Adsense All tips and tricks

Should You Place Google AdSense Ads Above The Fold

2009-11-14T11:09:00.001-08:00

Above the Fold refers to any area on the web page that is prominently displayed and this generally is the upper half section that the visitors can read without touching the scroll bars of the browser.
It’s a common understanding that Google AdSense Ads perform best when placed above the fold as they get maximum attention and hence a higher CTR.

There’s however a different opinion now which says that Ads may get more clicks when placed next to the content or near the comments:
"A couple years ago there was this idea that putting the ad above the fold would get more attention. However visitors just completely overlooked the ads because they were coming to the site to read the content and didn’t give a doodle about what sat on the way top of the page. And really, when people were reading the content, the ads were too high to see and/or click on and website owners and their advertisers were not making any mula.
Today we put the ads next to the content or in between action points like commenting or sharing links. This is because the visitor subconsciously sees the ad and may be looking for something to do next. When next to an action point like a comment, the visitor is no longer reading the article and is much more inclined to click on an ad. "

Contextual AdSense Ads for RSS Feeds – See Sample Codea

2009-11-14T11:07:00.001-08:00

The rumors are true. Google AdSense ads for RSS feeds are coming next week. Here’s a sample code that will be inserted in your FeedBurner feed for showing AdSense ads.

The AdSense ads inside FeedBurner RSS feeds will be contextual and CPM based – i.e., you get paid based on the number of ad impression – so the more subscribers you have, the more revenue.
And most likely you’ll see image banners in the feeds, not the regular text ads. THe RSS ads can be managed via the regular AdSense dashboard.
Google will initially experiment with only a small group of AdSense publishers but will eventually roll-out the program to all AdSense and FeedBurner customers. The layout will be quite different from the earlier screenshots.

Google AdSense Ads in RSS Feeds – First Impressions & Screenshots

2009-11-14T11:06:00.003-08:00

The AdSense for RSS feeds program is now live for some publishers and Google has also discontinued the FeedBurner Advertising Network in favor of AdSense.

*If you are subscribed to this RSS feed in either Google homepage or any news reader, you may have already seen the new feed ads at the bottom of each article.

AdSense Ads in Feeds are contextual and are available in banner (468×60) and medium rectangle (300×250) formats. They are probably a mix of CPC and CPM ads because you can show either text ads or image ads or even a combination of both in your feeds.
Here’s a screenshot of a feed ad inside an article that was about search engine optimization – notice the relevance of the ad.

AdSense publishers can choose how frequently the ads should appear in the feed and whether ads should appear in articles that are relatively short.
What’s different from FeedBurner though is that with Google AdSense you can position ads either at the bottom or top of the feed item.

There are two big advantages here:
a. The ads are contextual, very relevant and publishers may therefore see better returns.
b. A large majority of FeedBurner advertisers targeted their ad campaigns for US traffic so publishers were not able to successfully monetize traffic from other countries. That will change with AdSense for Feeds as Google has advertisers almost everywhere.
Here’s another example of an RSS ad – its a medium rectangle this time.

AdSense Click Tracking Data in Google Analytics Is Coming Soon

2009-11-14T11:06:00.001-08:00

If you are using Google AdSense on your website, here’s some very good news.
You will soon be able to track visitor clicks on your AdSense ads using Google Analytics reports.
These new reports in Analytics have enough details to help you exactly measure AdSense performance on every single page of your website.

Google dropped hints on AdSense – Analytics integration some two years but the program has finally entered the beta phase as revealed by a post on GoogleCache (offline now).

Luckily the story remained in FeedDemon’s cache and picking from there, following is a summary of AdSense related data that you’ll be able to track via Google Analytics:
1. The number of times AdSense ads were clicked on any given web page.
2. AdSense revenue generated per page for clicks mentioned in #1.
3. You’ll also know the CTR and CPM for all web pages – no need to create individual URL channels in your AdSense dashboard.
4. "Top AdSense Referrers" – this is the most interesting report as it helps you know about revenue made per referring websites.
Let’s take an example. Assume two sites – digg.com and cnn.com – have linked to a page on your website and are sending some referral traffic. Now Analytics will tell you exactly how much AdSense revenue you are making through traffic from each of these sites.
This report has enormous potential as it lends a "measurable" value to each incoming link. Some sites could even use this as a replacement for affiliate programs.
All the above information is based on screenshots that were shared by Google Cache but that story is no longer available on the web.

Google AdSense Reports in Analytics – Screenshots

2009-11-14T11:05:00.001-08:00

AdSense publishers will soon have access to extremely detailed stats about ads via Google Analytics reports. You’ll know about web pages that get more clicks, revenue generated per page, CPM rates, top referring sites, etc. For more, check this story on AdSense and Analytics integration.

The screenshots were inadvertently published on TheGoogleCache.com and were cached by different newsreaders. Here are more screenshots from the same source that give exciting hints about what’s coming next. (click to enlarge)

AdSense Overview

There’s a new AdSense section added to the Analytics Reports that displays complete statistics about how visitors interact with Google Ads on your site and how have the ads performed over time.

AdSense Trending

This Analytics report will give an overview of how your AdSense earnings have changed over time (like your site traffic in Google Trends).

AdSense Revenue Per Page

This report is similar to the ‘Top AdSense Content’ report but that was for the entire site and this is on the page level.

Top AdSense Referrers

Let’s say site abc.com and xyz.com have linked to a page on you are website and you are getting referral traffic. With the AdSense Referrer report, you’ll know the exact revenue that you are making from visitors that are coming to you via two different sources.

Great for AdSense Revenue Sharing Sites

All these new AdSense – Analytics reports will also be very useful if you plan to have a site / blog with multiple contributors and their payment is a fixed percentage of AdSense Revenue generated from articles that they have written. No complex Excel sheets required anymore.

Google Earnings Report – Good News for AdSense Publishers?

2009-11-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

Google doesn’t disclose the percentage of advertising revenue that it shares with AdSense publishers but you can pick some clues from their quarterly earnings data.

