Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

I’ve been reading a few forums and blogs about Google Adsense tips lately, and thought it would be helpful to consolidate as many as possible in one place without the comments. I’ve also thrown in a few tips of my own. We start out with some of the basic general stuff and move to the more specific topics later on.

Build an Empire?

When you’re deciding to become a website publisher you will fall into one of two broad categories:

• Publish 100 websites that each earn $1 a day profit
• Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit

The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithm’s, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but you’ll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.

General or Niche

You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field.

If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it’s currently zero).

Once you’ve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don’t try to run with the big dogs if you can’t keep up. If you have to ask if you’re a big dog, then chances are, you’re not. I have used a high dollar keywords report fromcashkeywords.com and was pleased with my results (see cash keywords free offer recap).

New Sites, Files and Maintenance

When you’re building a new site don’t put adsense on it until it’s finished. In fact I’d go even farther and say don’t put adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with “lorem ipsum” dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically.

I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it’s only one file I have to work with. TIP: I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.

Managing URL’s and channels

Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:

• domain1.com - 728 banner
• domain1.com - 336 block
• domain1.com - text link
• domain2.com - 728 banner
• domain2.com - image banner
• domain2.com - 336 block
• domain3.com - 300 block

While this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total. Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail. TIP: At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.

Site Design and Integration

Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.

Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

• 336×280 large rectangle
• 300×250 inline rectangle
• 160×600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior.

Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.

The one area where I’ve found blended ads don’t perform as well is forums, especially ones with a high volume of repeat members. Regular visitors develop banner blindness pretty quickly. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. As with any of the decisions about location, placement and color it’s a trade off. How much do you emphasize the ads without annoying your visitors. Remember it’s better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the adsense ads directly above or below the the first forum thread.

Using Images

One of the latest ’secrets’ to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being ‘over the line’ write to adsense and ask them to take a look.

As far as using the images, I’ve done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples.TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.

Added:
I got a little criticizm for this and rightly so, as I wasn’t specific as I could have been. Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate.

Multiple Ad Units

Another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google’s TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.

Adsense in RSS

With the growth of blogs and RSS feeds you’re starting to see adsense included in the feeds now. IMHO this doesn’t work, and here’s why:

• You only get to place one ad unit.
• You have no control over finding the ’sweet spot’ for the ad unit.
• The ads are usually poorly targeted (this is getting better).
• People develop ‘banner blindness’.

I know people like being able to read full postings in their feed reader, and there are at least a dozen other reasons for full posts from pleasing your users to mobile offline computing, all of which are completely valid. However if your website depends on generating adsense revenue to survive, then bring them to the site and show them the ads there.

Affiliate Sites

Placing Adsense on affiliate sites is tricky. Are you giving up a $10, $20, or $30 sale for a $1 click? This is something you have to test on your own to figure out. If you aren’t converting now it’s definitely worth a try. I like to use adsense on my article pages. For example let’s say you had an affiliate website where you sold shoes. You’re going to need some related articles to ‘flesh out’ the site. Things like ‘getting a shoe shine’ or ‘finding a shoe repair shop’ these are excellent spots for adsense. While you won’t get rich, they will usually provide a small steady income and cover things like hosting costs.TIP: If you find you have pages getting more than 50 clicks per month add more pages about this topic, and link the pages together. Mine you logs for the search terms used.

PPC Arbitrage

This is a dicey subject so I’m going to steer clear of precise examples. Basically you bid on low volume uber niche terms at a very low cost. You set up landing page that contains high payout ads for the related general topic. You are looking for terms with a large gap between the price you are bidding on adwords and the price you are getting on Adsense. If you pay $0.10 a click and get $1.00 a click you make $0.90 each click. To get your adsense ad approved you will need to ‘add some value’ along the way. You can make a killing or get taken to the cleaners with this one, so make sure you know what you are doing before you try it.

Have any other adsense tips, tricks or secrets? Drop me an email and let me know, I’ll give you credit.

Added
728 leaderboard works very well if it is just above the end of the
“above the fold” area on what would be considered your viewers average
resolution/browser window size if there are few other enticing links
above the fold. Makes for an interesting layout but if you’re building
a site for AdSense it may be worth it. We consistently receive very
high CTRs from doing this.

Try to build sites that allow you to quickly try any and all of
those locations outlined in the heatmap guide or at least allow you a
wide degree of freedom to easily change ad/content locations.
via:nuevojefe

Google AdWords!

Click the links below to get the complete picture about Google AdWords. You will require

Macromedia® Flash to view some presentations. How much time it takes for them to load will

depend on your internet connection speed. So please be patient if you do not have a

broadband connection.

