How do I Control Ad Relevancy? What is Optimal Ads per Page?

[bostonseo]

I know these questions are answered somewhere in this vast forum, but honestly I've spent an hour and could not find my answers - probably because the answers are so obvious.

My website is essentially a directory for doctors. Most people arrive at my website because they searched something like 'chiropracter in chicago' and they arrive on my chicago page. I have thousands of pages on my website - 1 for almost every city in the U.S.

My questions:
I just put an ad on my city pages and the ad that is being served is for apartments in this city. Can I control which ads get served? Say I don't want apartment ads, I want restaurant ads...how can I control this (if possible) - or does Google rotate ads from various industries?

Seconds question:
Right now I am planning on just implementing the 460x80 banner ad for the top of my webpage. Should I really ad other text ads to my pages? Is there a 'recommended' number of ads per page? I think I've read that 3 is a good number.

Thanks in advance.

[FourDegreez]

Google is going to show the ads that its algorithm thinks will generate the most money. As far as I know, you don't have control over it, although you can put your most important content within these tags:
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

And put your least important content within these:
<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

Again that's my understanding of how those tags work, so if I'm wrong someone please correct me! Apparently these tags give Google a clue as to what your page is about.

As far as banner placement goes, check out the Google heat map (https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html) and decide what you think will work for your pages.

By the way, do you use affiliates? There's an affiliate program on CJ that matches people with doctors in their area and gives reports and so on, which would probably do well on your site.

[anand84]

FourDegreez, I had previously answered the same thing. But I feel BostonSEO already knew these stuff. He probably wanted to know about rotating of ads and choosing the kind of ads to choose provided the same keyword.

[hunderdown]

bostonseo, Google serves the ads based on the keywords on your page and available ad inventory. If your page targets "Chicago," and doesn't say anything about restaurants OR apartments, the algorithm will serve up ads for which the advertisers bid on "Chicago." Some of those may be apartments, some may be restaurants, some may be lawyers. If you provide content with more specific keywords on the page, you may get more targeted ads.

Re the # of adblocks, 3 is the maximum and may not always pay the best. Some people find that one adblock works best because it displays the top 4 highest paying ads. If you add two more blocks and thus 8 more ads, the CTR may go up, but your EPC may go down, because you've added 8 ads that don't pay as well.

Experiment!

[bostonseo]

My ad on the homepage is for Katrina Hurricane Relief Donations - which has nothing to do with my website. Is there any way to prevent these ads aside from adding the website of the ad from my blocked website list?

[londrum]

that sounds like a public service ad (...it might not be though)
it throws those up if there are no relevant ads for it to serve.

you can turn those off if you want, and replace them with anything you like.
but you need to rewrite your content and put some keywords in, so it serves up a proper ad.