How to Optimize AdSense

People who use Google’s revenue generator want to be able to earn income from the program, but without knowing how to optimize AdSense, they may be leaving money on the table. While other factors can contribute to the actual earnings, following a few simple suggestions can help increase your revenue from the advertisements on your Web site. Whether it’s changing the style of advertisements or incorporating search engine optimization (SEO) into your content, you can test these strategies to see how they affect your revenue.

Method 1 of 5: Consider the Position and Style of Your Ads

1  Look at the styles of ads available. Some Web sites report better income potential from skyscraper ads measuring 160 x 600 pixels, from large rectangle ads with 336 x 280 pixels or from an inline rectangle using 300 x 250 pixels.
A skyscraper is a specific type of advertisement that places ads vertically along the side of your Web site.
Ad


2  Select the style of ad you want to use and test it.
If you feel like you aren’t getting the result you want after a month, consider switching to a different style.

Method 2 of 5: Optimize AdSense With Your Content 

1  Plan your Web site’s content with AdSense in mind.
Google offers many tools to help its users improve their revenue. One of these tools provides information on keywords and the average amount you can earn from those keywords.

2  Write SEO content with higher-paying keywords.
This has the potential to increase traffic to your Web site and to garner higher paid advertisements for the ads displaying on your pages.
SEO content can include things not seen on the Web page, including the use of meta tags, robots.txt files and site maps.

3  Gear your writing to your audience and not to AdSense. In order to maintain your traffic, you need to provide high quality information to your visitors. This will drive traffic back to your site, which can increase your revenue through increased exposure.

Method 3 of 5: Utilize Research for Ad Design

1  Make your ads appealing to visitors. While you can’t control every aspect of the ads, there are some things you can do.
While the most popular link color is blue, you may find that more people click on the ads if you use a link color that matches the other links on your Web site.

2  Consider the impact of borders for your ads.
Some AdSense users recommend using no border around ads when you use a light-colored background. When you use a darker background, the consensus is to border your ads.
Additionally, using borders for in-text ads can distract visitors, while bordering ads on the sides of your page can draw positive attention to the ads.

Method 4 of 5: Disable Onsite Advertiser Sign Up 

1  Evaluate whether or not you feel this needs to be done. Some people prefer to disable it because it makes a negative impact on the advertising. Others don’t see it as a problem.

2  Sign in to your Google account for AdSense.

3  Go to “My Account.” This should be in the control panel.

4  Find the “Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up” and disable it. In most cases, you’ll need to uncheck the box next to it.

Method 5 of 5: Add a Search Box

1  Gain revenue from ads that display when people search for something from your website. In most cases, the ads displayed count as part of your revenue program.

2  Log in at Google AdSense.

3  Find the AdSense Setup and go to AdSense for Search.

4  Customize your search box with design features like your logo or company picture.

5  Incorporate the provided code into your HTML pages. You can do this by cutting and pasting into your HTML and then uploading it to your server.

READ MORE:  wikihow.com

3 Killer Adsense Techniques to Increase Income

If you have a website or a blog then most probably you have been monetizing it with Adsense and one thing which you would be constantly working on is to increase your Adsense click through rates in order to increase your revenue and earnings.

Well your Adsense income majorly depends on two factors - traffic and the click through rates, it's very easy to understand that more amount of traffic your website has more number of clicks you will get and thus increasing your adsense income. But, we cannot increase traffic of our site overnight so the next obvious thing to do would be to increase the CTR of the ads with the existing traffic.

Below are few tips which worked for me to increase my Adsense Income - try this and certainly this should work for you as well.

1. Your Ads should not look like Ads

Your Ads should not look like Ads, yes that's right - when visitors come to your site they are more interested in the information that you provide rather than the Ads on your site. So if your ads are looking like ads then probably they are not going to click on them. So it's important for you to blend the ads into your site so that they don't look like ads. If your site's background is white and if you are using black text and blue titles for it then use the same with your Adsense Ads - try to match the background of the Ads with background of your site so that it perfectly blends with your site and match the color of the title and the URL with the color of the titles and headings of your site, and the text should match with the color of the text that you have used on your site. This way you definitely can increase the chances of someone clicking on your ads.