1. Lets go to the AdWords Learning Center.

AdWords Learning Center

2.A look at the AdWords Demos and Guides

AdWords Demos and Guides

3. A visit to the AdWords Help Center.

AdWords Help Center

Click here to go to the Google Adwords web page.

I wish you all the best and I'll leave you with that. The rest is up to you. Good luck!

Copyright © 2008 by www.i-fact.blogspot.com. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Part 2: The 5-Step Plan to Success

Once you’re accepted, you want to maximize the opportunity. In this section, we look at some of the most effective strategies for generating optimum revenue from the Google AdSense program.

Step 1 - Formatting Ad Blocks:

You can let Google decide for you the type of ads that will be displayed on your webpage, but as the website publisher, you may be in a better position to decide what ads suit the content of your website and how you would like them displayed. To the extent possible, whether chosen by Google or you, make the ads seem like part of the site itself.

Most internet marketing experts believe that the ads on your website have a high probability of getting clicked if they blend in with the rest of the content of your web page. Factors such as color scheme, font size and type, and the appearance of your ad should match your web page. Borders are optional and we think often you should opt out – why put a box around the ad that says “Hi! I’m an ad!”?

Also, regardless of other design choices, text links should be blue. Why are text links blue? For the same reason Henry Ford said of the Model-T “They can have any color they want so long as it’s black.” They just are.

Though we think text ads are generally better than graphic ads, also known as image ads, Google does offer them with the program.

Actually, you don’t need to struggle much with whether graphic ads or text will be better on your pages, as Google’s technology will suggest whether an image ad or a text ad will be more suitable and which will earn you maximum revenues (since you earn part of they earn, they have motives to get this mix right).

However, it remains totally up to you whether you wish to run image ads or text-based ads. You can select only image ads, or text ads or a combination of both these formats on your entire AdSense account or on one page at a time based on your discretion.

Step 2 - Ad Placement:

“Location, location, location.” It is true in real estate and true in advertising, including web advertising. Since the “location” of the user is your site already, the “location” of the ad in this context means on which pages, where on the pages, and so on. As noted, the less an ad looks like an ad, the more effective it is likely to be.

Then there are general design and usability factors to consider.

If your webpage is cluttered and you can’t dispense with any content, you may want to break it down further into sections or more pages to provide easier reading. This also gives you the potential benefit of placing additional ads.

As noted, we generally recommend text-based ads. However, text-dense sites may actually do better with image ads. If your site has very few graphics, you may want to balance it out by putting image-based ads. In the monotony of a lot of dense written information, image-based ads and graphics provide what’s called visual relief. This can also prompt clicks.

Where should you put the ads? The chances of your ad getting noticed by the visitors to your site increases greatly if you place ads as close to the top of your webpage as possible.

If you choose to place so-called ‘skyscraper’ ads – in magazines these would be called columns – on the sidebars of your webpage, it would be wise to place them on the right side of your principal content areas. The reason for this is the visitor to your page (in most languages) will read from left to right, he or she will chance upon the ad ultimately, if not consciously then at least out of habit. Their eyes will go there. From the left, they can visually “skip” the ad when they start reading next to it.

Your ads should be placed in such a way that it matches the links to other websites on your site. If you already have a links section on your site, put the AdSense links in that section or list. This is not dishonest – if it were Google would not allow it.

Obviously if you have a “most popular” area on your website, such as a page that is updated daily with some kind of material that people bookmark to revisit often, place your ad(s) there instead of somewhere else that may get less traffic. For many websites the home page is not actually the most accessed area. If you don’t know what the traffic pattern is on your sites, it’s easy to find out – ask your hosting provider about usage logs.

One more thing: While some affiliate marketing programs encourage host sites to encourage clicks directly, it is not appropriate to expressly ask your readers to click on the ads served by the Google programs. Not only is it unprofessional and arguably unethical, it also annoys people and moreover Google AdSense actually prohibits any such activity. You can neither directly solicit clicks nor can you do anything considered deceptive to encourage clicks.

In conclusion, the emphasis is always on quality of content on your web pages.

Good and interesting content makes your site better, more acceptable to Google, more likely to win with AdSense, and therefore more profitable for you!

Step 3 - Researching Keywords:

After you are done choosing the right format and location for your AdSense ads, don’t sit back and wait for the money to roll in just yet. The next important step is to choose the right keywords for your web pages. These will influence both who visits your site, and how AdSense assigns ads to you.

The number one mistake most website publishers make is to constantly choose high-paying (i.e. expensive!) keywords assuming that it will yield them more income. While it is tempting to choose such keywords to get higher rankings on search engines, be prudent when it comes to selecting the right keywords that go with the AdSense ads that are to be displayed.. Remember the goal here is clicks, not SEO rankings. This is a case where you often do not get what you pay for.

