Making money online can be quite hard, especially if you are looking to monetize your blog solely via ads.
To be a successful Adsense publisher you need a lot of traffic but you also need that traffic to engage with the ads that are being displayed on your site.
The adsense CPC that you get paid will depend on the topics that you write about.
In the world of blogging, you can either write articles that will compete for clicks that will pay a few cents or be strategic and write content that will pay the big bucks.
If you are serious about making money online with Adsense and building a successful business, I suggest you target these top paying keywords and industries.
Also, I suggest you try Ezoic to automatically automize your ads.
I broke down this post by:
- Top paying Adsense keyword industries
- Types of ads that pay the most
- Exact long-tail keywords that have insane CPCs
- 4 Bonuses to make even more money with Adsense
Here are the top 10 highest paid Adsense keywords for 2020 (by industry/niche):
- Insurance $59 CPC
- Gas/Electricity $57 CPC
- Loans $50 CPC
- Mortgage $44 CPC
- Attorney $48 CPC
- Lawyer $43 CPC
- Donate $42 CPC
- Conference Call $42 CPC
- Degree $40 CPC
- Credit $38 CPC
↓ keep reading to find the exact keyword phrases that you should target ↓
Why do these Adsense keywords pay so much?
Because the companies behind the ads have a high customer value and can afford to spend a few hundred bucks to acquire a customer. It all boils down to their business economics.
So, how can you profit from this data and rake in thousands of dollars each month?
Let’s run through a hypothetical example.
- You notice that insurance related blogs will carry a high CPC.
- You then research a few keywords and find that “car insurance companies” pays decently well.
- You get to writing the best article you can on car insurance companies
- With an amazing on-page SEO, you are able to get your blog post high on google rankings,
- You get a good amount of high quality organic traffic to your site, and then monetize into more Adsense revenue.
Which Adsense ads pay the most?
In addition to picking the best niche for adsense, you also have options as to which ad type to show. The options are: 1) text & display 2) matched content 3) in-feed and 4) in-article
In my own experiments, I’ve found higher click through rates with native in-article ads. Those ads perform the best on any of my sites.
The in-article ads will naturally blend with your content and display midway through your blog post. I like these types of ads because they are contextual and usually receive a good amount of clicks.
Sidebar ads are not as good since we are already trained to tune them out.
You can also try Matched Content if you have another content you’d like to promote.
Pro tip: Use Auto Ads by Google
Adsense Auto Ads take advantage of machine learning and place themselves automatically on your site where Google thinks they will perform well.
Google has been testing the Auto Ads feature as a beta since September of 2017 and recently (early March) released this feature to everyone.
Since Google has millions (if not billions) of sites to test, they will most likely be better than you or me when figuring out the right type and placement of the ads.
The only downside of this is that you won’t have much control of how many ads are shown or where they are placed, which if you are picky, might annoy you.
To set up Auto ads on your site, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your AdSense account.
- In the left navigation panel, click My ads.
- Click Auto ads.
- On the “Choose your global settings” page, use the controls to select the ad formats that you’d like to show.
- Leave Automatically get new formats selected if you want AdSense to automatically add new ad formats to your global settings as they become available.
- Click Save.
- On the “Place code on your page” page, click Copy code.
- Paste the ad code between the
<head>and</head>tags of each page where you want to show Auto ads. If you’re not sure how to do this, see Google’s Code implementation guide.
Bonus Keyword Industries/Niches
Here are other high paying keywords that you can target in your blog posts
- Treatment $37 CPC
- Software $35 CPC
- Classes $35 CPC
- Recovery $34 CPC
- Trading $33 CPC
- Rehab $33 CPC
- Hosting $31 CPC
- Transfer $29 CPC
- Cord Blood $27 CPC
- Claim $25 CPC
↓ Don’t forget about the bonuses at the end where I show you how to find the best kws ↓
Which exact keywords pay the most CPC on Adsense?
If you are looking for exact top paying keywords such as mesothelioma which pays $1000+ per click, you can check out the list compiled of 1M+ adsense keywords by GrepWords. For instance, they reported the ultimate top paying keyword “mesothelioma 
rates” at $1006.56 per click.
rates” at $1006.56 per click.
Here are a few of my favorite top paid keywords per industry found through SEMRush (data for 2017, 2018 and 2019, 2020):
Mesothelioma Keywords sorted by CPC
Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that lines the lungs, stomach, heart, and other organs, and unfortunately can’t be cured. Nevertheless, treatment can help reduce the pain. People that contracted mesothelioma did so at their jobs so that is why you see searches like “mesothelioma attorneys”, “mesothelioma law firms” and “mesothelioma compensation”.