There are three sections in the quarterly reports that are interesting from the perspective of AdSense publishers like you and me.
1. Google Network Revenues – This is total advertising revenue generated through AdSense program on sites that aren’t owned by Google (like blogs, NYT, etc.).
2. Traffic Acquisition Costs – This is primarily the amount that Google distributes among AdSense publishers.
3. Paid Clicks – While Google will not share the exact percentage of ad clicks on their network, this column will help you figure out if the number of clicks per impression are increasing or heading south. More clicks mean more revenue both for publishers and Google.
Now let’s compare this earnings data for Q1 2008, Q2 2008 and Q3 2008:

	Q1 2008	Q2 2008	Q3 2008
1. Total Revenue earned by Google from AdSense	$ 1.69 billion	$ 1.66 billion	$ 1.68 billion
2. AdSense Revenue that Google shared with publishers	$ 1.49 billion	$ 1.47 billion	$ 1.50 billion
3. Percentage of revenue share	88.16 %	88.55%	89.29%
4. Paid Clicks	n*1.04%	n*1.03%	n*1.07%

So what does this mean for AdSense publishers. While I am no expert, these numbers clearly say:
1. More people are clicking on Google Ads as is evident from the growth in %age of ad clicks (see #4).
2. The amount of advertising revenue generated from AdSense publisher sites has more or less stayed the same throughout the year (see #1) but Google is distributing a slightly larger share of the pie among AdSense publishers (see #3).

AdSense for Domains Available for International Publishers

2009-11-14T10:57:00.001-08:00

If you own some "unused" web domains that still get some traffic because that domain is listed in an online web directory or printed on your old business card, here’s an opportunity to monetize those visitors without having to show them messages like "Domain under construction" or 404 errors.
Google has just extended the "AdSense for Domains" program to International AdSense publishers and the program now supports non-English languages as well.

The program initially launched in December but was available only to publishers located in North America with English-language accounts.
To get started, login to your Google AdSense account and click the "AdSense for Domains" link under the AdSense Reports tab. Here are detailed instructions on how to set up your vacant domain for AdSense ads. It requires you create a new CNAME record which have a value pub-123.afd.ghs.google.com. where pub-123 is your AdSense publisher ID.
The AdSense for Domains program will also appeal to users who have purchased web domains only for the purpose of Google Apps and have no plans of creating / hosting a public website. In that case you may have Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. in sub-domains (mail.xxx.com or calendar.xxx.com) while you may use the main domain (www.xxx.com) for AdSense ads.

Google Adsense Now Allows You to Change Fonts

2009-11-14T10:55:00.001-08:00

You can now choose to customize the appearance of your Google Adsense ad unit by choosing between “Arial”, “Verdana” or “Times” font-faces on all English (Latin-based) web pages.
To quickly change the font settings for every ad unit generated from your account, visit the Ad Display Preference section of your Account Settings page to select a new account-wide font face.
To select custom fonts for individual ad units, go to Manage Ads and select the individual ad unit to make the changes.
This could be a boon for all publishers who have been struggling with Ad blindness, as the new fonts will make the Adsense ad unit look different.

Banned AdSense Publisher Gets His Money Back from Google

2009-11-14T10:51:00.003-08:00

It’s not uncommon to hear stories of disgruntled AdSense publishers whose accounts have been permanently banned by Google either due to "non-compliance with AdSense policies" or for "posing a significant risk to AdWords advertisers."
The compliance issue is almost always related to content. For instance, if any particular website is centered around banned topics (like gambling or pornography), Google can disable AdSense serving for that website.
The next issue is more serious as it relates to "click fraud". No one obviously has a clear understanding of how Google determines "invalid clicks" but such an activity can invite an AdSense ban for life. There’s an appeal process at Google but again it doesn’t guarantee that your AdSense account will be reinstated even if you provide all the required details (like web server logs).
Aaron Greenspan was another happy AdSense user until he received an email from Google saying that his account has been cancelled.

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 AdSense account.

Aaron writes in Huffington Post that his AdSense account was disabled without warning and he literally ran from pillar to post at Google trying to reach everyone from the AdSense Customer Service to the Legal Team to Google forums but with no success.
If an AdSense publisher’s account is disabled for invalid clicks, he is not entitled to any further payment from Google and all the current earnings are returned to the corresponding AdWords advertisers. The same happened to Aaron as he had made around $721 from AdSense but the payment was stopped after the account was disabled.
With literally no options left, Aaron made a final attempt and filed a civil lawsuit for $721.00 (the amount Google owed to him) saying that Google could not prove any wrongdoing and that Google’s fraud detection algorithm was imperfect. All he had to pay was $40 as the court fees for this lawsuit.
The AdSense account was disabled on December 9, 2008, he filed the lawsuit against Google on January 15, 2009 and on March 2, 2009, the judge delivered the following verdict:

I don’t think I have the power here in Palo Alto small claims court to make you reinstate his account, but I think you owe this young man $721. I think there might be money in Google’s treasury for that.

Google paid him all the "due" AdSense earnings along with the court fees though his account still stands cancelled.
I think a big reason why Google lost this case is because their lawyer couldn’t convince the judge about how "click fraud" was detected in first place. Google has good reasons to not disclose their fraud detection algorithms in public court cases but the fact that this decision went against Google could probably convince many more ex-AdSense users to follow the footsteps of Aaron.

How Many Google AdSense Ads are Allowed Per Page?

2009-11-14T10:51:00.001-08:00

Google AdSense publishers can place up to:
a. A Maximum of three AdSense for content units (text, image or rich media) on one webpage.
b. A maximum of three AdSense link units (horizontal or vertical)
c. A maximum of two Google Search Boxes on one web page (it can be Google custom search as well but make sure the Google logo is visible).
d. ~~One Video AdSense unit~~ (this has been discontinued)
Google AdSense program does not permit AdSense ad code to be placed in email messages or newsletters. Nor are you allowed to add AdSense ads in software application, browser tools, extensions, etc.
The Google AdSense code may be implemented only on web-based pages.

Improve Performance of AdSense Link Units on your Site

2009-11-14T10:49:00.001-08:00

Do you use Google AdSense on your site? Here are two tips to help improve the performance of AdSense Link Units on your site without changing any code.
1. Don’t Reuse Colors
When you create an Ad Link unit for your site, the background color of the Ad Link block should match with the color of other navigation elements on your web page.
For instance, on my home page, the AdSense Link Unit near the top navigation area has a dark grey background to match the horizontal navigation bar just above the Ad Link unit.

A problem with the above approach is that the landing page, which appears when a user clicks the ad link, will also have the same background color and that may not be very pleasing to the eyes of the visitor especially when you are using dark colors for Ad Links.
You can however override this default setting such that Google text ads on the target page are displayed using the default color palette (green URL and blue titles). For this, you need to edit your AdSense unit (AdSense Setup -> Manage Ads) and uncheck the setting "Reuse Colors".
2. Use Large Fonts
AdSense units with large font sizes tend to perform relatively better.

