Article & Journal Resources

Tips 1 : Tips Adsense

Google Adsense is perhaps the easiest way to attract advertisers from across the globe to your blog. Just submit your blog to Google for approval. If Google likes what it sees, it will place contextual ads linking to products likely to appeal to the readers. Each time a reader clicks a link, the advertiser pays Google a small fee, and Google splits that with you.

The next interesting question - How to Make Money with Google Adsense ? Here are The best Google Adsense Tips and Tricks for making more money (profit) from Google adsense program.

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.

c. Don't ask your friends or visitors to click on your Google ads. Do not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads. Don't label the 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. You should not reload your pages excessively. If you are testing your website layout with Google adsense, follow some precautions. 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.

f. Don't start a "adsense asbestos" or "home equity loan rates" website merely to make money from accidental clicks (accidence). You will never make money out these "made-for-adsense-only" websites. Instead, write on topics what you are passionate about. Don't waste your money on high-paying adsense keywords lists.

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

h. For long articles, CTR improves if ads are placed somewhere in middle of the content - visitors read the long content and then they are looking for more resources.

i. Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options. If you still want to display image ads, consider ad formats that support image ads - Choose either the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper - or both, if you display multiple ad units on a page.

j. Google Ads without background color and borders 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 the HTML. 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.

m. Go Wide - The large rectangle is the best paying adsense format (336x280) - The Google Adsense Publisher team also feels that the best formats are the wider ones - the ad formats that contain the widest individual ads. Try using the 336x280 large rectangle, 300x250 medium rectangle, or 160x600 wide skyscraper.

n. Placing images next to ads or above ads does help in attracting user attention.

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. Organize an Adsense Party for your friends and colleagues - Request them to navigate your website, watch their activity - it will provide vital clues about which regions on your website draw more user attention. Try putting ads near those areas. (Thanks Darren)

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, 1 adlink unit and 1 referral button per product (i.e., 1 AdSense referral button and 1 Firefox plus Google Toolbar referral button).

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 "" 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. Don't syndicate full content. If people can read everything from the newsreader window itself, why would they visit your website where your ads are.

v. Use URL channels to determine performance of individual pages. I track my most popular pages with Google Analytics, Statcounter and create a channel for each of the URL. You can even track Adsense Clicks with Analytics

w. For low CTR pages, try changing titles or adding more content to get better focused ads

x. Block low paying advertisers with Filters. Why to loose a visitor for 0.01 cents. Use Overture or Google Adwords Keywords tool to discover keywords that are less popular with advertisers.

y. The AdSense for search Top Queries report shows you what your users are looking for, by listing the 25 most common searches conducted through your AdSense for search boxes. Use this report to identify additional topics to add to your site, or to keep track of your most sought-after information. Focus and improve that content.

z. Not everyone has a RSS reader. Use RSS to Email services like FeedBlitz, Bloglet or Rmail to let users subscribe to your blog by email.

Remember, you are the best judge when it comes to choosing ad formats. 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 on the Google homepage, you will find ads on the far right.

Tips 2 : Tips Adsense

Google adsense folks have unveiled another useful feature for Adsense publishers - Section Targeting.

The concept is simple but the advantages and possibilities are endless.

Consider a possible scenario that could confuse Adsense Bot and serve irrelevant ads on your page. You have just written an article in your blog on "Web Hosting". Great, but on the same page you have others sections like "Previous Posts", "User Comments", "RSS Web Feeds" and your "Profile".

Your personal profile may say that you are a die-hard soccer fan, user comments might contain spam and links to Viagra stores, the Previous Posts may contain totally unrelated topics like "US Outsources Teachers" or "Google releases Dance 2005 pictures".

Your article on "Web Hosting" may occupy just 50% of your precious blog Real estate while the rest is grabbed by everything else.

What do you do then. Here comes Google Adsense Section Targeting to your rescue. Just tweak your HTML a bit and force Googlebot to focus only on specific content.

Some things to note before implementing Google Tags:

1. Don't cheat Google why targetting wrong content - Google is smart enough.

2. Though a bit risky but always include user comments in the Tags.

3. Don't worry if your Google earning drop the first day, experiment for some time.

4. Always include the Title of post within the tags.

Here's how you do it. Just open your Page HTML in notepad, point your cursor to the beginning of your article and insert the following line:

Then point your cursor where your story end and inser the following HTML line

Save your HTML and publish it to the web. You are done. It is so simple.

