Tips for maximizing Your Google AdSense Revenues

Despite what you may hear, the Google AdSense program is not for everyone. There are some types of web sites that do poorly no matter how hard the owners try, and there are others that should be doing well but the webmaster simply isn't putting in the effort to make things happen. Here are some tips to make AdSense work better for you. If you do them all and you're still not having any luck, then you just might be running one of those sites that don't make money

1. Determine if your visitors are in the mood.

Like I mentioned at the top of this article, some web sites just don't work with pay-per-click programs. The best performing sites fall into one of these categories:

Sites where users go and expect to buy something while they are there. E-commerce sites fit the bill here.. Sites where users go to find specific information on something that they want to buy now. Music and video review sites, vacation information sites, resume building sites, etc. You don't have to actually be selling these types of things; your site can just be a mecca for information pertaining to these things. Then, when the visitor comes to read your content, they are more likely to click on your ads.

Sites where people who have disposable income and a credit card like to visit. This includes sites with money management, investing and lifestyle content.

Sites that draw a large amount of new users every day. Free coupon sites and How to sites are good examples. Sites where people go who expect to read ads. Classified ads and shopping comparison sites fit into this category.

2. Make sure that your visitors don't feel that you just want to grab their money

Give them plenty of relevant and well-written content. If writing isn't your best skill then hire someone to do it for you. Good content brings steady traffic and steady traffic pays the bills.

3. Play by the rules

Google has some very specific Terms of Service (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) for participating in their AdSense program. Learn those rules and follow them so you don't lose all of your investment by getting shut out.

4. Use the tools that Google gives you



Google gives you tools for determining the best keywords for your site, measuring ad performance, and setting up different ad channels for fine-tuning ad results. These guys and girls are the 800 lb. Gorillas in the Pay-Per-Click market. They didn't build these tools just to keep their programmers busy. Take advantage of their knowledge for they are very big and you are not!

5. Tweak, fine-tune and then tweak again

You should never be happy with your AdSense performance. If it's good, then you need to make it great. If it's great then you need to make it amazing. If it's amazing then you need to take it to the UPS club. The UPS club? Google sends all checks over $10,000 per month to the webmaster via UPS overnight delivery. Now there's a club that I wouldn't mind belonging to.

6. Get more traffic

No matter how much traffic you have, you need more. More eyeballs translate to more clicks. Even if you're only pulling a 2% click-through. That's a lot of clicks when you have thousands of visitors each day.

7. Experiment with new keywords

New keywords can bring new ads and new eyeballs along with it. Set up some new pages on your site and experiment with different content. Once you get something that's working then refer back to Tip # 5.

You can see results in near real time when you use Google's AdWords. Don't be afraid to be different. If something that everyone else is doing doesn't work for you, then invent something that does work and get it on your site.

6 Google Adsense Tips

1. Less is More I believe the theory behind this lies within the visitor's experience at a website. If you serve up let's say... a 728x90 leaderboard, and a 160x60 side block, and maybe even an extra ad unit or link unit then you aren't just showing the top-paying ads, you're also showing a lot of the ads with lower values too. This is especially painful if your site only triggers ads in the $2 range. These low-paying keywords can be a distraction to the visitor and while the recommended "slop of gravy on top with a side of mashed potatoes" (describing sites using the 728x90 and 160x60 ad blocks on a page) has often been touted as the best placement for Adsense, it is being proven by many to not be all that tasty. Why? Because these ads are "outside" of your content, not within it. When Adsense ads are placed within the body of content, it generally performs better for many. I have seen this myself in testing different Adsense placement methods. One site I own jumped in CTR by 10% when I removed the full meal deal and opted for a small 468x60 text ad block within the body of my content.

2. Keyword Density While Google doesn't reveal the specifics on the methods behind their Adsense madness, most people have learned through experimentation that keyword density plays a significant role. Adsense does rely on the content to determine which ads to show, and they want their ads to be shown. It would also appear that content towards the top of your page has a greater influence over the ads. It's almost a passive way of forcing Adsense users to boost their keyword density to not only show the most relevant ads, but to improve search engine positioning which improves the chances of those ads being seen. Perhaps an underhanded means of thumbing their nose to MSN, which seems to feed on keyword loaded sites these days propelling many an Adsense website into it's top rankings. Either that, or I've been watching too many shows about conspiracy theories.