This is a very competitive keyword set so unless you can outrank WebMD and MayoClinic, I suggest you look for other industries.
| Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC (USD) | Competition | Results |
| compensation mesothelioma | 10 | 64.96 | 568.67 | 0.91 | 594,000 |
| mesothelioma attorney houston | 30 | 55.72 | 545.84 | 0.74 | 109,000 |
| mesothelioma attorney california | 10 | 55.3 | 390.08 | 0.86 | 223,000 |
| mesothelioma compensation | 110 | 64 | 326.85 | 0.84 | 596,000 |
| pleural mesothelioma stages | 90 | 71.76 | 318.44 | 0.93 | 148,000 |
| mesothelioma lawyer directory | 20 | 63.42 | 290.34 | 0.86 | 212,000 |
| mesothelioma lawsuit settlements | 110 | 61.8 | 276.44 | 0.85 | 139,000 |
| statute of limitations on mesothelioma claims | 90 | 53.98 | 274.07 | 0.82 | 64,000 |
| lawyers for mesothelioma | 40 | 58.43 | 265.92 | 0.86 | 537,000 |
| mesothelioma settlement fund | 40 | 59.3 | 257.12 | 0.82 | 262,000 |
*Competition of 1 means highly competitive.
Top Paying Keywords for the Lawyer Niche
Being a lawyer must be nice. You get to dress in a suit (which I love) and you also get to afford to spend exorbitant amounts of money for website traffic. Not too shabby.
| Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC (USD) | Competition | Results |
| car accident lawyer moreno valley | 90 | 52.02 | 584.44 | 1 | 112,000 |
| ft lauderdale car accident lawyer | 10 | 48.18 | 566.17 | 1 | 267,000 |
| auto accident lawyers in chicago | 90 | 59.03 | 542.95 | 1 | 2,280,000 |
| car accident lawyer ny | 30 | 53.89 | 508.62 | 1 | 1,320,000 |
| car accident lawyer in phoenix | 20 | 55.27 | 504.53 | 0 | 1,070,000 |
| california motorcycle accident lawyer | 30 | 47.51 | 475.78 | 1 | 5,410,000 |
| car accident lawyer augusta | 90 | 44.3 | 463.71 | 1 | 416,000 |
| car accident lawyer in fort lauderdale | 50 | 47.13 | 462.97 | 1 | 1,110,000 |
| personal injury lawyer ft lauderdale | 10 | 43.06 | 429.36 | 1 | 860,000 |
| dallas truck accident lawyer | 90 | 49.67 | 426 | 1 | 721,000 |
Doctors keywords CPC Adsense
In this list you will find a mix of people looking for Physicians and people looking for a PhD program.
| Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC (USD) | Com. | Results |
| can you sue a doctor for wrong diagnosis | 40 | 70.83 | 250.96 | 0 | 697,000 |
| doctorate in security | 70 | 74.61 | 189.19 | 1 | 25,000,000 |
| doctor after car accident | 40 | 60.59 | 136.95 | 1 | 29,200,000 |
| doctors car insurance | 10 | 66.17 | 128.46 | 1 | 3,100,000 |
| car accident doctor atlanta | 70 | 43.8 | 122.42 | 1 | 762,000 |
| rehab doctors | 210 | 59.77 | 118.49 | 0 | 22,900,000 |
| business doctoral programs online | 30 | 73.19 | 118.19 | 1 | 1,810,000 |
| best doctoral programs in education | 30 | 77.26 | 114.31 | 1 | 11,000,000 |
| top online doctoral programs in business | 10 | 71.32 | 112.46 | 1 | 995,000 |
| educational leadership doctoral programs online | 20 | 81.12 | 108.97 | 1 | 734,000 |
Best Attorney Adsense Keywords
I thought attorneys and lawyers were the same. Guess I was wrong.
Here are some other keywords pertaining to attorneys:
| Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC (USD) | Competition | Results |
| personal injury attorney cape coral fl | 70 | 44.08 | 573.71 | 0.79 | 302,000 |
| accident attorney rancho cucamonga | 90 | 46.05 | 548.48 | 1 | 71,000 |
| mesothelioma attorney houston | 30 | 55.72 | 545.84 | 0.74 | 109,000 |
| truck accident attorney san antonio | 50 | 47.2 | 432.95 | 0.85 | 703,000 |
| motorcycle accident attorney orange county | 30 | 52.34 | 404.05 | 0.83 | 2,180,000 |
| auto accident attorney colorado springs | 70 | 51.94 | 396.78 | 0.66 | 280,000 |
| accident attorney riverside ca | 30 | 43.12 | 390.88 | 0.51 | 331,000 |
| mesothelioma attorney california | 10 | 55.3 | 390.08 | 0.86 | 223,000 |
| phoenix accident attorneys | 20 | 54.24 | 358.08 | 0.71 | 1,500,000 |
| louisville accident attorney | 20 | 46.44 | 345.62 | 0.63 | 674,000 |
Bitcoin CPC Adsense KWs
I threw this one in because the crypto space is just so hot right now. These keywords are not the highest paying on my article roundup but I expect their cost per click to rise in the coming years.