Consider this scenario. Your webpage talks about wine tasting courses. You review search phrases and keywords with “wine” in it and you find “wine rack” is in the top three and available, so you buy it. The corresponding ads also focus on buying wine racks online, wine storage and building your own wine racks. After a week when you check on the statistics of your webpage and AdSense account, you see that you are losing visitors and your income is dipping! The keyword selection is faulty in this case even though it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Why? The visitors to your webpage were actually looking for wine racks and have landed on your webpage talking about wine tasting courses instead. The wine course types want to sign up for the courses, maybe buy a book on wine, or a wine of the month club. They don’t want to build a wine rack. Think strategically, not tactically.

Just because a keyword is high paying and is seemingly related, does not mean it is totally relevant and you need something relevant. Relevance is more important than value! In the above case, you could have – and should have – chosen wine tasting tour, wine tasting party, wine tasting event, wine tasting class, wine tasting school, course tasting wine and so on. You are interested in relevance more than popularity. Tasting is a match. Racks are not.

Let’s look at some of the ways in which you can research your keywords for AdSense ads:

• You can check out the popularity of various keywords if you already have an account with Google AdWords. This way you will get an idea of the popularity of various keywords as well as the cost and returns that entail.

• Google AdWords also has a tool known as the AdWords Keywords Tool which can sometimes help you search for alternate keywords and variations.

• Another tool known as Keyword Analyzer can generate numerous key phrases that are typed by Internet users in different search engines.

• Consider getting a WordTracker account. They have an excellent tool that suggests top 1,000 most popular keywords. This tool can also help you create a list of relevant keywords for your webpage. You can learn a lot from a small investment here.

• Another great idea is to search for top 100 keywords on 7search which will give you an idea of high-paying keywords.

Your clickthrough rate will be boosted tremendously by including the right keywords in your web copy, of course. Keywords occurring in your ads are usually highlighted on the search engine results page. This also helps in drawing additional attention to your ad.

The URL of your webpage is also an integral part of achieving success on Google AdSense program, as it is on the Web generally. Current wisdom holds that the keywords in the URL are equally if not more important than the ones featured in the actual webpage content or in metatags. If you change your ordinary URL to a keyword rich URL relevant to your market, it is possible to raise your CTR as much as 200% or more without doing anything else.

Obvious domain names with the keywords that you want might be expensive to purchase from a broker, but you can also buy used domain names that are no longer active, often for just a few dollars per year.

Step 4 - Developing Content:

Let’s assume you have good ads, good placement, and good traffic.

This step is all about how to tweak your pre-existing content to support the most effective profitability from your new AdSense program.

One major mistake many web publishers make now is to lard up their pages with a bazillion keywords for so-called “search engine optimization.” Do not fall into that trap and clutter your webpage with high-profile buzzwords that do not contribute to the value of your webpage or the experience of your intended audience. Remember, we’re focused here on clicks, which means bringing relevant readers to your site and giving them a good experience that puts them in an inquisitive or buying frame of mind.

As a general rule, all content shifts should make some kind of sense. You may well be able to make connections between articles on sports, to articles on sports medicine, to articles on herbal supplements which feature ads for those products. On the other, a web page on bicycles should not have ads for other kinds of pumps, if you know what we mean.

Before you decide to add that magic Google AdSense code on any page of your website, you should have dealt with the following two important steps:

• High quality textual content

Ensure that your web pages have enough textual content so that the AdSense program can set up ads that are relevant to the content on your pages. If you have very little content, it will be difficult for Google to determine the focus of your page and end up displaying only public service ads that do not earn any revenue.

• Use different page titles for different pages

Have unique page titles based on the specific content of each page. Avoid generic or vague page titles such as ‘Untitled Document’ or ‘Page 1’. Be crisp and precise and avoid using long phrases and difficult words in the page titles. If your page has a very long title, it might get banned from some search engines, so be pithy.

Step 5 - Tracking and Reports:

Tracking the results of your marketing efforts can help you focus your efforts and make adjustments to win.

Google offers a great free tracking feature known as ‘Channels’. You can use these channels to track ads on specific URLs or to categorize ads based on their formats, keywords, location on web page and so on.

You can choose from two channel types offered by Google.

URL Channels

This will help you track the performance of your web pages without altering your ad code. All you need to do to track your performance is to enter a full or partial URL in the channel and you’re done. A full page URL will track the performance of the specific page having that address. If you want to track all the pages on a specific domain, you need to enter a top-level domain name.

Custom Channels

Custom channels are used to track the performance of your webpage based on the criteria that you specify. You can choose what specific factor you would like to track and customize the channel according to your requirements.

As the name suggests, custom channels are very flexible, and if you have ever used any kind of data reporting tool you will find setting them up easy and logical. You can have up to 50 custom channels!