2. Don't overdo the Ad Blocks

You might be thinking that if you add more number of ad blocks on your site then you will have a high CTR and thus increasing your revenue. Well that's not true - infect if you have more number of ad blocks on your site this will bring down your CTR or even if the CTR goes up then your earnings may not go up because if you have too many ad blocks then your visitors may click on low paying advertisers ads whose ads seems to be attractive and thus decreasing your ppc. So, try not to have more than two ad blocks on one page.

3. Placement of Ads

The right placement of ads is extremely important to increase your CTR, because if you place your ads at the wrong place then those ads will be ignored by your visitors. The best place to put your ads is to place it at the top of the site below the menu bar or just before where your content starts. The second best place to put the ads is on the right side of the page because whenever visitors scroll the page they will notice the ads on the site and thus increasing their chances of clicking on your Ads.

The above methods has definitely helped me in increasing my adsense income and I hope that this will help you too. Keep experimenting with your ads to see what works best for you and stick to that.

READ MORE: votetorrico.com

Make Money from Adsense – Without Inappropriate Ads!

by Naomi Elbinger  myparnasa

My last post on making money from your website got an amazing response. As well as 30 comments on the post itself, it stimulated lengthy discussions on LinkedIn and Facebook groups. Obviously this is an important business topic – and also a spiritual one. Since helping each other earn parnasa is the goal of this blog, I’ve decided to continue with a series of posts on increasing our earnings and improving our bottom line!

 

Google Adsense is probably the easiest way to make money from a website. All you need is some traffic and the earnings start to mount all by themselves.

You don’t need products or customer service, you don’t have to waste time looking for advertisers or testing affiliate programs, you don’t  need to keep up with the latest selling trends. All you need to do is drive traffic, and that’s what you are good at, right? (And if you are not good at that, don’t worry. You’ll get there with persistence. So this post is for you too!)

Israeli web marketing guru Yigal Pines, who has made a fortune from Adwords and Affiliate Marketing, recently wrote a post called “7 Reasons Why Adsense is Not Such a Bad Idea After All.” He reports that he just monetized a website with Adsense for the first time. While the site is still young and not yet earning much, he cannot get over how easy it is to earn money with Adsense, compared to the hard work of selling!

How Much Can You Earn from Adsense?

This is an important question for us all. Really, it depends on how much traffic you’re getting. You need a steady flow of over a thousand unique daily visitors to make more than a couple hundred bucks a month. The very general rule of thumb is that your average unique daily visitor count should approach your monthly Dollar earnings. Of course, this is an average estimate and varies significantly for different niche markets. On my sites, I earn a bit less than this rate. The way you place and optimize your Adsense will have an impact on your earnings, so I discuss tips for increasing your earnings below.

In any case, I’m sure that there are many readers of this blog that would like to earn a monthly check that approaches the number of their average unique daily visitor count. So Adsense seems like a monetization option that we must all explore seriously!

And no – Google has not hired me as a saleslady. In fact, I have a big problem with Adsense, which many readers of this blog share.

Inappropriate Ads in Adsense

My problem is that Adsense serves ads that are inappropriate for my sites. For example, I run a modest fashion magazine, and so all the image ads featuring fashionably dressed ladies kinda ruins the atmosphere. In addition, whenever I discuss women’s issues, I’m likely to get ads for interesting dating sites that might turn off my readers. When we talk recipes, we get ads for non-kosher foods.

The problem of inappropriate ads on Adsense exists in all markets. Most Adsense publishers and their audience find that Adsense sometimes serves ads that are completely irrelevant, if not contrary to the spirit of their site concept. On the Adsense forum, I read of one frustrated webmaster who runs a site for men who are bald and proud of it. Unfortunately, Google’s clever robots regularly serve ads related to hair replacement treatments that don’t gel well with his “proud baldy” message.

I have discussed this problem with many webmasters, most recently Rabbi Jack Kalla, Director of Development at Aish.com. Aish.com is a massively successful website in the Jewish niche with over 2 million pageviews per month. With all that great content, professional viral videos and cutting-edge technology, Aish.com is obviously not a cheap site to run. It attempts to pay its way with banner ads, memberships and other monetization options. It would like to use Adsense and with that kind of traffic, it’s a good idea. The problem is that Aish.com is naturally very selective about the kinds of ads it wants to host.