So it is just like saying - "Hey Google, please don't read my entire page for determing the Ads that you want to serve. I want you to focus just here".

You can use section targeting to make suggestions about as many sections of a page as you like. In Google jargon, you are making a suggestion to Google Adsense Bot. Google suggests that you need to include ’significant content’ in the tags or you’ll end up with irrelevant ads or PSAs.

Here's a sample illustration of implementing Section Targeting in Blogger Templates. (Use at your own risk)

<$BlogItemTitle$>

<$BlogItemBody$>

Save to Del.icio.us

Furl It

The content between the Google comment tags is emphasized and the rest may be ignored while displaying Google Text Ads or adsense units. Remember to use this feature carefully. Double check that you have closed the Google Start tag. Incase you need further help on implementing section targeting in your Blogger template, feel free to contact me. Good luck.

Tips 3 : Tips Adsense 3, Dramatically Increase CTR

By Roseanne Van Langenberg

Here are three Adsense Tips, together with the required HTML code, to dramatically increase CTRs and Google Adsense revenue.

1. Correct HTML Code to Include Images or Graphics Above An Adsense Leader Board Block:

Expert SEO Forums have been abuzz over a new Adsense tip which has seen a dramatic increase in CTR's.

Many webmasters have reported increases over 400 percent after adding four images, expertly positioned horizontally over a 4 block Adsense Leaderboard, with no border.

I don't see any reason why this would not work on smaller blocks, but you would have to alter the following HTML accordingly.

Here is the HTML code you should use to align the images directly over the ads -- please be cautioned, so as not to breach Google's TOS, you should not use any other text around these images, apart from the required Adsense code:

[table cellspacing="0" width="728" border="0" cellspadding="0"]

[tbody][tr]

[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]

[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]

[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]

[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td colspan="4"]

GOOGLE AD CODE HERE 728x90

[/td]

[/tr]

[/tbody]

[/table]

NOTE: Please do change all [ ] brackets above, to the required HTML brackets < >.

Here is one of the relevant threads at SEO forums that has a clear "graphic" example, with before and after pictures clearly depicting how to add these images:

Forums Digital Point - Quadrupled Adsense CTR's thread

A website with thousands of drawings of little Piggies, was responsible for starting the above thread!

2. Maximize Google Adsense CTRs using the Competitive Ad Filter to exclude low-paying Blog related URL's:

Have you ever had days where 50 clicks would pay you the grand total of $1.50 - well that's the combined power of 3 cent clicks or low-paying Blog related ads. working against you.

This post Maximise CTR with Adsense for Blogs at the Shaolin Tiger blog gives you a good list of around 50 URL's to include in the "Competive Filter" of a Google Adsense account:

This will naturally filter out the low-paying Ads which Blog software and related domains seem to serve up.

3. Adding a Double Block of Large Rectangle Adsense Blocks at the End of each Post or Webpage

A number of the high-trafficked blogs, add a double block of 336x380 "Large Rectangle" blocks at the very end of a Post or Webpage, just as the visitor is about to leave.

Makes sense - a visitor is about to leave, and has one of two choices:

(a) visit another page on the site, or

(b) click on a high "paying" Google Adsense ad, prior to leaving the site

Serving them with a wide-choice of Adsense ads in the format which is statistically proven to have the best CTR, is an obvious choice. Trialling this placement has made a dramatic improvement in CTRs for the Marketing Defined blog.

So go ahead, use these 3 Adsense Tips to make a dramatic increase in your CTR's.

Copyright 2005 Roseanne van Langenberg

Roseanne van Langenberg is the Editor of the Marketing Defined blog which shares expert tips and strategies on how to increase Adsense CTR and Increase Targeted Traffic to a website using only current SEO and Marketing strategies.

Tips 4 : Adsense Tips, Guide to Publisher

If you are a regular visitor to my site, you might have noticed some changes in the style. Well, I drew most of the inspiration from the picture above also known as the "heat map".

Google Adsense Placement Tips Looking at my recent adsense statistics, I must admit that the above illustration is fairly nice. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). All other things being equal, ad placements above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.

Google has done an impressive presentation to woo new Adsense Publishers.

Adsense for Content remains my primary source of revenue from this blog. I do not use "Adsense for Search" as Googlebot doesn't index my site too well. Yahoo! spiders do a better job, atleast in my case.

