How Much Adsense Is Too Much Adsense?

When we asked users on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ if they had any web design or SEO questions, we were asked the following excellent question by @HolidayScotland:

“How strict are Google now with ads on websites? And can too many get you penalised?”

In short How Much Adsense is too much?

There are a few different answers to this:

• The mathematical answer
• The ‘above the fold’ answer
• The ‘bigger picture’ answer

The Mathematical Answer

If you were to read through the Adsense Guidelines you will know that mathematically speaking you are allowed a maximum of:

• Three Adsense for Content blocks
• Three link units and
• Two search boxes per web page.

This is quite a large allowance – so in theory you could have up to 8 Adsense units if you followed this as your answer.

However, even the guidance makes it clear that

However, keep in mind that placing the maximum number of allowed ad units on a page may result in it looking cluttered.

We will come back to this shortly.

Above ‘The Fold’

There has always been debate as to what ‘above the fold‘ actually means. Roughly speaking, in computer terms it means whatever can be seen on a website without scrolling. In the era of mobile devices, responsive web design and a myriad of screen resolutions this definition has become increasingly blurred.

However, if you think of it in terms of the initial impact your website or individual web page has on a user when they load your site as ‘above the fold’ you will be thinking in the correct way.

How this applies to Adsense is that since late 2011 it has been clear that Google have been open to penalising sites with too much Adsense ‘above the fold’. So if a user lands on your page and they are bombarded with ads and struggle to find the real content, then that’s a bad signal. Firstly it’s bad in terms of organic ranking because the user’s experience of your site is poor, so your site may not rank very well because of that. Secondly your site could contravene Google’s Adwords (and therefore Adsense) policies, risking the closure of your Adsense account.

So while you could have 8 ad units on your page, if all 8 were above the fold, the visitor to your website could easily land and be put off your site due to the volume of ads they initially encounter.

Principle: place your ads carefully down your page, be considerate of your users.

Sites for Adsense

If you read the Google Policy above you will have noted that one of the main ways your Adsense account and website could contravene the rules is

“Websites designed for the sole or primary purpose of showing ads”

Therefore if you set up a website, however good the content, because you thought that’d be a great way to make money, then you risk being in contravention of this principle. This is called creating a “site for Adsense”.

You could still fall foul of this unintentionally by loading your site up with too many ads. If you’re creating 200-300 words of quality content per page and have 8 ad-units, that can appear to bea site for Adsense.

So the first principle is don’t create a site for ads, create a site for users and then ensure your ads are controlled. Don’t have too many and don’t overwhelm the user. Focus on great content – text, video, images, infographics – whatever is applicable, then you can insert adverts carefully and sensitively so that your ad income is a nice add-on but is not your driver.

Are Google Strict?

On this thread from a couple of years back the complainant had received this e-mail from Google.

“While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Are Google strict? It appears they have to be.

And why is that? Because as a website owner when people click on your Adsense links, a person or company somewhere is paying for that click. Adsense is firstly other people’s money before a website owner’s. And because that money is being paid for a click, Google need to make sure that advertiser’s money is well-spent.

Adsense – The Bigger Picture

Finally it’s important to look at the bigger picture, rather than just purely at ad placement and click-through rates etc. While Adsense can be a legitimate form of income – you can get banned if not using it correctly.

The answer – build your website first for your target users, not for people who might click through. So here’s some basic guidance:

• Ensure your website design is good – and presents you well.
• Produce great content for your users first – and build a following who know you do! Ask yourself if a visitor to the site sees content or ads – and redress the balance accordingly.
• Position your ads considerately, being sure that the first experience of your site is positive – and keep some further down the page too.
• Make it clear to visitors which are your ads and what is your content – do not accidentally (or intentionally) cause people to click when that was not their intention.
• Google are strict (it seems) because they are protecting the advertising spend of companies that use the Adwords network.
• Too many can get you penalised and cause negative SEO affects as well, if the web page is overloaded with ads.

SOURCE: summitweb.net