Most people fail at earning USD with Google Ads for one painfully simple reason:
👉 They start building content before they understand whether a keyword can actually make money.
They chase traffic.
They ignore intent.
They ignore geography.
They ignore advertiser behavior.
And then they wonder why their AdSense RPM looks like spare change.
Today, I want to strip this down to a practical, human-level framework—no SEO jargon overload, no guru fluff—just how I personally judge whether a keyword is competitive and monetizable, using a real example.
Why keyword selection decides your Google Ads income
Google Ads monetization is not about:
How smart your content is
How beautiful your website looks
How much effort you put in
It’s about who is searching, why they’re searching, and how much advertisers are willing to pay for that attention.
So before writing a single line of code or content, I focus on search analysis.
A real example: “Calorie Calculator”
Let’s break it down step by step.
Step 1: Check trend stability and where the traffic comes from
Tool: Google Trends
🔗 https://trends.google.com/
This tool answers two critical questions:
Is this keyword alive?
Is the traffic coming from countries that pay?
Trend rule of thumb
Average trend above 50 → stable demand
Below 50 → risky, fad-like, or dying
In this case:
There’s a visible dip after July
That’s normal seasonality (summer = weight loss off-season)
Annual average above 70 → very healthy
📌 Seasonal ≠ bad
Seasonal + predictable = monetizable
Why geography matters more than volume
Here’s a hard truth beginners hate:
Traffic from low-paying regions does not equal revenue.
Countries like:
India
Indonesia
Some parts of SEA
→ Huge traffic, low advertiser bids
Meanwhile:
US
Canada
UK
Western Europe
→ Lower traffic, much higher RPM
When I checked the top regions, the top 5 were all Europe & North America.
That alone made the keyword worth deeper analysis.
Step 2: Understand what users actually want
Tool: Ubersuggest (Neil Patel)
🔗 https://app.neilpatel.com/en/ubersuggest/keyword_ideas
Ignore the noise. Focus on six signals only.
1️⃣ Keyword & variations
Shows whether this topic has:
Tool-style demand
Long-tail expansion potential
Good calculators usually do.
2️⃣ Search volume
You don’t need millions.
For beginners:
~5,000 monthly searches is perfect
Enough data, not overly competitive
3️⃣ Search intent (this is everything)
Here’s how I simplify intent:
Informational (I) → users want answers or tools → 💰 BEST for AdSense
Commercial/Transactional → users want to buy → good, but competitive
Navigational (N) → users want a brand → ❌ bad for ads
Mixed (I + N) → acceptable if tool-focused
Tool sites love informational intent because:
Users come repeatedly
They stay longer
Ads blend naturally
4️⃣ CPC (Cost Per Click)
High CPC = advertisers are fighting.
Low CPC = nobody cares.
You don’t need extreme CPC—just consistent advertiser demand.
5️⃣ Paid Difficulty (PD)
This shows how crowded the ad battlefield is.
High PD → hard to compete
Medium PD → sweet spot
Low PD → opportunity
6️⃣ SEO Difficulty (SD)
This is where beginners usually self-sabotage.
My rule:
0–10 → absolute beginners
11–30 → experienced devs
30+ → authority sites only
Ignore this, and Google will ignore you.
Step 3: Filter like an investor, not a blogger
For beginners, my filter is brutally simple:
✅ Informational intent
✅ CPC not zero
✅ SEO difficulty below 30
✅ Search volume ~5k
❌ Brand keywords (Starbucks, Subway, etc.)
Why brand keywords fail:
Advertisers don’t bid
Users want official sites
Ad revenue is trash even with traffic
In my test:
Starbucks → SEO easy, CPC = 0 → useless
Subway → CPC high, but brand-dominated → risky
So I dropped them.
That’s not “giving up”—that’s capital preservation.
When to pause instead of forcing it
Later in the day, I found a better candidate:
Strong US/EU traffic
Manageable backlinks (checked via Ahrefs)
No brand dominance
But here’s the key:
I stopped instead of rushing.
Why?
Because:
Ubersuggest data correlates strongly with AdSense performance
Too many results can confuse users
Good keywords deserve patience
Tomorrow, I’ll verify it properly and only then build.
The mindset shift that changes everything
This is not SEO.
This is search economics.
You’re not writing content.
You’re positioning yourself between user intent and advertiser money.
When you think like this:
Fewer sites
Fewer keywords
Higher confidence
Higher RPM
Final thoughts
If you’re doing:
Indie hacking
Tool sites
Niche calculators
Content + AdSense monetization
Then keyword selection is not step one.
It’s step zero.
If you’re also building overseas sites or testing Google Ads income models, feel free to discuss in the comments.
Thanks for reading this far ❤️
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