Tips 5 : Adsense Tips, Maximum Clicks

WWWCoder shows you how to better optimize Google Adsense to make more money from your web site in Optimizing Adsense For Better Performance and More Money!

Positioning:

You need to add your Adsense links right in the heart of your template or right in the heart of your content.

Link Units:

Since the introduction of Google Adsense "link units", we can now add what looks like a "menu system" to compliment our menu system within our website. This is HUGE. Have you ever just clicked on a website and kept clicking on the menu links? I know we all have. By adding a "Google link units" to your menu, you will get more clicks than you thought possible. Try adding the link units near the top for better performance and try creating your link units to match the color of your menu system in place. Once in a while I find myself clicking on a menu link unit without even realizing it which in turn gives more money to the website owner.

Leaderboards & Skyscrapers:

These may very well be your "bread & butter". I only say this because of the sheer size of these ads units. The best place to add these ad units is obvious; Straight across the very top of your website (leaderboards), and straight down the side of your template (skyscrapers). Anywhere else may not look proper within your template and may look unprofessional.

Square & Rectangle Ad Units:

These are great to compliment the mass amount of content within your website and also within your recommended resources. You want to compliment your content, you don't want Adsense to BE your content because this will look poor on your part. Square and rectangular units are great to use within articles posted on your website or within your link resources. Try adding your Adsense boxes above your resource links within a page to give your Adsense account that added extra exposure.

Tips 6 : Adsense Tips

As explained in Why are ads displayed on this site?, most of the pages on this site display text ads from Google's AdWords program. To display these ads, a site must join Google's AdSense program. Joining is free, but not all sites are eligible to join. Once you're accepted, however, it's very simple to place the ads on your pages and to start generating revenue for your site. AdSense will serve ads that are generally very relevant to the content of a particular page. Here are some tips based on my experiences so far with the AdSense program.

Tip #1: Don't put ads on empty pages.

When I reworked my site, I built a skeleton set of pages that had no content, just titles and some meta tags. I displayed ads on those pages, however. Although all you see are public service ads at first, the very act of displaying ads on a page causes the AdSense web crawler to quickly fetch that page for analysis. A page with good content will thus begin showing relevant paying ads fairly quickly.

If you don't have any content, then, Google will have to guess as what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant. You'll have to wait until Google re-crawls the site for the ads to correct themselves. Here is what Google had to say when I asked them about how often the AdSense crawler updates a site:

Thank you for taking the time to update your site. New ads will start appearing on your site the next time our crawler re-indexes your site. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to control how often our crawlers index the content on your site.

Crawling is done automatically by our bots. When new pages are added to your website or introduced to the AdSense program, our crawlers will usually get to them within 30 minutes. If you make changes to a page, however, it may take up to 2 or 3 weeks before the changes are reflected in our index. Until we are able to crawl your web pages, you may notice public service ads, for which you will not receive any earnings.

It's better to flesh out the page before you start displaying ads on it.

Tip #2: Don't be afraid to ask questions

If you're wondering about something, don't be afraid to ask Google. So far, they've always responded to my questions within a working day. There are two email addresses to use, depending on the type of question:

Please feel free to email us at adsense-tech@google.com if you have additional technical questions or concerns. For general program or account questions, please email adsense-support@google.com.

Their responses are always very polite, and they appreciate getting problem reports and suggestions.

Tip #3: Avoid non-English characters on English pages

This one is a bug, to be honest. My surname is French, and I prefer to write it out correctly with the accent grave on the first "e". Every page on my site would then include at least two accented letters, because my name shows up twice in the footer. On some pages my name shows up two or three more times.

Normally, this wouldn't be an issue. But on some pages the presence of the accented characters is enough to cause AdSense to display non-relevant ads in French. This happens whether the browser indicates a preference for French or not. When I reported this to Google, this is the answer they gave me:

Hello Eric,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

We are currently working as quickly as we can to address this problem. As soon as we have more information for you, we will email you again.

We appreciate your patience.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

Until this is resolved, I've decided to strip out all accents except on the pages that are actually in French.

Tip #4: Check your keyword density

Although Google doesn't release exact details as to how they determine the ads to serve on a given page, they do tell us that it's the text content of the page that matters, not the meta tags. Before serving ads on a page, then, you might want to check its keyword density. A good, free tool for doing this is found here:

http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

This lets you fine-tune the page before exposing it to the AdSense crawler.