Therefore always consider using 4 links per unit (not 5) because with lesser number of links, AdSense will increase the font size and spacing (or line height) to fill the whole ad space and that may yield better results.
Google Ad Link units help you make the most out of limited space so don’t ignore them. And unlike the other text ads, Ad links can sometimes perform well in less visible locations also like the sidebar of your blog or even the footer. Keep experimenting.
Best of all, you can make all the above changes directly from the AdSense dashboard without having to edit your site template.

AdSense Webinar: Making the Most Out of AdSense

2009-11-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

The AdSense Optimization team at Google recently conducted a live chat where they shared some useful tips on improving revenue from text ads as well as AdSense for search. The presentation was followed by an interactive Q&A session with AdSense publishers.
Recording of AdSense Optimization Webinar
In case you missed this webinar, here’s a complete recording of the presentation that was sent to all registrants via email. The Q&A starts at 26:00.

And here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions from the AdSense chat session again shared via email.
Q: What is the performance difference between the 300×250 and the 336×280 units?
AdSense Specialist: The 336×280 usually has a higher CTR; however we tend to have a higher image inventory for the 300×250 unit. Ultimately, both the large and medium rectangles are two of our top performing ad units, so using the one which fits most seamlessly into your site design is key.
Q: Does adding additional AdSense ad units to your pages decrease CPC or eCPM?
AdSense Specialist: Usually, most publishers see overall revenue gains if they place more ad units on their pages. Publishers may see a decrease in the average "eCPM" in their account, but this is expected because the additional ads on a page will usually generate lower per-click revenue. For example, the top 4 ads on a page will generate the most revenue through our auction model, and the next 5-8 ads will generate lower amounts. However, the overall revenue generated will usually be higher for the publisher.

10 new or improved features I want, from 10 online services

2009-11-14T10:42:00.001-08:00

I’ve got something to suggest to some of the online services I use, features that could really make the day for a lot of their users.
I don’t expect representatives (except Unicredit’s) from these services to jump right ahead and take action on what I suggest, but at least take note of them.
Here they are:

Google Search: Implement a linkdomain: operator and make the link: operator work with the -site: operator, like Yahoo!’s: linkdomain:www.seopedia.org -site:www.seopedia.org.
Google Adsense: Allow us to filter out unwanted ads more efficiently. The maximum 200 URLs that we can enter into the Competitive Ad Filter are just not enough. Maybe allow us to use filters on the TLD itself ? Maybe regional filters ? Or just allow us more then 200 URLs. Moreover, you guys at Google could come up with a community controlled arbitrage/spam filter, exactly like the one Gmail has, this way: If 100/500/1000 people block a certain URL in their AdSense account, that would trigger a filter that could either automatically a MFA status to that particular URL, or an AdSense representative could go and check the website out manually. If it’s a MFA, put it in the system. I know MFA’s are good earners too Google, but think of the other users that bring cash. Us, not the spammers and arbitrageurs.
Digg: Guys, please make a page where buried items can be un-buried. A lot of good stories are getting buried for no reason. I’m not talking about spam. I’m a Digg user, I submit stories (mainly blogs, because those are the websites I read), but I am getting frustrated to see so many good ones being buried because some troll users think so. Give us a chance to combat that small number of users that make the Digg experience really not so pleasant. You think it’s best to leave the burying to the community, without any intervention from your part right ? That’s the most UNwise thing you could do. Anytime of the day 5-10 people can make a team and can decide what stories make it to the frontpage, and what stories don’t make it, right in the upcoming section, where the needed buries are just a few, to actually bury the story. Take Netscape’s example. They have a report button, not a bury button and moderators decide if that story really disserves to be taken down.
Bloglines: Whenever I click on a feed on the left panel, please don’t mark all the new posts as read. Only mark the posts that I read. I always wanted that, because sometimes when I’m not that active on the web, I read only some of the new posts in a feed. Later on, maybe I want to come back and read the rest. Also, verify some of the latest problems some of us are having.
2Checkout: Make a central administration console, where users can administer accounts for all their websites. You guys currently require a separate account for each URL. That’s insane. What if I want to sell products from 50 websites, trough you guys ? 50 logins ? It’s killing me (and a lot others I guess) because I already have a couple of them (logins).
Alexa & Amazon: I understand that business sometimes takes you in unwanted places and makes you pull up unneeded features, but please stop telling people that my visitors buy sex and hip-hop books:
People who are interested in seopedia.org also bought:
BYO Split Series, Vol. 3 ~ NOFX
Walk Together, Rock Together ~ 7 Seconds
Kings of Gangster Bop ~ Royal Crown Revue
Goddess Worship: How to make any woman feel worsh… by www.NewSex.org
Learn to Hip Hop Volumes 1 & 2 by www.joesworld.org
Learn to Hip Hop Volume 1 & 2 by joesworld.org
Technorati: Please update your search results more often. I mean, I post a post about AdSense, with an AdSense tag, and until you update the search results, my post is somewhere on the 3rd search results page for that tag. Also, please update the rankings more often. And speaking of rankings and algorithms, you could insert this into your current ranking algorithm: placing a higher importance on links from blogs which in their turn have a lot of links towards them. To be clearer, don’t put the same weight on a link from a blog that has 5 links or one that has 3000 links. Think BlogRank™
Performancing: Whenever I check my Metrics account I keep getting the visits from Netscape.com (the social news website) as search engine visitors. Netscape IS a search engine, but they also have the social news portal. So please count visits from Netscape.com only if they come from Netscape’s search engine, where the referring URL contains http://search.netscape.com/ns/ or http://www.netscape.com/search/. Thanks Nick.
Unicredit Bank: The bank that currently holds my bank accounts and credit cards. Please go broke, so that I can move on. You ruined my inner childhood.
DMOZ: Please issue an e-mail when a website is rejected. I don’t care about specific comments, because I know what an editor does or doesn’t, and that he(she) doesn’t have the time to write custom rejection letters. But please let me know if my website is still in the queue or not.