Aside: I personally just love blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Actually, I love it so much that with my company Flux Ventures we launched an entire division just to buy and sell bitcoin and alt-coins.
| Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC (USD) | Competition | Results |
| bitcoin merchant account | 20 | 56.02 | 64.32 | 0.87 | 217,000 |
| bitcoin merchant services | 30 | 62.35 | 33.24 | 0.87 | 336,000 |
| bitcoin mining cloud computing | 10 | 66.05 | 32.65 | 0.73 | 604,000 |
| buy bitcoin australia | 30 | 52.36 | 21.47 | 0.32 | 783,000 |
| buy stocks with bitcoin | 50 | 83.4 | 21.08 | 0.46 | 6,010,000 |
| software mining bitcoin | 10 | 65.75 | 18.19 | 0.62 | 936,000 |
| bitcoin mining gpu | 70 | 71.59 | 18.19 | 0.36 | 696,000 |
| buy stock with bitcoin | 30 | 81.94 | 17.59 | 0.48 | 64,000,000 |
| bitcoin stock chart | 210 | 73.86 | 16.24 | 0.09 | – |
| how to invest in bitcoin stock | 50 | 77.64 | 16.16 | 0.71 | 1,060,000 |
Top Paying Insurance Related Adsense Keywords
The insurance companies surely make a killing from those outrageous premiums they charge us. Otherwise how could they afford all those TV commercials and these crazy spend on Adwords? If you are in the insurance blogging space, kudos to you. You’ve picked a winner.
| Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC (USD) | Competition | Results |
| compare car insurance | 70 | 78.04 | 469.12 | 1 | 5,720,000 |
| auto insurance troy mi | 10 | 66.48 | 420.29 | 0.84 | 1,080,000 |
| car insurance comparison quote | 10 | 77.7 | 342.54 | 0.88 | 2,400,000 |
| cars with cheapest insurance rates | 40 | 85 | 316.47 | 0.89 | 3,200,000 |
| best learner driver insurance | 10 | 67.65 | 300.26 | 0.77 | 830,000 |
| insurance quotes young drivers | 10 | 76.73 | 299.63 | 0.94 | 6,490,000 |
| automobile club inter-insurance | 20 | 84.42 | 299.49 | 0.81 | 783,000 |
| car insurance personal injury | 10 | 82 | 298.54 | 0.95 | 2,210,000 |
| auto insurance conroe tx | 40 | 69 | 298.08 | 0.82 | 443,000 |
| auto insurance philadelphia pa | 170 | 63.03 | 293.14 | 0.48 | 1,330,000 |
I actually took some of those keywords ^ and launched my site TheInsuranceNerd to attract those high paying clicks ?. So far, so good.