Let’s look at some possible solutions:

Blocking Sensitive Categories in Adsense

Adsense gives you a selection of sub-categories that could be considered “sensitive” and you can select these under the “Allow and Block Ads” tab. See the image below:

For some reason, not everyone will have this list of sub-categories within their Adsense interface. I don’t know why that it. I have written to Google about this problem so maybe one day it will be explained. (Note: all these screenshots are taken in the new Adsense interface. If you are using the old interface, things look different.)

Blocking Image Ads in Adsense

If you don’t want to take any risks with image ads, you can choose text ads only, like in the image below

Activate the Adsense Ad Review Center

Adsense gives you the option to review all ads that will appear 24 hours in advance. You can activate this option by clicking as shown in the screenshot below and following the instructions. It takes about a week to activate. You can learn more about the Ad Review Center here. This seems like a good options for ultimate control, but obviously it requires some manpower to regularly review the ads.

So basically, there is no need to rule out Adsense just because you are concerned about inappropriate ads. There are ways to work with it. In general, it’s best to minimize your blocking settings to the essentials. As you block more ads, the average cost-per-click will fall, since there is less competition from advertisers who want to appear on your page.

Making More Money from Adsense

Here are some tips to increase your Adsense earnings:

• Position ads under titles and subtitles – they are more noticeable there
• Adjust the colors so that the ads fit into your site’s color scheme.  In general, the more that the ads appear to be a part of your site, the higher your click-thru rate.
• If you don’t want Adsense on your recent articles that are currently getting mileage on social media , you can still put it on your popular “evergreen” posts that get a lot of traffic from search engines. You can earn a lot by heavily Adsensing these “back-door” pages, even if the “front-door” pages are completely free of Adsense.
• Assuming there’s money in your niche (think big spending), you’ve created high quality content (that visitors like and keep coming back to), AND you’ve done a good job of strategically sprinkling high cost-per-click key words (easy to check this on the Adwords keyword tool), your earnings could potentially rise much higher

I want to thank Ohad Flinker from Israel-Travel-Secrets.com for sharing his knowledge of Adsense and helping me write this post.

And now… it’s your turn!

READ MORE: myparnasa.com

AdSense for content

If you own or manage a website, blog, or forum, AdSense can help you earn from your content.

AdSense for content is a way for website publishers of all sizes to earn money by displaying Google ads on their website's content pages. The ads are related to what your users are looking for on your site, so they'll help you enhance your content pages while earning from them.

Through AdSense, ads from Google's advertiser network are served on content pages like this one, from nameadog.com.

AdSense is free, and you'll earn when users click on or view the ads on your site, depending on the type of ad. For more information, visit the sections below:

How does it work?

• Google places relevant cost-per-click (CPC) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) ads in the same auction and lets them compete against one another. The auction takes place instantaneously and when it's over our system automatically picks the advertisers who are willing to pay the most.


• Keep your users coming back with contextually targeted ads. You want to make more money from advertising, but you don't want to show irrelevant ads to your users. AdSense solves this problem by automatically delivering text ads, display ads, link units and high-end mobile ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content -- ads so well-matched that your readers will actually find them useful.


• Access thousands of advertisers with minimal effort. AdSense displays ads from our vast network of AdWords advertisers. Our advertisers range from global brands to small local companies, in categories from Education to Travel, Mortgages to Patio Furniture, and just about everything in between.

What features does AdSense provide?

• Block unwanted ads: You can filter competitive ads, or other ads you want to keep off your site, simply by telling us which URLs to block.


• Choose your own default ads: In the unlikely event that Google can't show targeted ads on your page, we'll let you display a backup ad of your choice. This ensures that your advertising space is always being used effectively.


• Customize ads to complement your site: We let you customize the appearance of your ads to match your site's look and feel. Choose from our pre-set color palettes, or design your own palette from over 200 colors.


