Sven Lennartz

About The Author

Sven Lennartz Sven is the co-founder and former CEO of Smashing Magazine. He’s now writing at his Conterest Blog, where he focuses on blogs, content strategy and publishing — all in German.

Google AdSense: Facts, FAQs and Tools

Design 379 Advertising 12 Analytics 12 Marketing 28

Google AdSense is probably one of the most popular revenue generators in the Web. We hear the stories about bloggers-genies, who manage to turn their blogs into cash machines overnight. However, it's not that simple to find the actual tips, which stick to Google policies, might increase your revenues and don't try to trick out the readers of your weblog.

Make your first API call
Make your first API call

Google AdSense is probably one of the most popular revenue generators in the Web. We hear the stories about bloggers-genies, who manage to turn their blogs into cash machines overnight. However, it’s not that simple to find the actual tips, which stick to Google policies, might increase your revenues and don’t try to trick out the readers of your weblog.

We’ve spent several hours, trying to find out, what might increase your Google AdSense income and which tools you can use to observe and track your revenues. We’ve selected the key-points of successful stories and useful tips as well as Google AdSense sites and services you can use on a daily basis. Let’s take a look.

Things You Probably Don’t Know About Google AdSense

  • “AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor. Viewing your on website will not get you banned. Just make sure you don’t click on the ads.
  • However, repeatedly reload your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned. Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.”
  • “First impressions count: make sure the ad unit with the highest CTR is the first ad unit in the HTML code of your page. Keep in mind that the first ad unit in the source code is not always the first ad unit that your users will see when the page finishes loading in their browser.” [Inside AdSense: First impressions count]
  • “Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page. on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well.” [Where should I place Google ads on my pages?]
  • “Format is important for multiple ad units, display your ad units where repeat users will notice them, place a leaderboard immediately after the last post.” [Six AdSense optimization tips for forums]
  • “The middle, above the fold location performs the best. Best performing ad format is the large rectangle, 336x280. So the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user.
  • So the wider formats do best so specifically, the top three formats are the 336x280 that you see on the page; the 300x250 medium rectangle; and then the 160x600 wide skyscraper.
  • We have a feature in the AdSense account where you are able to multi-select different color palettes that blend with your site to add some variety and freshness to the ads. And that also will help decrease ad blindness.”
  • “The second most active placement in terms of click-throughs tends to be the right-hand rail or margin”. “Skyscrapers” and vertical banners do well when placed next to the content in the main body. Square and rectangle ads placed within the center column also do well, provided they are placed in context to the content. Ads placed below the fold tend to perform least well, although that isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.”
  • “I found the most success in placing the Google Adsense medium rectangle either right in the middle of the page or in a middle right column as long as it has content above and below the ad unit. Its is fine to use Adsense Ads on a forum however expect a very low CTR.”
  • “Post Adsense ads on text rich pages, avoid titles like the approved ‘Sponsored Links’ and ‘Advertisements’, place Ads above the fold, Match the colors of your ads with the colour scheme of your site, Blend ads with your page - remove the borders by having a similar color as your background.” [How to Increase Google Adsense CTR]
  • “To remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense develop sufficient good content with keywords, Ensure that META tags like ‘title’ & ‘description’ and the headings tags like h1, h2 etc. have content which matches the rest of your site.” [How to Remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense]
  • “You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs.” (January 2007) [It’s official! You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs]
  • “Google AdSense Policy: We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads.” [Inside AdSense: Ad and image placement: a policy clarification]
  • “Section targeting uses certain html tweaks to force the google adsense bot to focus on specific content. Section targeting is the latest and most effective addition to AdSense”. [Display Relevant Adsense Ads Using Section Targeting]
  • “Over the weekend, I decided to change the number of ads units on my blog based upon where the traffic is coming from. I have a small PHP function that checks to see if the referrer is a search engine, and if it is, I display and additional 2 ad units. My Adsense revenue increasing by 284% on Saturday, Sunday and Monday!” [Positive Adsense Experiment]
  • “Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. Never change the Adsense code. Do not run competitive contextual text ad (2006) or search services on the same site. Do not mask ad elements. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing.” [ 15 Common Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS ]
  • “Putting ads on your site won’t hurt your traffic. There are 6 sorts of bloggers’ income: Google Adsense, Donations (e.g. PayPal), Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click), affiliate programs like Amazon, Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer) [How to Make Money From Your Blog - a VERY extensive article]
  • “A number of factors come into play when AdSense tries to determine what the page is about: The URL of the page, the page title, the anchor text of links, the keywords that appear most frequently within the page, search engine queries that lead to the page or to another page that links to the page”. [How to Get Relevant AdSense Ads (Especially For Bloggers)]
  • “Ask yourself if you are willing to compromise your blog’s layout and over-all feel by adding ads in them. Look at your traffic and see if it’s enough to draw the crowd. Make good use of the Ad Channels. Give it time.” [Tips on Blog Adsensification]
  • “You can put upto 3 AdSense units on a page. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content. For long articles, CTR improves if ads are placed somewhere in middle of the content. Go Wide - the large rectangle 336x280 is the best paying adsense format.” [Adsense Tips, Layout Optimization Tricks for HigherCTR]
  • “Google AdSense folks have unveiled another useful feature for Adsense publishers - Section Targeting. The concept is simple but the advantages and possibilities are endless.” [Display relevant Ads in Blogs: Just suggest Google]

Google AdSense: Google’s Information and Tools

  • Google AdSense FAQ the Adsense support for official guidelines.
  • Google AdSense Help Page provides a very detailed FAQ about Google AdSense. Learn optimization essentials, how to design successful ads, savvy ad placement and how to use features wisely.
  • Google AdWords: Keyword-Tool The Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Start your search by entering your own keyword phrases or a specific URL. You can then add new keywords to the green box at the right.

Google AdSense Tools, Services

Google AdSense Tips, Resources

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