And lastly, how could I forget this…
Best Digital Marketing/SEO Adsense Keywords
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you are most likely interested in all things online marketing / SEO so this list is for you:
| Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC (USD) | Competition |
| seo explanation | 10 | 73.3 | 108.42 | 0.42 |
| digital marketing degree florida | 30 | 77.4 | 100.48 | 0.96 |
| online courses on digital marketing | 10 | 73.88 | 92.38 | 1 |
| digital marketing certificate programs online | 20 | 80.74 | 87.56 | 0.91 |
| digital marketing course review | 20 | 67.72 | 85.6 | 0.9 |
| internet marketing classes online | 70 | 74.36 | 83.93 | 1 |
| courses on online marketing | 10 | 72.8 | 83.63 | 0.73 |
| online marketing education | 30 | 75.65 | 80.56 | 0.91 |
| email marketing wikipedia | 10 | 79.3 | 76.14 | 0.71 |
| digital marketing degree course | 20 | 75.56 | 72.71 | 1 |
| digital marketing classes online | 30 | 73.78 | 70.72 | 0.94 |
| seo marketing company | 90 | 57.52 | 58.44 | 0.65 |
| search engine optimization articles | 20 | 78.13 | 58.32 | 0.54 |
| seo companys | 20 | 59.89 | 54.77 | 0.87 |
| types of seo services | 50 | 44.34 | 53.13 | 0.86 |
| seo technology | 110 | 72.09 | 49.29 | 0.75 |
| search optimization companies | 10 | 61.61 | 48.65 | 0.83 |
| seo specialists | 210 | 74.3 | 45.35 | 0.61 |
| search engine optimization marketing services | 10 | 60.4 | 44.83 | 0.59 |
| seo company | 30 | 59.63 | 43.01 | 0.74 |
Keywords to target if you are in the ‘software for fitness’ niche
| Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC (USD) | Com. | Results |
| fitness showrooms stamford ct | 10 | 76.54 | 138.6 | 0.3 | 22,000 |
| ea fitness | 260 | 68.9 | 84.16 | 0.03 | 116,000,000 |
| fitness barre cranberry | 30 | 76.41 | 72.41 | 0.89 | 371,000 |
| fitness center software | 10 | 54.49 | 67.1 | 0.81 | 4,240,000 |
| fitness gym software | 40 | 50.54 | 63.03 | 0.56 | 24,100,000 |
| apogee fitness | 30 | 69.7 | 60.03 | 0.16 | 420,000 |
| fit online classes | 10 | 64.82 | 59.65 | 0.39 | 381,000,000 |
| rpac group fitness classes | 40 | 84.79 | 57.8 | 0.1 | – |
| fitness management software | 10 | 52.8 | 52.73 | 0.56 | 17,100,000 |
Aw man, you still forgot my industry…
No worries, you can find all these keywords (and more!) by going into SEMRush and clicking on Keyword Analytics > Phrase Match (or Related Keywords), typing the keyword(s) that you want and then sorting by cost-per-click.
Now, onto my favorite part. The bonuses.
Bonus #1: Target these countries if you want to earn 10x more
Aiming for the right countries can really skyrocket your adsense earnings. Here are the top 10 countries to target:
| No. | Country | Avg. CPC ($) | Max. CPC ($) | Avg. CTR % | Average RPM ($) |
| 1 | United States (US) | 0.40 – 2.3 | >50 | 2-3 | 2.04 |
| 2 | Canada | 0.50 – 2 | >30 | 2 | 1.83 |
| 3 | United Kingdom (UK) | 0.10 – 1.6 | >19 | 1-2 | 1.37 |
| 4 | Germany | 0.40 – 1 | >11 | 1-3 | 2.62 |
| 5 | Thailand | 0.30 – 1 | 6 | 2 | 1.6 |
| 6 | United Arab Emirates (UAE) | 0.15 – 3.1 | 11 | 4 | 2.07 |
| 7 | Japan | 0.20 – 0.85 | 4 | 3 | 2.44 |
| 8 | Switzerland | 0.20 – 1 | 6 | 3 | 2.35 |
| 9 | Italy | 0.10 – 0.50 | 3 | 1-3 | 0.73 |
| 10 | China | 0.10-0.30 | 4 | 1-2 | 0.9 |
If you take a look at this chart, you will notice that most of the countries in this list are first-world countries.
How do you target a particular country in your blog?
The easiest way is to blog in their native language. To get visitors from Canada, US, UK or australia, your blog must be in English. Similarly, write in German if you are looking for people from Deutschland.
You may also change your targeting settings under Search Console.
Bonus #2: Unlock even more revenue by blocking low CPC ads
As a publisher, you have a good amount of control as to which Ad Categories you want to show on your site.
If you are trying to raise the CPC, RPM or CPM of your Adsense ads, then I suggest you take a look at your ad performance and start blocking categories that are not paying well.
Here’s how you can do that.
- Go to Adsense and on the left hand column click on “Blocking Controls > Content> All Sites”
- Click on “General Categories”
- Sort by % Earnings (Ascending).
- In there you can take a look at which ads are taking a good amount of impressions but generating relatively low earnings.
- For instance, let’s say the “Hobbies Games & Leisure” category is taking 4% of impressions yet just making 0.7% of your revenue, you can try and block it, and see if your performance improves.
You may also experiment by blocking certain ad networks. I haven’t personally tried this, but some people claim it works.
A word of caution: Don’t block too many categories (or ad networks) or else you will significantly reduce the bid competition and will start driving your revenue down.
Pro tip: Run Optimization Experiments
You can always run an Experiment (found under Optimization > Experiments) and see if blocking your ads yields more revenue or not.
You can also test if showing 50% of your total ads vs. 100% of ads yields more revenue.