You can compare the performance of different ad formats and the relevancy of ads. You can also compare how ads on one page are performing when compared with ads on other pages. You can do so by assigning each group of pages to a specific channel and eventually comparing results in your customized channel reports. You can also see where your clicks are coming from by assigning a channel to each of your separate pages. Also, it is a good idea to name your channel in such a way that it is easy to identify different channels in reports, especially if you are using a dozen or more.

Server Logs

In addition to the ‘channel’ program offered by Google to track your AdSense ads on your web pages, you can also use any of the various high quality external AdSense tracking software packages to track your performance in greater detail (except actual revenues – you need to get that from Google). One major advantage of such software is that it runs locally, which enables you to access specific information that Google doesn’t track. Be aware that none of these third-party software solutions are “endorsed” by Google currently but most of them guarantee to operate within AdSense guidelines. Just make sure they do, because you don’t want to lose your account status over a technical violation by a third party.

Some of the information you can obtain by using tracking software:

• Referring website of all your visitors

• The type of web browser they are using

• Where the actual ad-clickers are coming from

• Search keywords typed in by the visitors to your website that eventually brought them to you

You should use a combination of Google channels and a reliable AdSense tracking program so as to get comprehensive information about your AdSense account.

Part 1: Joining the AdSense Program

Understanding Google policies

We discussed earlier how rewarding the Google AdSense program can be. However, joining the Google AdSense program is not that easy or everyone in the world would do it (which would defeat its purpose, ultimately). You have to be approved by Google in order to create your AdSense account and start earning money from it.

How do you get approved? Google famously has never publicly published details of its approval process, there are tips you should follow to ensure a high possibility of getting approved.

The good news is that Google does publish its policies and you do not need to be a member to read them. 

You should read them and be certain that you are in 100% compliance with them, not only when attempting to start your AdSense account, but once you are already a member. They update these policies regularly and a violation will get you suspended. A list of Google AdSense policies can be seen at: http://www.google.com/adsense/policies

Content – The Key to AdSense!

As stated earlier, we cannot say exactly how Google decides to accept or reject a site. However, one thing is for sure – the main criterion for approval is always the content of the website!

Most sites get rejected simply because they do not have any – or enough – good content. What constitutes “good” content? 

We can say what it is not. The types of websites that only have links and “filler” content aimed at attracting Search Engines, and sites that do not offer any informational content but solely focus on their own products and services. Google is one of the smartest companies on the Internet, and they can easily tell “junk” content from “real” content, even if many web surfers themselves can’t.

Google approves websites that have significant real content. These could be in the form of informational articles, analyses of various topics, and much more. For business websites that solely focus on selling their products and services through their website, including informational articles about their industry is smart, and this data is usually pretty easily available.

Another reason why most business websites do not qualify for the program, is that most businesses are specialized, and these websites are most likely to get Ads from their competitors, as only those ads would be relevant. 

As discussed, competitor ads would be blocked by you, filtered by Google, or both, so an AdSense program that serves no ads makes no sense!

Similarly, websites that focus only on links for generating search engine traffic do not have any content at all, according to both common sense and Google. These sites may rack up fairly high traffic scores and so forth, but they do not qualify for AdSense.

One of the best and simplest strategies is to include at least 30 to 40 informational articles of 400 to 450 words each and update them from time to time. Writing these articles yourself may be a daunting task. However, the good news is that there are considerable websites that offer articles for free, and plenty of professional writing resources who can not only write high quality material for you, but can especially optimize that material to work well with search engines and the “qualification” processes for systems like AdSense.

How the Ads Get On Your Site??

Once you join the AdSense program – and Google approves your site or sites, which we’ll cover in detail shortly – the actual process of displaying ads on your website is extremely simple. You are provided with a small HTML script, which you can paste anywhere on your webpage. You may paste this code any number of times and on multiple pages, and watch the ads get served! Google automatically places AdWords ads that are most relevant, from its extensive advertiser base. Google employs various sophisticated algorithms to determine the relevancy of the ads to your content.

Before we get into how Google assesses sites, and whether a few or many placements of that magic script will deliver optimum results, let’s review the advantages of AdSense.

Google AdSense is simple to use and manage. Once approved, displaying ads on your webpage does not take time and requires minimal technical knowledge.

Google AdSense is very smart about ad selection. The ads that are displayed are only those that are relevant to your content, and Google has strict quality control on the general quality of the ads.

Google AdSense uses text-ads. Far from being low-tech, text ads are more effective than flashy ads. The clickthrough rate of text ads is proven to be higher than that of animated ads! More clicks equals more money, and text ads equals more clicks. Also…text ads are very “low weight” and very fast loading. The AdSense program will not slow your website, or your visitors, down. You can also use graphic ads.