“Ads by Google” features new image branding

2009-11-14T10:41:00.000-08:00

Via Digitalpoint I found out about several new types of images which are beeing inserted in the “Ads by Google” mentions on all Adsense ads, be it a normal or a premium publisher that’s displaying them.
Here are some screenshots (copyright rights of the images below, belong to each individual poster in the Digitalpoint thread above):

PS: No, the images are not “Photoshoped”.
If you read the webmaster’s opinions in that thread you will see not only that they don’t like the new feature, but they actually hate it.
To be honest I hate it too. Why ? Simple because it makes the ad REALLY! seem like an ad. If up until now we could blend the ads here and there, this way all chance is lost. Just have a look at the first screenshot above: the one with the grey background.
I mean are we forced to use only a white background now ? That G image is not even transparent !!!
Not only that, but that small image really ruins any design, no matter how good or bad it is. Moreover, every single website that is now using Adsense, will show a Google brand watermark in it. Users are maybe 500% more likely to notice the mention “GOOGLE” because of that image. I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing, after all I love Google, but it’s unneccessary. The text was enough.
I’m just curious ? Why was this move made ? To put more attention to Google’s brand ? Why ? It’s already one of the top brands worldwide. At least on the online, I think Google is the most known brand, worldwide.
This is not necessary guys!
In this Ads by Google page, Google is telling us :

We want to know what you think of these ads. Please email us at: adsbygoogle+aff@google.com

So if any of you guys have feedback about this new change (or test, because I really don’t know if this is a limited time test or a final feature), email them a few words, be it good or bad.

Google experimenting Adsense with italic titles

2009-11-14T10:39:00.001-08:00

I just noticed that Adsense is starting to experiment italics titles for the ads:

Other discussions at WebmasterWorld and at DP.
What’s your take ?

Earn More with Adsense: Tips & Layout Optimization Tricks for High CTR

2009-11-14T10:34:00.001-08:00

Google Adsense is perhaps the easiest way to attract advertisers from across the globe to your blog. Just submit your blog or website to Google for approval and if their content team approves your content, you are ready to place contextual text ads on your websites. Every time a reader clicks an AdSense ad link, the AdWords advertiser pays Google a small fee and Google splits the revenue with you.

Now you know how to make money with Google Adsense but to help you improve AdSense performance (and advertising revenue), here are some of the best Google Adsense Tips and Tricks for making more money (profit) from the Google Adsense program.

About me: I have been using Google AdSense since 2004 and my technology blog was recently featured as an AdSense Case Study.

Update: Some of the AdSense tricks in the article are old so you may please check my latest article on AdSense Optimization Tips that includes a PowerPoint presentation as well.

Tips to Increase Google AdSense Earnings

a. Strictly follow the rules mentioned in Adsense policies. You will always earn more revenue from Adsense by playing it clean.

b. Never modify the Google Adsense HTML code. If have trouble embedding AdSense code in your WordPress or Blogger template, take help of the AdSense support forums or send an email to your AdSense account manager.

c. Never ask your friends or visitors to click on your Google ads. Google takes click fraud very seriously. Do not include incentives of any kind on your site for users to click on your ads. Don't label Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements.".

d. Don't click on your own ads - Google is much smarter than you think and can discover invalid clicks through IP addresses, site navigation patterns, etc. If you working on a new design for your site, avoid reloading your pages (with AdSense) excessively. You can turn off AdSense temporarily and avoid invalid CPM impressions. Or you can use the unofficial Google Adsense Sandbox Tool that is accessible from Firefox, IE and other browsers to see what kind of Google ads will be served based on content (website address URL) or keywords.

e. Don't place ads in pop-up windows, ~~error pages or even empty pages~~. Update: With the new AdSense policy change, you can probably place ads on 404 pages. Check with the AdSense support team.

f. Don't start a "adsense asbestos" or "home equity loan rates" website merely to make money from accidental clicks. You will never make money out these Made for Adsense websites. Instead, write on topics what you are passionate about. Don't waste your money on high-paying adsense keywords lists. Stay away from AdSense Adwords arbitrage.

g. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content.

h. For long articles, CTR will improve if you place ads somewhere in middle of the content or just where the article ends - when visitors are done reading the article, they may be looking for related resources.

i. Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options and the payout is often higher. If you still want to display image ads (for CPM), consider ad formats like the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper as they support also support rich multimedia and the new gadget ads.

j. Google Ads with no background color and no borders will always perform better. Make the border color and background color same as your page background color.

k. Always put ads above the main fold. Make sure that the ad unit with the highest clickthrough rate is the first instance of the ad code that appears in your HTML source. Since the first ad unit is always filled before the rest, you want to make sure that ad unit is located in the best placement on your page.

l. Try setting the ad link URL color to a lighter shade. If your text is black, you may make the adlink as light gray or something like #666.

m. Go Wide - The large rectangle (336x280) is the best paying Adsense format especially for text ads. Try using the 336x280 large rectangle, 300x250 medium rectangle, or 160x600 wide skyscraper.

n. Don't places images next to Google ads as that will invite a permanent ban to your AdSense account.

o. Blend AdLinks with other navigation links or place horizontal adlinks at the top of your webpage. AdSense publishers are permitted to click on link unit topics on their web pages, provided that they do not click on any Google ads on the resulting page.

p. You should try adding a unit near the comments senction of your blog. See more AdSense tweaks.

q. You can put upto 3 adsense units on a page. Try putting a large skyscraper on the right navigation sidebar of your website. That area is close to the browser scrollbar. You can also add 2 AdSense for search boxes and 3 adlink units.

r. The first few lines of your content are an important factor for determining what Ads are served on your webpage. That's the right place to put keywords in bold (strong or &ltb> tags) or header tags (h1, h2, etc).

s. Always select the setting to open Google Adsense search box results in a new browser window, so you won't lose your visitors. Click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox and this add target="google_window" to your form tag.

t. Maximum people think the search box is on the top right corner. So you know where to put it.

u. Always syndicate full text RSS feeds and then monetize your feeds with a 468x60 ad in RSS feeds.

v. Monitor the AdSense performance of individual web pages with Google Analytics

w. For low CTR pages, try changing titles or adding more relevant content to get better focused ads. Alse see: Get relevant Google Ads

x. Block low paying advertisers with Filters. Why to loose a visitor for an ad that will only pay you a cent. Use Overture or Google Adwords Keywords tool to discover keywords that are less popular with advertisers.

y. Learn how to implement AdSense Revenue sharing if you run a site with multiple authors and need to pay your writers based on advertising revenue generated from their articles.

z. Experiment with color schemes and layouts using split testing. You are the best judge when it comes to choosing ad formats for your own website.

Even Google doesn't offer the best advise always. For instance, in the visual heat map, Google suggests that webmasters are best served by positioning ads on the upper left-hand side of a Web page but if you go to any search page on Google, the ads the mostly in the right.

