Search Engine Optimization Tip: Section Targeting For Enhanced SEO

One SEO technique that very few webmasters employ that more could probably use to great effect is section targeting. Section targeting tells the search engine that a particular piece of text on the page is more important than the rest. You can use section targeting to draw the search engine’s attention to that text for SEO purposes. This is particularly helpful if you are running an AdSense site.

There are two ways to go about section targeting:

1. Highlighting the positive
2. Downplaying the unimportant

Remember, the idea is to tell Google which part of the page to focus on for keywords so that the search engine can more easily match your keywords with your content. If you’re really savvy, you can use both types of section targeting code to ensure this happens.

Highlighting The Positive

Let’s say you have a particular part of your page that uses your primary keyword more than other parts of the page. You want your ads to match that part of the page’s content. Use this code to tell Googlebot that this piece of text is important and that it should use it to match AdSense ads with the text:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>

<!– google_ad_section_end –>

Between those tags you can put a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire section. I would be cautious to include too much or too little, however. Google’s guidelines say to include a “significant amount” between those tags. Probably, for most sites, a two or three paragraphs is plenty.

Downplaying The Unimportant

If you want Google to ignore a particular section of your page so that it doesn’t match ads with content that isn’t optimized for your keywords or that is less weighty than other parts of the page then you can use this code:

<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>

<!– google_ad_section_end –>

Not a lot of difference, huh? But that difference is significant in what it tells the Googlebot to do.

Try section targeting for better optimization and higher AdSense earnings.