3. Less is More - or More is More? Another theory is that using fewer internal links on your webpage gives visitors fewer "click-away" options, thus improving chances of them clicking on Adsense ads. If you have 20 links on your page and let's say 4 of them being within a 728x90 ad block, then visitors still have 16 other links to choose from beside the meager 4 Adsense links. Keep only 5 links on the page, and they now have only 9 links to choose from other than Adsense ads. Add more Adsense ads, such as a block containing 5 more links carefully weaved into your content (such as a 336x280), and they now have a better chance of getting clicked on with a ratio of 9:9. Taking it a step further, you could also factor other numbers into the equation such as : percentage of page scanned before clicking away, percentage of page scanned before scrolling, number of average scrolls per page to predict good places to place ads, etc. The odds can definitely be in your favour with this tactic. I haven't aggressively tested this theory yet and with a blog this is certainly not an option, but I have noticed on another site I own this might explain the 20-40% CTR I'm seeing on pages where all internal links are at the bottom of the page.

4. Using Images Next To Ads While it's reported that Adsense doesn't like images placed next to ads which appear to be served by Google, this has been proven by many to boost CTR incredibly. And because these images are different than those which caused the worldwide pandemic of "banner blindness", people are more likely to notice them. It really just makes sense. Human beings are visual creatures. From the time we were monkeys popping our heads over the grass to see if a lion was coming our way, our eyes have always been our first tool in evaluating a situation, and of course, checking out other monkeys. But back to Adsense..... even more effective is when you use images that illustrate the content of the page. I've used this trick and find it reallly works well.

5. Font Type and Size This was announced on the official Adsense Blog recently and it's a great tip. Adjust your page's font and size to match Adsense ads can greatly boost CTR. This could be difficult if your site has a lot of static pages, but a simple batch search & replace tool can help you speed things up. Now figuring out what the matching font is has been a chore for many. I believe (through trial and error) that the font used mainly in Adsense ads is Arial, size: 11px A number of people have reported that they've witnessed Adsense ads conforming to their page's CSS font styles. If anything is occurring here, I'm willing to take a guess that Adsense ads might be able to adapt to a very limited number of fonts and if you happen to use one of those fonts on the page, it will change accordingly. But as I said, if this is true than I think it's limited. After all, have you ever seen an Adsense ad in FontLeroyBrown 20px ?

6. Test, test, test Nearly everyone agrees that Adsense is only as effective as the unique way you integrate it into your website. What works for one person may not work for another. While there are some basic principles which are great starting points for any website, your design and content is unique and therefore visitor behaviour will be unique. Your best results will come through experimentation and patience.

How to Monetize your site using AdSense

With the advent of blogs and other informational sites, the search engine market space has become increasingly competitive.

Sometimes website owners begin to wonder if they will ever make money off their product or service. In this article I give you other ideas on how to make money with your website, even if you don't sell products or services.

My experience with AdSense

As an owner or contributor to many sites, not just search engine related, I've come to learn a thing or two about monetizing a site.

The thing is, I don't mind writing for these sites - it gives me an outlet because my mind is always racing with new article ideas.

On one of my sites is about console gaming: Xbox, Nintendo and so on. It's not a huge site, but I get some decent visitors. I have a friend who writes for a similar site that deals with portable gaming units like the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP.

When we started writing it was for fun and to bring some news to the world. Kind of like a console gaming news aggregator.

So when Google came out with their AdSense product I applied for an account immediately. Since I work in the industry I knew about AdSense long before most people and got an AdSense account within 48 hours of applying for it.

The setup was quite easy. I logged into a web based console and the system helped me pick the types of ads I wanted to display and even helped generate the code to insert into my pages so the ads matched the same font and background color of the site.

All in all it took me about 15 minutes to sign in, generate the code and paste it onto my page template. Now, every page on this site has Google Ads displayed.