Bonus Tip: Use the AdSense Preview tool to determine what ad campaigns are currently targeted for your site in different geographic regions of the world.

Enter any keywords or a website address (URL) and choose a geographic location of the visitors to see all the related related Google Ads.

5 Google Adsense Secrets, Tips and Tricks

2009-11-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

I want to share you some secrets I learned up until now. I am not going to tell you basic stuff like “use channels”. Also, bear with me on the graphics. I’m no designer :)

1. Blend your ads. Adsense color and font size

1.i It’s tested and it works. Use the same colour of your page background, for the border and the background of the ad.

1.ii Use the same colors used in your page, for the Adsense ad title, text and url link.

1.iiia If possible use the same font in your page, as the Adsense ads. Since the ads have variable text size and font, according to dimension and type of ad, you can never do this 100% right. But every little bit helps.

Real life Adsense font size and type

768×60 Ad unit:
Title: style="line-height:12px; font-size:11px; font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif"
Description: style="line-height:12px; font-size:10px; font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif"
URL: style="line-height:12px; font-size:10px" face="verdana,arial,sans-serif"

300×250 Ad unit:
Title: style="line-height:14px;font-size:11px" face="arial,sans-serif"
Description: style="line-height:14px;font-size:11px" face="arial,sans-serif"
URL: style="line-height:14px;font-size:10px" face="arial,sans-serif"

As you can notice above, some ads have the arial font as default, some have verdana. Some have a 10px description text, some have 11px. And besides all that, each box may contain 1 up to 4 ads, and depending on that the font sizes will change. So it’s really up to you to experiment and see what works best for you, in as many cases as possible.
1.iv Try to not separate the ad from the content (like trashing the ad in some remote corner of your website. Integrate it within the content (in, within, next to, above, below etc).

2. Placing ads high on a page is good

Position the ads with the highest CTR, as high as possible in the page, in the source’s order (in the image below, notice that the ad appears just below the body tag). The first ads that appear in the pages (in the source’s order) get the most income per click.

3. Use images. Images and Adsense work together

Use images left or right of the ads. It makes them seen as part of the pages content, and your CTR increases. It doesn’t matter what images you use. Use any plain generic images. If you can, try to corelate those with the niche/domain of your website/blog. Be carefull not to write text, point arrows or similar on the images, as that might be seen as click incentives.

4. Earnings are variable, based on CTR

With the Smart pricing ideea, your income varies a lot, according to each of your channel’s CTR rate.
Now this is very important: It’s account-wide, not channel-wide. So if you have a very good CTR (5%-50%) for one website, and you include it in the same account with a 0.04# CTR website, you will loose money.
Remove all the websites (from your account) that don’t have at least a 5% CTR (or depeding on your overall CTR, remove the ones that are really lower than your average), or you’ll affect the income of all the other good converting websites.

5. Use non-standard types of ads

We all know that web-savvy (eg. webmasters or people that use the Internet for so many years, and know all the standards, convetions and so on) users are ad-blind.
Banners like 468×80 have been on the Internet since it’s creation. Even people who use the Internet vaguely or once a month, are kind of blind to these standard banners.
Instead, use vertical skyscrapers, or boxed ads. They have a much higher click rate. The Adsense team even published a list of their highest performing ad sizes:

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

End note: I hope these advices help some people. If they did, drop me an e-mail and tell me about it.

Submit your website to Webxperience! and Webotopia directories and get bonus deeplinks.

If you found this post useful please (new windows)

Do you really need to update blog everyday?

2009-11-14T09:18:00.000-08:00

It has been well over a fortnight since I last posted on Webtalks [you can still be with me and my mates at the Ashtech Blog]. It would have been a prediction that this blog did experience a traffic slump, a decrease in feed count and obviously a decrease in earnings.I'll say a big NO to it.There was a slump but nominal one and has fully recovered now.

Instead of decreasing, the feed count is showing its highest yet(125)

As for earnings, Google AdSense team narrowed down the click able region of AdSense which had its effect but not that big. But now, accidental clicks are negligible and hence we prove we are promising :)

Now let me tell how did the poor posting frequency didn't effect my blog

Evergreen Posts As a part time blogger(or I must say occasional blogger) it is essential for me to write posts which are useful to for visitors even though they are reading it after a long time.
For eg, posting about new AdSense feature will not be as effective as a review with your personal touch of that feature.

Give your blog a break. Some of your posts are really good and deserve to stay on the homepage for long, so why to refuse them?

Google Juice. No new pages(post pages) gave Google a chance to index this blog deeply, which I believe it didn't do previously even though having a blast of back links

Be evil. (Just a personal opinion) No new updates I believe would have forced the regular passerby visitors either to subscribe to the RSS feeds, or to forget this blog.Losing such visitors isn't that costly because they hardly click on any of the ads and just contribute towards the page impressions, which hardly matters to a growing blog. If they would have subscribed to the RSS feed to receive the update automatically, I got few more readers.

You might be also interested in reading what to do when your internet server is down

Blogger introduces inline comment form

2009-11-14T09:16:00.000-08:00

The most annoying feature of blogger, the commenting system, has been finally been looked upon by the blogger team as it pushes out much desired inline comment forms out of the draft version of blogger. Good move, I would say though and as I anticipated, this would create a bit of mess for people like me who completely revamped their widget templates.With the help of some html tweaks, thankfully this blog now runs inline comment forms which I hope will increase the participation of those lazy people who simply hated that popup

If you too are running a heavily modified template, following html tweak might work for you
Important: I'm giving directions for widget templates and not for classic templates

First of all follow basic instructions given on blogger blog.Check your post page, if comment form is visible then no problems, but if not, then the following steps may help you out.

Step 1: Open your dashboard, Follow the Layout link, Select Edit HTML

Step 2: Backup your template(don't be lazy, this may prove very costly)

Step 3: Look for this line

<b:if cond="'data:post.allowComments'"> <a href="'data:post.addCommentUrl'" onclick="'data:post.addCommentOnclick'"><data:postcommentmsg/></a> </b:if>

and replace it with

<b:if cond="'data:post.embedCommentForm'"> <b:include data="'post'" name="'comment-form'/"> <b:else/> <b:if cond="'data:post.allowComments'"> <a href="'data:post.addCommentUrl'" onclick="'data:post.addCommentOnclick'"><data:postcommentmsg/></a> </b:if> </b:if>

There may be one/ more than one places where u'll find this code, just be sure where you want comment form to be dislayed

Tip: For saving time, you can copy the html code to notepad, save it as a text file first and then use the find option to quickly jump to the required code.

