If you have a blog or website, you probably know that Google AdSense is a great way to monetize your content and earn a few bucks. Some people make a fortune with AdSense, while other site owners only make a few pennies a day.

• You need lots of visitors to your site
• You need to have good content
• You need to place ads strategically

Have you ever wondered exactly what it takes to rake in tons of money with AdSense? Well there are a few basic tenets of AdSense success:

Those three points are common knowledge - if you do any reading about how to “do” AdSense, that’s what you’ll hear. All common sense stuff, too.

So let me share something with you that’s not as commonly known: there is a way to more precisely target your ads toward your visitors. The reason this is important should be obvious - if the ads are relevant to the subject matter, your readers are more likely to be interested in the ads and of course they’ll be more likely to click on them. So how do you target the ads? I’ll tell you a few ways. Let’s call them AdSense hacks.

Have a strategic naming structure. When at all possible, make sure the directory and filenames of your pages contain the best possible keywords. If a page is about “Spider-Man comic books” make sure either the path or the filename contains those words. Keep in mind that dashes are seen as keyword separators by Google (as opposed to underscores, which are ignored). By doing this, it increases the likelihood that Google will know which ads are most appropriate to display.
Filter your ads. In your AdSense account, go to AdSense Setup and click on the Competitive Ad Filter. In the box, type the domain names of the low-paying ads or ads you don’t wish to be displayed.

Use the Section Targeting feature. Google has a little-talked-about feature called Section Targeting that allows you to specify to Google where your content begins and ends. In effect it allows you to tell them, “Here - this is the part that matters. This is the part that I want you to base your ads on."

Targeting your ads can make all the difference in the world. So if you have decent traffic to your site but don’t have the click-throughs or if you simply aren’t making much per click, try implementing these “hacks” and see if you make more money.