The eventual aim of proxy webmasters is to maximise their profit. Yet plenty of proxies are poorly optimised and their owners complain when they get low value clicks. It is possible to run a proxy and receive high value clicks, which will give you proxy income a boost. All it takes is a little keyword research. Targeting particular keywords will result in more focused adverts being displayed, which in turn will increase the CTR (click through rate). Since these adverts will be relevant to higher paying keywords, you’ve got a win-win situation: more clicks, and higher value clicks.
To find good keywords you just need to use the Adwords Keyword Tool. Enter some terms (one per line) in the box and click submit. You’ll see a list of keywords that Google considers relevant to the terms you have entered. It’s easy to see how often certain terms are searched for, and how much advertiser competition there is. What we’re particularly interested in is the cost per click value. To show this information choose ‘Show estimated avg CPC’ in the Show/Hide Columns dropdown box. You’ll now see the average value that advertisers pay for a given keyword. You wont receive all of this (Google takes its share!), but it is extremely useful to give us an idea of the better keywords to target.
Try entering these terms: ‘Facebook School’, ‘Anonymous Proxy’ and ‘Unblock Sites’. The tool indicates that ‘Facebook School’ has an average CPC of 0.04 cents, ‘Anonymous Proxy’ 0.38 cents, and ‘Unblock Sites’ $1.39. The difference is stark, and it’s easy to see how this would have a positive impact upon your earnings. By simply spending a small amount of time doing keyword research, proxy webmasters could dramatically increase their earnings. You don’t have to remain within the proxy niche, but remember that you need adverts to be of interest to your users.
Once you’ve decided on some keywords, you just need to make a few amendments to your proxy. Make sure you customize all your text, Meta information and titles to reflect the new keywords. You don’t want to go over the top with keyword stuffing, but instead aim for focused and useful content. That will help your users, but your SEO will also benefit, as well as your earnings. It’s particularly easy with proxies to target high paying keywords as there are relatively small amounts of content compared to other websites.
This is an area that you can reappraise over time, and keep experimenting with different keywords. Different approaches will work differently according to the target audience and traffic etc. It’s important to get the right balance between better paying adverts and ads that are likely to be clicked. There’s no point in targeting financial keywords if you’re visitors are overwhelmingly teenagers at school. You’ll find that your CTR will decrease, even though the ads themselves are higher value. So just remember that it’s all about the balance between better paying ads, and the likelihood of them being clicked.