Step 4: Save the template code, and have a look on any of your bog's postpage.

Should work, if not, comments welcome.

Manage Ads: A promising feature in AdSense

2009-11-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

Google AdSense, few days back added a new feature in their AdSense program for all publishers.You may be knowing about this feature from a coming soon status message in your AdSense dashboard or from a sneak peek previous post from the AdSense Blog or from a Breaking news post from Problogger still here is a quick definition for it

This new ad management feature means that your ad unit settings (such as colors and channels) for new AdSense for content ad units will be saved in your AdSense account every time you generate ad code. Then, if you'd like to change any of these settings in the future, all you do is make the update within your account -- you'll no longer need to manually replace the ad code on all of your pages. For instance, you can quickly change the borders of all your 300x250 medium rectangles from red to blue with just a few mouse clicks.

As a blogger I think the key lies in experimenting with your Ad slots.For even changing the border of an Ad unit, I had to generate new ad code, parse it and then finally add the script to my XML template.This was a bit time consuming and a hectic process.This feature just makes the same results available with a few lesser mouse clicks.

I found this feature interesting and gave it one of my blog's slot.I always thought that perfectly blended ads performed much better than one having a distinct border and when I tried border for one day, the results amazed me(I only changed the colour pal latte). I saw a good spike in CTR and CPM.

Concluding it...
Likes

A short and simple process for changing the look of the Ad unit
Import feature which allowed me to import ads from other channels.
Preview Ad feature.
A bit short script :)

Dislikes

It permits to change the colours of the Ad unit but not it's size.
Once the script is uploaded, it takes around 10 minutes for the Ad slot to deliver Ads.

I will be giving more slots to this new feature soon and I recommend you to do the same and experiment.

SEO Consulting

2009-11-14T09:12:00.000-08:00

If you’re interested in getting an expert search engine optimization consultant to assist you in developing and growing your business, I offer services that can help you. Depending on what level of service you need there are different packages for you to choose from. These services are high level consulting services that will assist you in developing or fine tuning your SEM strategy. If you are interested in having me work with you directly on a specific project please see the performance based marketing section below. All of the plans, except the basic phone consultation will include follow up communications via phone or email. You can use the button at the bottom of the page to schedule a phone consulting session.

Qualifications

In addition to running my popular SEO blog, I am an editor for the Search Engine Optimization and Marketing News Website Threadwatch, as well as an active senior posting member at Webmaster World. I was a contributor the SEOMoz Search Engine Ranking factors report along with other industry experts. I have also been a guest on popular SEO podcasts such as SEO Rockstars and Good Karma.

Phone Consulting

We will discuss any basic or specific elements or area(s) of your site that you would like. I’ll also come up with some suggestions on how you can improve your website and assist you with developing a general strategy to help you bring your site to the next level. This service is available for any site including affiliate sites. I’ll need to see your domain and get a general idea of what you think you need help with before proceeding. This service is billed at the rate of $400 per hour of phone consultation.

Link Baiting, Viral Marketing and Social Media Consulting

If you’re interested in link baiting, social media sites like delicious, digg, Netscape, MySpace, you tube or others this is the consulting service you need. For this service I will work with you to develop a strategy that can help get the most value out of these services. Instead of working for a “perfect storm” of traffic from just one effort, I’ll develop a plan for multiple efforts over a period of time, which in my experience is much more effective and has longer lasting results. Keep in mind every link baiting or viral marketing effort is different and will have different results. Some may get you 50 organic links and 50,000 visitors some will get you 10-20 links and bring only 1000 visitors, it varies by industry and what other stories are running at the same time, which is why I favor a multi-effort plan. The price for this service starts at $5,500 and will increase if any additional production costs such as video or new application development is required.

SEO Site Review

Is your site broken and you don’t know why? Do you think you’re doing everything right but still aren’t getting the rankings you should be getting? The SEO site review will evaluate all of your onsite factors and assess what the search engines think of your site. This will include a full report with specific details on what you need to do to correct any problems you have.

Blog Consulting

Are you looking to add a blog or get involved in the blogosphere but don’t know where to go or how to get started? The blog consulting package is the right choice for you. We will evaluate the different blogging platforms for you go over the advantages and disadvantages of each and help you choose the right one for your company or organization. Additionally we’ll help you develop an overall blogging strategy, keep you from making common and costly mistakes that could derail your blogging efforts.

Reputation Management

Are there negative listings for your company, product, or executives? Are you concerned that these negative listing are affecting your customers opinions of you and negatively affecting the profitability of your business? Do you want to take proactive steps to prevent competitors from encroaching on your brand and space, then look at our reputation management consulting.

If you have question about which service is right for you or would like more information please use my contact form. Be sure in to include the following information, your name, your site, what type of service you are interested in and what’s the best time or way to get back in touch with you. You can use the button below to schedule a phone consulting session.

Wordpress SEO: How to Maximize Your Internal Link Strategy

2009-11-14T09:09:00.000-08:00

While there are hundreds of thousands of posts on maximizing external links for your blog, like a red headed step child no one pays much attention to internal links. Internal links can be very powerful in helping you distribute the link equity that those external links bring, and they can decrease your bounce rate and increase your page views per visitor by sending your visitors to other pages. In this post we’ll take a look at some tools that help you link internally more effectively.

To be clear in this post we’re talking about links within the body or post area of your pages, and we’re talking about linking to pages within your website. Secondly before you put this strategy into action you’re going to have to make some decisions about site architecture. If you’re using your robots.txt file or “noindex” meta tags to block category, tag and date archives from the search engines from picking up duplicate content you may have to revist your thinking, as you don’t want to feed the spiders links to pages they can’t index.

To get an idea of what really good internal linking looks like take a look at this post on lifehacker, it’s filled with mostly internal links, since it’s a pretty helpful bit of linkbait information chances are it will secure a lot of external links, and pass the equity on to the other pages. There are two ways you can do this effectively, automatically and manually, and we’ll look at both.