• Track your earnings with online reports: With AdSense, you can monitor your ad performance with customizable online reports that offer details like the number of ad impressions, clicks, and click-through rate. Our flexible reporting tools let you track the performance of specific ad formats, colors and pages, and spot trends quickly and easily.


• Get ads on your high-end mobile website: Our crawler is intelligent enough to detect which types of phones your users are using. With AdSense for content, we'll deliver the best optimized ads, whatever device your users happen to be viewing your site with.

SOURCE:  google.com

Google AdSense Revenue Tips

by Kathy Burns-Millyard, Demand Media

Google AdSense is a contextual advertising system designed to allow small businesses and individuals to make money from their websites. Contextual advertising displays advertisements based on the surrounding content available on a given web page. If your small business website has an article about laptop computers, for example, ads related to that topic will display in the Google AdSense blocks on your page. Google AdSense revenue can vary dramatically based on a number of factors; by implementing a few optimization tips you can increase that revenue over time.

Website Traffic

Since AdSense earns money each time a website visitor clicks an ad, revenue will be low if website traffic is low. Increase your website traffic using online tools such as free classified websites, search engine listings and local directory listings to help increase the overall AdSense earnings on your website. Offline marketing tools help increase traffic too: Print your business website address on business cards and brochures, for example, and incorporate it into any of your newspaper, television and radio advertising campaigns.

Text Content

Google AdSense displays advertisements based on the type of content your business displays on its website, and the primary content of importance is text based. If your website has pages filled with images, video clips and other multi-media elements, AdSense may not be able to determine the topic of that page, and it won't be able to select the appropriate ads to display. Incorporate plenty of text-based material in the form of image alt tags, captions, video or multi-media summaries, and articles on the topic of what's being displayed to ensure AdSense is displaying relevant advertisements for your website.

Ad Placement

According to the AdSense optimization tips provided by Google, the placement of your AdSense blocks plays an important role in improving revenue generation. Internet users often scan a website page instead of reading it, so their eyes are naturally drawn to specific areas of a page. The top portion of a website page--the part that is seen without having to scroll down--is referred to as "above the fold." This location is a premium ad placement spot because a larger percentage of your website visitors are likely to see the ads in this area and click on them. Google provides several ad placement strategy recommendations based on the type of website on which your company displays AdSense. A blog, for example, can optimize revenue by placing advertisements in slightly different locations than a discussion forum.

Ad Design

Use the ad design tools provided by Google to customize the way your AdSense blocks look. In most cases, making the AdSense advertisements blend in with the look and feel of your website will produce the best revenue increases. Design the ads so they have the same background color as your website, and select text and URL colors that match the text and link colors of your site as well, so the ads look as if they're just additional related content.

Channel Tracking

Use the channel tracking features within your AdSense account to track ad performance. Google provides URL tracking and customized channel tracking. URL tracking helps you determine which specific pages or sections of your website are generating the highest revenue, as well as which are performing poorly. Custom channels are useful for determining which ad placements are performing best or worst on each page. Custom channels can be made to compare how an above the fold advertisement is performing versus another at the bottom of article pages, for example.

SOURCE:  smallbusiness.chron.com

Adsense Tips: Tips to increase traffic to your site

Some of the best strategies you can use to drive users to your site and improve the visibility of your pages can be found within Google's webmaster tools. We've highlighted five ways you can take advantage of the tools below to improve the visibility of the content you've worked hard to create.

1. Submit all of your pages to the Google index - for free.

By using Google Webmaster Tools to submit your URLs, you help Google's web crawler do a more complete and efficient job of crawling your site. Webmaster tools enables you to submit all of your pages to the Google index, and it's particularly useful for making sure that we know about all dynamically generated URLs or pages that are not adequately linked to on your site. But please note: submitting a page to the index will not guarantee inclusion or influence your PageRank, and isn't a replacement for creating compelling and useful content.

2. Find out how Google sees your site.

Once you've made sure we have access to your site, you can see the common words used to link to your pages and that are seen by Google. This allows you to see trends in your site's content, and can help you determine why you may be ranking for particular keywords. You can also see which page has the highest PageRank by month. Some site owners are surprised to find that this isn't always the home page. If an internal page has the highest PageRank, you might consider spending more time optimizing the ads there.

