Google AdSense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets
By Graywolf
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
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 criticism 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
in 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.
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.
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