Adsense Primer: Getting Started, Tips, and Tricks
If you are looking for a quick, easy way to monetize your web site(s), look no further than Google Adsense. Simply put, Google’s bots look at your site, analyze its content, and return a set of ads based on keywords throughout the site. If you have a blog with several pages, with several topics, Google will still return relevant ads based on the post your visitor is currently viewing. What this means to you is your visitors will be presented with relevant ads that they are more likely to click on, thus earning you more money. Its an incredibly smart system.
The sign up process is relatively painless, you will need at least one website with a little bit of content. Once you sign up it takes Google about a day to approve your Adsense account, at which time you can place your ads on ANY site you own. Tips: Do not submit a page with broken links or an Under Construction site. If you are just starting, wait until your site is fleshed out before adding Adsense.
I am going to assume that if you are reading this article to better your website, you can sign up for Adsense, navigate the settings, and add code to your website. So we will skip the go here, go there and get to the meat. There are several different type of ads you can configure on the Adsense website. Refer to this link for an overview of the standard ad formats. There is no one format that is the best. The trick to picking the best for your site is experimenting and integrating the ads into your site so well, that a visitor does not realize its an ad. Over years and years of ignoring ads on the internet, we’ve become blind to ads (especially Google ads) and have learned to look over them. Tip: The most common mistake people make when configuring Adsense is keeping Google’s defaults. You can pick the colors of the ad units to blend in with your site.
Page position is also a very important factor to consider when integrating Adsense into your website. Google has gone through the trouble of creating a ‘heat map‘ which shows us where on the page an ad is most likely to be clicked. It is generally a good idea to make your sites navigation menus simple. This way, you can place an ad unit near them and format the unit to blend. This will place your ads in an area that your visitors will look, and hopefully click. Seemless design between your content and your ads is the key to results with Adsense.
Overall Adsense is by-far one of the most valuable tools to use when you are looking to make money from your website/blog. Another great tool to use, which you can integrate with your Adsense reporting is Google Analytics (which is a whole other monster itself).
This post was written by Tom Barton. I have been doing web design for over 10 years and have dealt with Adsense since its inception. Due to a recent increase in spare time (darn you economy), I have recently started blogging. A little over a week ago I created a Conservative blog: dPuncher, and a blog tracking my blogging experiment: BiggerBetterBlogging. I am still in the expirimental phase of designing and placing my ads as my traffic starts to increase. Best of luck and be sure to leave me a comment some time.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Adsense is certainly useful, but it leaves a lot to be desired. I’m wondering how the new partnership between microsoft and yahoo will affect the market for programs similar to adsense.
That is true, it will be good to see some great competition to AdSense. I have tried so many marketing programs and pay-per-click programs, but none of them hold a candle to Google’s pay and simplicity.
.-= tom´s last blog ..Hey There Obama (Drink the Koolaid) =-.
I took your advice and tried google adsense on one of my sites and usually only get $0.04 p/click – yet in the keyword estimator they show much higher, is this because i am doing something work?
Hello Dan. You are correct, one reason why i chose this article is to get a tip on how i could advance in my adsense. Honestly, up until now, i am still having challenges when it comes to making the most out of the benefits i would like to get from adsense.
Thanks for the information and take care
Well I must say that this is a nice post. But I would like to add another tips to your post. “make use of adsense section targeting” so that very relevant ads are shown. This will increase your CTR & also avoid the adsense slapping to some extent.
Thanks
I wrote this article as a starter for most people. Perhaps I will do a more advanced writeup on section targeting, AdSense in RSS and so on.
@ tom from bridfeeders: Some of the pays per click are a little low like .04 and .06 i have seen. Depending on the content of your site you will get between .10 and .75.
.-= tom´s last blog ..CNN: Rate the President Asks for our Input, Then Censors It =-.
I’ve struggled to get decent conversions from Adsense and had never heard of the heatmap concept – i’m going to try and apply that to my blog and see if it makes any difference. I tend to get about $1 for every 100 visits – not going to make me a fortune!
.-= Danni@herbal fiberblend´s last blog ..Herbal Fiberblend – Frequently Asked Questions =-.
I would like to advise one more thing. One should also implement the adsense section targeting codes to help increase the ads relevance and improve CTR!
Thanks
Yeah google adsense is the easiest way to monetize website or blog. But this service have low customer service.
So it is depend on what people want. If want to have better service you can use other middle-man but the ads performance maybe don’t really high.
If blogger want to make more money, affiliate program maybe is better but it is not simple to be success with affiliate program.
.-= Ruri@Free article directory´s last blog ..Understanding Dreamweaver CS4′s Document View =-.
I agree with your thoughts about google adsense, but google is one of the best search engine in the world, and they have millions of customers, that’s why they don’t have much time to pay attention to their customer service, But before adding google adsense to your site, you must research the keyword and do a proper planning and research of you keyword. Don’t forget to place ads on the right positions.
Have you noticed a difference in comments since you’ve been using Keyword Luv? I was considering installing it.
Adsense is an excellent way to monetise a website, have you looked at things like the super site tracker. It is a good way to experiment with different ad placements.
Traffic is still my downfall.