3. Diagnose potential problems.

We let you know if, and why, we're having trouble accessing your site or specific pages. If we can't crawl a page, we can't index it -- so fixing any errors we list can help improve your overall coverage. If the AdSense Site Diagnostics tool shows that you're blocking pages from MediaPartners-Google (the AdSense crawler), you can use the robots.txt analysis tool of Google webmaster tools to test changes to that file and make sure those changes allow access. You can also see what pages you are blocking from other Google bots -- this lets you experiment with changes to see how they would affect the crawl of your site.

4. Find out which queries drive traffic to your site.

Using Google webmaster tools, learn which Google queries created clickthroughs to your site and where you were positioned in the search results for that query. You can also view data for individual properties and countries as well. For instance, you can see the queries from users searching Google Images in the United States that returned your site in the results. You'll only see properties and countries for which your site has data.

5. Get re-included.

If your site has disappeared from the search results, read through the Google quality guidelines, then correct any problems on your site and request re-inclusion from your Google webmaster tools account. Please keep in mind that the reinclusion request form is only available to people using Google webmaster tools.

SOURCE:  support.google.com

7 AdSense Optimization Tips for Beginners

You are not going to earn much simply by placing Adsense on your blog or website. How do you know which ads are performing better than the others? Did you know that ad placement, color, theme and layout, all effects CTR and conversion? Recently there was an article on this blog on monetizing your blog with adsense. And today, we have a guest post from Ankit who will shed some light on the importance of Adsense optimization and A/B testing. This article is mainly geared towards beginners but I am sure you all can learn something from it. Take it away Ankit…

We all have heard of the bloggers making “BIG MONEY” with Google Adsense. Simply creating a blog or a website and slapping a few Google Ads hasn’t led them to where they stand today. It has undoubtedly taken a lot of patience, motivation and hard work. You can’t just add a few ads to your website and wait for the money to roll in.

Succeeding in a moneymaking endeavor, whether they involve Google Adsense or any other source, requires not only your time and effort but also persistence.

Who doesn’t want to make the most out of their AdSense revenue? It is perhaps the only part of a website or blog that is always on the Webmaster’s mind. But, are you really trying to make the most out of your website? Here are some optimization tips, which are a must for all publishers who use AdSense or similar display advertising based monetization platforms.

A large majority of webmasters and publishers are undermining the real power of ad revenue optimization.

ARO can help you improve your Adsense revenue, without improving your website traffic. In other words, it helps you make the most out of your current website traffic. So, essentially, we are going to focus on ad optimization while traffic remains the same in term of both quantity and quality.

Well, what exactly is it that we need to do? Let’s find out…

A Typical website would have around 3 Ad units on every page. Now, it is natural for some ad units to have a better CTR than others. But are you loading (in HTML) your best performing ad unit (in terms of CTR) first? Whether you believe it or not, it makes a huge difference.

When you have two or three units on your blog or website, the html structure should ensure that the ad with highest CTR is loading first. In other words, it should come first in the HTML structure, even if it is shown in the middle or later part of the page.

You can do it pretty easily using a little CSS and the <div> tags. In case you’re wondering the reason behind the success of this method, Adsense always fills the highest paying ads first. For instance, the top paying or highest grossing ad might earn you 62 cents; the 2^nd highest one to load may offer you a little less, say 40 cents and the final one: 20 cents.

It isn’t hard to guess that the highest CTR (click through rate) on the top paying ad unit would earn you a lot of additional revenue, which you are most likely to be losing right now.

Note: The maximum ad units allowed by Google Adsense on a webpage are three.

Selecting the right text colors for your Ad theme is crucial. Yes, small changes in the ad color can make a huge difference. Let me give you an example.

A recent website on which I ran some tests, witnessed an increase in CTR by 75 percent as compared to the original ad units, all done by making a small change in the color of the Textual Adsense theme.

Different AdSense Themes for Text Ads

Salman: Interrupting for a bit :). So Ankit, what was that small change in the color which increased CTR? I am sure everyone would like to know that. Aside from that, I have a niche site which is slightly monetized with Adsense and Amazon. Since I am Mr. nice guy, I am sharing it with you all here so you can check it out. It’s called whitejeansformen.org. I don’t usually monetize my blogs with adsense but I thought this one is worth sharing.

