It's actually a decent question that is hard to answer.

Assuming you want to use Adsense and want to target "high paying" keywords... who doesn't. The your best bet is:

Log into an Adwords account and do your keyword research to see how much a keyword phrase would cost you to advertise.

Target the expensive keywords... obviously.

But it's more involved than that.

Next you want to one at a time type those keywords in to Google and look at the Paid Inclusion areas at the Top and Right in Google search.

Look at both the number of Advertisers and the Names and URL's of the Advertisers.

What you want to know is this: Are there a lot of Advertisers using these keywords - YES is what you want, NO then you should probably pass.

Are those Advertisers Name Brand Companies or something you have never heard of? If they are Name Brand are the ads a spot on match to the keyword intent. For Example Ads from General Motors for cars would be good. Ads for Target or Shopping Comparison Services or Ebay would be bad. This is very important if you want to make money.

Now you need to also know that just becaue a Keyword Costs the Advertiser a lot doesn't mean Google will pay you a lot. While they claim a 68% payout on context ads they may not charge the Advertiser much for the placement on your site depending on the Advertising options which you will not see.

So you should also be thinking of targeting Industries who have a high Margin Product. Insurance is a good example because it's expensive and renews. It's in their interest to spend a lot to acquire a customer because the payout is large and will likely be renewed over time.

Then you need to make a site that Google values so it will stick and people will use those links.

That's pretty much the basics.

There is a whole art to placement, colors, and saturation which also comes into play.

Hi Matt,

It wasn't real clear in your post whether you are asking about AdWords or AdSense. :confused: I am going to go with the answer for AdSense.

First you want to choose a niche that has a lot of competition for a product or service with a relatively high average profit/price. Then optimize for keywords within that niche that have high commercial intent.

The real key is to develop lots of highly targeted traffic to those select keywords. If you build a high demand for your ad space you will earn high average CPC.

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