Chances are you’ve come across blogs where lots of words are always linked to internal pages such as the words [new mexico] on this post from Gadling. If you are running on the wordpress platform you can do this really easily with the cross linker plugin. Basically you set up words and tell it to automatically link to a preset page everytime it finds the word(s) in a post. This makes it really easy for a publisher as it’s a hands off operation once you set up the link. However from a user perspective, it can be problematic at times. Let’s assume you have a travel blog and want to set up the word [Washington] to automatically link to a page you have about Washington state, no brainer right? Except if you write about Valley Forge where George Washington was camped, or you write about the Washington Monument, or about an article in the Washington Post. In each of those cases the word [Washinton] would have been automatically linked, but it would be awkward for the user as the link doesn’t match the context. You can override the autolinking, but it’s cumbersome, time consuming, and defeats the purpose. So if you use this solution use it sparingly and at a very high level.

A more manual aproach comes from the Insights Wordpress plugin. This plugin allows you to search your blog (or other external sources as well) from within the edit post page (see screen shot below)

Type in any term and it searches your blog for posts. If you highlight the words from the post, copy and paste and then hit the chain/pencil icon it takes care of the linking for you … automagically. While this approach takes more time, it avoids the awkward out of context links that I showed you in the first example. If you’re careful with which words you interlink, always use keywords, and avoid “this post” types of anchor text, you’ll help yourself focus your internal anchor text.

Lastly when you implement this tactic resist the temptation to link too many words, whether you do it automatically or manually. If you do it too much you end up looking a lot like a bad wikipedia entry, with too many links, that no one knows where to click to go next.

PS: yes I’m aware I used “this post” when linking to other people, but told you to avoid it, but of course internal and external links serve different purposes now don’t they …

Make Easy Money With Google Review

2009-11-14T09:07:00.001-08:00

I had seen Make Easy Money with Google (aff) being mentioned in quite a few spots and was pretty interested in reading it. Due a problem with something else I ordered I received a credit, so I applied it towards the purchase of this book.

Make Easy Money with Google is written by Eric Giguere who’s website can be found at EricGiguere.com. He’s written a few other programming books, none of which I’ve read (not my subjects). The book has a companion website/blog MakeEasyMoneywithGoogle.com.

The book is written in conversational style, with the author talking and explaining things to three fictional characters. Each has different styles, goals, and approaches to building a website with Adsense. While you will probably identify with one character over the others, all of them are important to the story. This approach makes for a book that’s very easy read and understand (KUDOS Eric!), and at just over 250 pages you can probably get through it in few days or a long weekend. In the first part of the book the authors spends considerable time and effort explaining how to register a domain, get hosting , build a simple website and publish it. In the second part of the book he goes into explaining the basics of the adsense program, how to get different size ad units, choose colors. He very briefly goes into design, placement, and keyword theory.

The Good: This book is very easy to read and comprehend. If you’ve never published a website before and want to learn how to do it, and make some money using adsense, this is the perfect book for you.

The Bad: If you have built more than 6 websites in your life, or are already meeting adsense’s minimum monthly payment threshold, there’s probably not much in here for you.

When all is said and done this is a good book, and is best suited for new or inexperienced web publishers, or people with little or no experience with contextual advertising programs. If you read some of the reviews from amazon or other places you’ll see this book isn’t well received by the “techie” types who think it’s too basic, which is unfair, as I don’t think the book was intended for them. However the reviews clearly show there is “demand” for a book covering advanced contextual advertising concepts, implementation and theory, if someone is willing to go after it.

Adsense Tools

2009-11-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

I was hoping to find more adsense tools to review and recommend, however I never received anything so we’ll go with what I was able to find.

Adsense Script Tools

These are the tiny little programs you install on your server (blech!) or locally on your machine that help you analyze your adsense clicks, CTR and earnings. Some of them are easy, some of them are difficult, and some of them help you make pretty graphs. To be honest none of them are worth recommending. You could do just as good a job by setting up your channels properly and dumping a CSV file into excel. If someone has a specific one or wants to send me a review copy of thier software, I will look at it. DO NOT send me anything that has to be installed on a server. I run multiple websites on multiple hosting companies, so I don’t need something that requires more maintenance thank you very much.

Adsense Preview Tools

The Adsense Sandbox comes via Digital Point. You put in a URL and it lets you preview what ads are most likely to appear on a URL. Pretty handy IMHO.

Adsense Tracking

While not set up to be an Adsense tracking tool per se, the free log analyzer from AddFreeStats is actually pretty good. You put a small graphic tracking bug on the bottom of each of your pages and it gives you standard logging reports. You can also activate adsense tracking to find out what ads are being clicked on what pages. Combine this with an excel spreadsheet and channels and you are good to go. You can upgrade to a paid version and get an invisible tracking bug. TIP: Lock down your stats under a password, I’m fascinated how many people leave that open.

Adsense in Action

Probably one of the best things you can do to increase your adsense earnings is to go and look how other people are doing things. The adsense case studies are one place. While these are Google approved you really don’t have an idea how successful they are. So you’d be much better off finding someone you know is in the UPS Club. Jason Calacanis who runs Weblogs Inc is on a quest to make 1 Million dollars a year from Adsense. While I do give Jason a hard time sometimes, I do actually admire what he’s built, and think there are some very valuable lessons to be learned from looking at the websites owns. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger also has two sites I really like the Digital Camera Review and Camera Phone Review. Don’t be a wanker and copy exactly what they’ve done, it’s bad form. Instead look at them, learn from them, and use it as inspiration.

Adsense: Why Bloggers Don’t Get It

2009-11-14T09:04:00.000-08:00

In doing the research for my series of Adsense articles, two common ideas kept getting repeated:

My Adsense ads are horrible, they only pay out (insert low dollar figure here)
My Adsense CTR is horrible, I only get a (insert extremely low CTR here)