And the great part is the ads are related to the content of the pages. For my Nintendo pages, all the ads relate to Nintendo while for the Xbox pages all ads relate to Xbox.

And the best part of this is that for every click on an ad I make a few cents.


Now, I don't make a lot of money on AdSense, but there are sites out there that do. Weblogs Inc. is a series of blogs all built around themes. A recent interview with the founder showed that the sites are on par to make over $1 million in AdSense revenue this year. That's right $1 million from AdSense.

So you can see that AdSense could be a way to make money in addition to whatever else you do on your site.

How do you get an AdSense account?

Well the first thing you need to do is apply for an account.

It's quite simple really, you give some basic information such as the URL of the site that will host the ads, your contact information and so on, and submit your application.

Google responds fairly quickly and generally your site will be accepted if it meets their guidelines and policies. You can find more information on these policies on the AdSense site.

Once you've been accepted it is a matter of creating your ad code, of which there are two basic types.

AdSense for Content

AdSense for Content is the most common type of ad displayed. These are the ads you see on sites that are marked with "Ads by Goooogle" either above or below the ads, much like the ads you see on Google's site.

The display formats vary for these types of ads which you can see on the AdSense site here. As you will see, there are a variety of layouts available, from text ads to banners.

Once you've selected the type of ads you want to display on your site, you pick the number of ads, and apply a style.

Pick a style which matches your site. In other words, try and pick one that has the same color background and text as your site. This way they don't stand out as much.

Finally, copy the code provided by Google (yup they even provide that for you - pretty simple hey?) and paste it on your page where you want it. Google even provides ideas on the best placement of your ads. Check this page out for more information on ad placement.

AdSense for Search

As the name implies, this is a Google search box which you'd place on your site that searches Google and returns Google results. For these searches you can earn money as well.

Google even allows you to customize the search box by changing the colors to match your site and even insert your own logo if you'd like.

Then, when you've added this feature to your site, your visitors will be able to search Google or search your site and, as I mentioned, if they select an ad you get a cut of that money. You can even find out what phrases people were searching for.

Tracking your Performance

Once you have the ad code(s) inserted into your site the first ads you will likely see are PSA (Public Service Announcements). This is because Google uses its advanced crawling technology to crawl the pages where the ad code are found and matches ads to the content.

Therefore if you check back in 15 or 20 minutes you should see ads that closely match the content of the page on which the ad code is found.

Google also offers you a way to monitor your AdSense account's performance.

By logging into the AdSense console you can generate tons of different reports showing click through rates, impressions, average returns per click and more.

Further, you can get more advanced as time goes on, by setting up channels and tracking them separately. Google now allows for 200 channels. Which means you can have 200 different ad display types scattered throughout your site.

Lets say, for example, that you want a search box as well as ads, but you have different places you want to place ads on your home page as your internal pages.

By using channels, you can track the clicks separately to see which types of ad positions perform better. This allows you to find the best place on your pages to place ad code to make the most money.

Show me the money!

Payments for AdSense are pretty straight forward. Google will mail you a check or you can sign up for their beta direct deposit program.

If you click on the "My Account" tab you can edit your payment preferences.

Google only pays out monthly on $100 or more. So if you don't have more than $100 by the end of the month, the total will roll over into the next month and continue to grow until you do have $100 or more by the end of the month.

I remember when I got my first check - I was so excited. I was expecting a check with the Google logo - you know like the logo they have on their home page. Turns out it was a very official looking corporate type check. Too bad - I was going to scan it and save a copy of my first Google check.

Some final thoughts

If you find that your site just doesn't generate enough clicks in a month to generate at least the $100 minimum, you can use your ad code on other sites which do drive more traffic.

If you know someone who has a high traffic site but isn't taking advantage of a program like AdSense, I'd recommend contacting them to see if they'd be willing to display ads on their site. Perhaps you can make a deal with him - splitting the ad revenue. Be careful not to distribute your code on too many sites, though, as you could set up flags because your clicks have gone up so quickly in a short time.

One thing some people have been known to do is create content specifically for high paying ads. I read a story once about a guy who built a blog around asbestos removal. He didn't know anything

That way you can monetize your site (and others) using AdSense in addition to your existing products or services.