. I think most of the same things you would do to optimize a page for search results will also help bring more targeted ads. Sometimes though it just depends on the ads. If there is only one or two ads for the topic then the third has to lose relevancy.

I've been noticing lately that the ads on my own site are seeming less relevant to the specific post and more relevant to my domain name.

You are right too.
BUT. I have a website with 3GP videos.
I've bolded all "3gp" and all "videos" in all articles ... and i dont have any public ads, or any other ads. Only related ...

So ... worked for me

The truth is that you must have a theme ... you know ... a niche ...

Yeah, my problem seems to be that the theme of the overall site is determining the ads. I only have the ads on my blog, which is a different theme from how Google sees the overall site. It's not a big deal to me since I think the ads they are showing have a higher payout than what I would think should be there.

I'll have to experiment more with using semantic code around keywords to see if that helps make the ads more relevant to the post.

Much of it is that I haven't had a lot of time to really test the ads as well as I'd like. All in good time though.

If you're receving different ads than your website content, this will lower the # of clicks that you'll get from your visitors.

That's true. Like I said in my case it's not that the ads are irrelevant, but it seems that the ads are often based more on my domain than on the text on the pages. Since my domain currently has the word hosting in it I get a lot of hosting ads, even though I hardly ever mention the word hosting on words related to hosting on my blog.

I have used section targeting so that only the main content on the page should be included in the relevancy of the ad, but it hasn't seemed to affect anything yet.

It's not a big deal to me at the moment, since there are many other things I want to work on before optimizing AdSense on my site. But it is interesting to see what Google does and doesn't consider relevant. I think the ads that show up can go a long way in determining how Google sees the theme of your site.

I think the number of clicks I get is inline with most sites. On the low side of CTR certainly, but that's to be expected when your audience is mostly tech savvy. Overall though my CTR appears to be inline with what I've heard or seen others mention. Not great, but certainly not bad.

One of these days when I have more time I'll experiment a lot more with the ads and the pages where the ads appear and see if I can contol what does and doesn't get displayed a little more.