How can I make my adsense adverts relevant?

Not as straightforward as it sounds - low "content" site.

[downhiller80]

I have a VERY popular site. It doesn't get much traffic as it's in a niche market, but the traffic it gets is high quality. The problem is 90% of the pages have very little "content" as such.

The site has lots of data on it (and that's what the users come for), but I've not cluttered the page with paragraphs of text (as it's unnecessary for the users, and would be very repetitive across the site). For instance there's 4000 different pages of data, so if I were to write a block of text basically just for adsense, it would be the same block on each page, and my users would quite rightly think it rubbish.

Obviously adding such content and hiding it from the users is a big no-no, I assume?

Does adsense pay any attention to the meta description tag? What about if I put title tags on my <h2>s etc?

Any other suggestions?

cheers

[londrum]

there's other stuff you can do like <legends>, <captions>, and summary attributes in the table and form tags, if you use those. you can put titles on <th> cells as well, and do a <tfoot> with text in it.
and you can hide all of these legitimately, because people use them for blind users, and for when people print the page out.

[downhiller80]

OK cool, for some reason I thought adsense only cared about VISIBLE content, and would ignore all of this hidden stuff. I'll get busy then - a lot of it is stuff I need to do to improve my SEO anyway.

[farmboy]

Do you currently have AdSense on this site and if "Yes", how is it performing? I have a site that is similar to what you describe and I get really good targeted ads.

Don't forget that whatever ads you see when you visit your site may not be what others see when they visit.

And don't forget to check to see if there is a supply of ads for the topic of your site.

FarmBoy

[wyweb]

Also think about section targeting and weight ignore.

<!-- google_ad_section_start --> (CONTENT STARTS HERE) 
<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) --> (SENTENCE TO IGNORE) 
<!-- google_ad_section_end --> (END OF SENTENCE TO IGNORE) 
<!-- google_ad_section_start --> (START OF CONTENT AGAIN) 
<!-- google_ad_section_end --> (END OF CONTENT) 

I've had good success with this. Some say they haven't.

[HuskyPup]

The problem is 90% of the pages have very little "content" as such.

The site has lots of data on it

Tell me if I'm wrong however surely data is content if that is what your visitors are seeking?

I have some image galleries and apart from giving good, basic information about the niche image shown and good SEO, that's all there is...if you're wondering, people like to see these images when considering an expensive purchase and being a natural product like to see the variation available.

[downhiller80]

Most of the data is just numbers Husky, so not very interesting to google adsense crawl!

farmboy, you have exposed my ignorance of all things adsense I think. Are you saying I can request specific adverts? If so, how? Or are you just saying that there may be no adverts relevant to my site at all? I know there are, I just need to get them! :)

[farmboy]

Are you saying I can request specific adverts? If so, how?

No. Not sure why you think that.

I am saying that sometimes ads are shown to visitors based on the past browsing experience. Someone who has been searching around looking for a new Ford pickup then comes to your site about green widgets might see some Ford pickup ads on your site. You could visit the same page and still see green widget ads.

Or are you just saying that there may be no adverts relevant to my site at all?

No really saying that, but it is a possibility. Use the Google AdSense preview tool and see what you find.

FarmBoy