To be fair these comments weren’t coming just from bloggers, but bloggers did make up an overwhelmingly large percentage. I think this stems from a misconception on the part of the bloggers that they are entitled to high payout and CTR. I’d like to spend a little time to share my feelings on this subject. In the early days a blog may just have been an online diary or journal, but like the days of the Nehru jackets, they are gone. What a blog is now is Chronologically Structured Content Management System, as opposed to the classic web hierarchical structured implementation. Let’s be clear, you can still use a blog as your online diary or journal, but nowdays it’s just as likely to be used as a commercial blog. Yes, I did just say commercial blog, and no the earth didn’t open under my feet and swallow me whole for saying it. Let’s take some time to look at a your typical blog.
You may post about commercial related subjects like your job, what you like to buy, or even your hobbies. However these posts are all about your life, they are no more commercially viable or attractive than say Aunt Millie’s Holiday Newsletter. Yes we all have an Aunt Millie in our family, every year she sends out a finely crafted newsletter in a coordinating envelope she ordered from paperdirect.com telling us all about her family. We learn how hard her husband works, how many activities her kids are in and how good they are at them. We also read the details of how her scrapbooking business hasn’t taken off yet, but she promises to spend more time on it right after New Years. So if you were a business owner would you want to advertise anywhere on Aunt Millie’s Newsletter? Then why would a business want to pay you top dollar to advertise on your blog? What’s that, you say your blog gets (insert a high number here) of readers per day, surely that has to be worth something? Well did you know Aunt Millie sends out over 800 copies of her holiday newsletter to 17 countries, on 4 continents? Now before you get all fired up about it, understand that I don’t have a problem with you having a personal blog or sharing it with the public. However your expectation that it has value outside of your family/friends/community, is a serious misconception.
So what exactly is a commercially viable blog? Don’t think of it as publishing a blog, think of it as publishing an online magazine. You need to start out with good content or articles about a small area or niche topic. You will need lots of content, and unless you are well known, don’t expect much to happen until you’ve written at least 100 and more likely over 200 articles. Yes you will have to devote some time and effort to publicizing and marketing it as well. Once you’ve got a significant focused reader base, that’s the time to slowly ad in the advertising. Now here’s the one that causes lots of people to freak out. BE PREPARED TO GIVE UP SOME PRIME SCREEN REAL ESTATE, IN THE CENTER, ABOVE THE FOLD, TO ADVERTISING. If you’ve worked with print media at all you will know the middle of the right hand page is the most desirable spot inside of a magazine (excluding the cover pages). I’ve sat through meetings where people have said ” … you know we need more right hand pages …”. If you want people to click on your ads, you will need put them where they can see them, above the fold in the center of the screen, in a prominent location. Yes I can almost here the keys typing for the flame comments and emails now. Before you hit that send button though, ask yourself this, are you building a space sough after by advertisers, or are you working on Aunt Millie’s Newsletter? No I don’t think your pages should be filled with ads, in fact quite the opposite, there should always be more content than advertising, ALWAYS!
Next thing, lose the fancy graphics and eye-candy from your template. Yes I know you may have paid for a fancy template, maybe you had your niece who’s a graphic artist design something for you, or you really like the way that spinning flaming platypus looks in your page header. Here’s the thing, it’s detracting from your content. Graphics should be simple, understated, and support the content, not overpower or compete with it. Now before some art student wearing a beret, corduroy jacket with elbow patches, and smoking a pipe or French cigarette, writes and calls me a Philistine, stop and think. Are you designing a commercially attractive and viable space, or are you designing an intricate macrame border for Aunt Millie’s Newsletter? Remember keep it simple and to the point.
Yes I know you feel like I just ripped off the band-aid, and now it hurts. Sorry but someone had to do it. I know some of you are still out there reading saying ‘but can’t I still have this … do we have to get rid of this … I really like that …’. Well I’m not your second grade teacher who’s going to tell you everything’s all right, that you don’t have to change a thing, and put a scooby-doo sticker on your shirt to make you feel better. If you want a blog that makes you more money than you spend at Starbucks every Tuesday, you will need to get serious about what you’re doing.
If none of this sounds incredibly fun, and really sounds pretty close to actual work, here’s the way I see it, getting an Adsense check for $5 is fun, getting an Adsense check for $500 or $5000 is work.
Disclaimers:
I don’t actually have an Aunt Millie, she’s a fictional character. But like you, I do have relatives who send out holiday newsletters.
Yes I know the minimum Adsense payment is $100, so you never could get a $5 check, but I was just making a point, mmkay?

Google Adsense Forums, Blogs and Resources

2009-11-14T07:42:00.001-08:00

Here is a list of notable resources if you want to find out, and stay on top off Google’s Adsense program. I’ve included some obvious links and some low volume forums as well, in an effort to be through. Be careful about what you read and try if you venture too far off the beaten path.

Official Google Information

Google Adsense : This is the main Google site where you apply for Adsense, log in to get your adsense code, and view your reports.
Google Adsense Case Studies: If you’re looking to see examples of Google adsense in action these are a few sites google has profiled.

News or Blogs About Google Adsense

JenSense: Jenstar who publishes this blog is the moderator of the WMW and Search Engine Watch forums on Adsense. This blog covers all contextual advertising programs not just adsense, but is one of the best sources for information about the adsense program. Additionally when they make a change to the programs terms and conditions, this is the place I go for an explanation I can understand. She is also a regular speaker for contextual advertising programs at conferences and tradeshows.
Problogger: This Blog is run by Darren Rowse who is part of the Breaking News Blog Network. You will get some good subjects brought up here on a regular basis. I’ve only been subscribed for a few weeks but this one is definitely a worthwhile read.
Make Easy Money With Google Adsense Blog: This is the companion blog to the ‘Make Easy Money with Google‘ book. Not deep in coverage, but it is fairly new. See my ‘Make Easy Money With Google Adsense Review‘ for more information.

Adsense Related Forums or Newsgroups

WMW Google Adsense Forum: There’s lot of information here, not too much in the ways of ‘tricks’ or ’secrets’. A major advantage of this forum is Adsense Advisor (Google’s Adsense representative) reads, answers questions, and posts news here. Check out the Adsense Library for archives of the top threads.
Digital Point Google Adsense Forum: Much looser and less formal than webmaster world. This is an active fast growing forum, however there aren’t as many seasoned adsense professionals here as there are in other places. Members drop URL’s to their own sites looking for help, or advice. Makes it a great spot to see things in action.
Search Engine Watch Google Adsense Forum: Again not as formal as WMW, but not quite as loose as Digital Point. If you read for a little while and use the reputation rankings you’ll get a feel for who knows what they are talking about and who’s just yakkin’. That said you will still see some good topics here on a regular basis from more seasoned adsense professionals.

Google Adsense Blog: Nothing to speak of at the time of publication. http://adsense.blogspot.com requires a login, Adwords has a dedicated blog so we can only hope.

Google Groups Adsense Publishers: Not a very active forum, and not much in the way of tips.
WebProWorld Adsense Adwords Forum: Adwords and Adsense are lumped together here.
SEOChat Adsense Forum: This one has Adsense mixed in with other affiliate programs.
SEOGuy Adsense Forum:
AssociateForums Adsense:

If you know of any other forums, blogs or news sites, let me know and I’ll add them in.

Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

2009-11-14T07:39:00.000-08:00

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 from cashkeywords.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