Google Adsense experiments typically last for 10-30 days, up to 100 days (depending on your experiment and traffic).
For instance, I am running the experiment of blocking certain categories, and as you can see below I already started to see some good results (unfortunately Adsense policies prevent me from sharing the exact numbers)
Bonus #3: Steal your competitor’s lunch (aka. find which keywords are driving the most revenue to them)
What if you could view which keywords gets your competition the most clicks and revenue?
I’ll show you how I do it.
The process is very simple and uses SEMRush. (7 day free trial)
All you have to do is:
- Find any authority site in your niche. (For the sake of example in online marketing, I will use my own site)
- Type that site on the search bar in SEMRush
- Scroll to “Top Organic Keywords” and click on “See Full Report”
- On that report, sort by CPC.
- Voilá, you have a list of potential keywords that you can now use.
- Rinse and repeat with other sites that you admire.
Once you do this process with 3-5 sites, you will have a good set of keywords that you can target. (By the way, you can hire someone on Fiverr or Freeeup [my favorite] to write quality articles for you so you don’t have to actually spend time doing it.)
Bonus #4: Find more high paying keywords using Search Console
Did you know that Google already provides you with the keywords that you rank for?
What if you could optimize your existing blog posts to target even better keywords?
Instead of spending tons of hours writing a thorough post, you could use update an old one and pick juicier keywords.
Here’s how.
- Install the Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension
- Head to the Search Analytics under the Google Webmasters Tools
- Choose your website
- Be sure to check the Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Position boxes at the top
- Filter by any specific page that you want keywords to show for: i.e. https://alejandrorioja.com/high-cpc-adsense-keywords/
- Since you installed the Keywords Everywhere tool you will see an additional 3 columns on your list, namely: Monthly Volume, CPC and Competition
- Unfortunately you can’t sort by CPC so you will have to copy all the data into a spreadsheet and sort it there. I suggest you hit the Show 500 rows at the bottom of Webmaster tools.
- I made a Google sheet for you that you can copy (File > Make a Copy..) to sort all your keywords.
- Copy and paste all your keywords, and then hit the arrow on the column of CPC and sort from Z->A
- Voila, you will see all the keywords that your blog post ranks for, all ranked from highest CPC to lowest CPC.
As you can see this last trick will yield keywords that might not be applicable to your blog post. In my case, “mesothelioma lawyer directory” does not apply to this specific post so I will just ignore it.
However, it will also find keywords that I am already getting impressions like “top paying keywords” but for which I am still ranked on page #2. The secret here is now to extend my existing blog post to include that new keyword so that my page gets bumped to page #1.
Pro tip: You can also sort by Volume or competition to find other hidden gems.
(Remember that now with the new RankBrain algorithm you shouldn’t target each specific long tail keyword but rather target medium-tail keywords that cover a broader topic.)
so, how can you make $100 a day with Adsense?
I don’t know about you, but 100 bucks a day on ads sounds like a good passive income to me ($3k/mo).
Let’s run some calculations to see what it would take to make $100/day on Adsense.
First, some assumptions.
- You are targeting US readers (as we saw earlier, US ads pay the most on average)
- Your CTR (click-through rate) is 1% (i.e. 1% of visitors click on ads)
- Your CPC is $0.50 (your niche is strong but your site is just getting started)
- Your RPM (revenue per 1000 impressions) is $2
? Btw, you can increase your earnings using Ezoic. (an ad tester platform)
With these numbers we can now calculate how many visitors we need to earn our target amount.
The formula is = Visitors * CTR * CPC + Visitors/1000 * RPM
So with 15,000 visitors per day we obtain around $100/day on Adsense.
(15,000 * 1% * $0.5 + 15,000/1000*$2 = $105/day)
But how do you obtain 15,000 page views per day? Is that reasonable?
Yes, it is reasonable. To do that, you can either
- produce 15 articles that get 1000 page views (hard)
- produce 150 articles that get 100 page views (much easier)
Tips for Youtube CPC
In case you were wondering the same steps apply if you are looking to grow your earnings on Youtube. The same industries, languages and countries discussed above will also do well on YT.
To further optimize your Youtube earnings, you should also include a thorough description of your video that includes the high paying keywords you are targeting.
Conclusion
I hope you found this list of high cost-per-click keywords useful.
I also hope you liked the strategy to find keywords that your competitors are getting money from. If you want additional tools to find keywords, head to my SEO tools list.
Building a high grossing blog is a combination of picking a solid niche, doing SEO on your articles and having fun while at it.
If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment and share this article with a friend.
At this point, aren’t you wondering how I got the first result on Google for this blog post?