Notice the theme and the layout and color of the ads. They blend with each other pretty well. You might not see that many stuff on it yet because I haven’t worked on this at all. It was created from scratch by one of my outsourcers and I believe he has done a great job. The entire website looks pretty neat; but of course, the content needs to be fixed and the ads need to be tweaked. As I said, I haven’t laid my hands on this yet but when I do, you will see some changes (probably in the next 2 weeks so keep an eye on it).

When it comes to color, I believe it greatly affects CTR as well as sales. Alright, over to you Ankit…

The overall performance of a particular ad unit relies heavily on its location on a given webpage.

Incorrect placement of Ad could mean higher bounce rates and lower ad income.

On the other hand, putting right sized ads at the right places can even double your ad revenue without any additional traffic. Always make sure that your ads are placed strategically on our site. But how would you know the right location to place your ads?

Fortunately, you can use A/B Testing tools to compare ad performance in different page locations. We’ll come back to the topic of A/B testing, later in the article.

Responsive design is another factor that is equally important. Websites and blogs equipped with a responsive design should feature ads that adjust automatically according to the viewer’s screen size.

Wider ads generally perform better than taller ads. Of course, we have exceptions. Keep in mind- if a 468×60 Banner works incredibly for someone, it is not necessary that it can work for you as well. The only way to know for sure is by testing it yourself.

When it comes to ad size in particular, it is important to remember that context is the key. Never make your ads so large that they overpower the content of your website.

On the other hand, they shouldn’t be so small that no one can see them. They should never disappear beneath the sea of content you have on your website.Moderation is always the key!

Another factor that you have to keep in mind is the relevance of the ad with the content on your website. Always consider the purpose of the page and ad placement while determining the size of an advertisement. Make certain that the ads you put on a particular page are complimentary to the content that they are featured alongside. You have to experiment here.

Test different sizes of ads in different positions. There are tons of different combinations that you can try. You can use A/B testing to figure out the best placement and size combination.

So far, what we have understood is that there are 3 key elements, which can help you improve your CTR: Size, design, and location. Next, create variations – different ad size in different ad locations with different themes, and then split your website traffic between these variations.

Over time, once you have enough data, you’ll see some ad units performing better than others. This data will help you find the best performing ads for your website. You could also use an automated tool such as AdPushup (Disclaimer: I’m a cofounder) to do the same for you.

A/B Testing – Different Ad Size and Location

Salman: Hostile takeover again :). Most successful entrepreneurs, bloggers and marketers know the power of A/B testing. One awesome guy I know is Neil Patel. If you are wasting your time implementing stuff that doesn’t result in a good ROI, you are going nowhere far.

My recent experience with facebook ads was pretty slick. I ran several campaigns; however, I would like to just talk about 2 of my campaigns which I used for A/B Testing. I was running 5 different ads with different pictures, targeting the same locations, interests and demographic. I then noticed that only 2 of them had a high CTR which lowered my CPC. I was getting clicks for pennies  I paused all the ads which were not performing well and ran only the ones with high CTR. (More on this will be revealed on a later post).

I just wanted to emphasize the importance of A/B testing. Whether you are running an ad campaign or monetizing your site with Adsense, you definitely should consider A/B testing.

Content is the most significant part of any website/blog. It not only attracts traffic, but also makes a huge impact on the CTR of ad units.

Although there aren’t enough stats to support certain theories, there definitely is an important relation between CTR and the quality of content on your website. Outlined below are a couple of examples for your better understanding:

According to an article by Jim Boykin, if readers find content on a blog/website sufficient, satisfactory and good, they are likely to ignore everything else on the webpage, which will eventually lead to decreased CTR.

On the other hand, if there were a detailed, well-researched article offering you every piece of information you need about a certain technology, what would you do if you see a targeted advertisement at the bottom of this page directly related to that technology? Wouldn’t you be intrigued to check it out after reading this compelling article on the technology about its advantages and disadvantages?

I’ve stated both the hypothesis above, but what would work? – Again, only testing and data can answer this question.

SOURCE: mastermindblogger.com