AdSense 50 Tips

August 25, 2005

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I was navigate over the net (forums) and recollected all possible tips that users share: Those information are taken from: WebmasterWorld: All credits to the posters.

1. Google’s Heat Map really does work and deserves the full attention of those who’ve ignored it. It’s really helped me improve my CTR. https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html&gsessionid=HyRs2QlabOI

2. When it comes to content, take the time write the best article you can. Don’t write a bunch of rehashed garbage that’s already been copied 100x before by lazier webmasters then you. Write something fresh and recent with new sources. Also, don’t make the article short just because you don’t like to write. Write until you’ve exhausted the subject. This will help you avoid duplicate content penalities, increase the stickyness to your site, and put out more 3,4,5, etc. keyword combinations that you can pick up traffic on.

3. Clear off the clutter, eye candy, bells and whistles and unnecessary links from each page. You want visitor’s eyeballs to focus on 2 things: Your Content and Your Ads. Trimming the fat also reduces the low value places for visitors to go. You want them to either continue surfing your site or to exit through an ad. I’ve reduced the clutter and low value links off many of my pages which really helped my CTR and proved to be worth the time it took.

4. Only use 1 ad block per page to keep the highest paying clicks in view and avoid .03 clicks (not worth leaving your site for .03 in my opinion)

5. Blend ads in to design (but still displayed prominently) as to not offend your visitors

6.Use an adlink in addition to an adblock, and consider placing it at the end of your page’s text. If the text you’ve written is sufficiently focused on your keywords, the adlink should have no problem with relevancy. The adlinks really work great and seem to add significantly in many cases to the bottomline. They sometimes subtract from the number of clicks you’d receive from a single adblock, but the dollar amount earned at the end of the day can be greater.

7.when placing adblocks, consider choosing alternating color schemes so repeat visitors to certain pages will see a different ad appearance on repeat visits. this might help alleviate ad blindness.

8. Use the channels agressively to test and do more testing – keeping in mind you can’t compare just 1 day against another – you have to look at bigger blocks of time.

9. Match your ad style to your page style sheet. I have had big jumps in my CTR in doing this

10. Your traffic sources can impact your CTR. If you are bringing generic, run of network traffic to your site, you will have lower CTR. If you bring targeted traffic focused on your topic to your site, you will see higher CTR

11. Keep an open mind and keep trying different things
- sometimes even if you think you are doing well you can still do better – colours – layouts – positioning – ad types etc. Sometimes something that sounds like a really stupid idea might actually do really well.

12. Keep each page on a single topic (where possible) and split large content into multiple pages – lots of highly targetted ads and good proportion of ads to content (obviously don’t drown your content with ads).

13. Be willing to test. (test, test, test, test, test, and test, the last one TEST).

14. Don’t be afraid to ugly up your site a little bit to make your Adsense ads really stick out to get a better CTR. You’ll get a few complaints, but the increased CTR will help you sleep better at night.
15. Those Adlinks can work. Give them a try.
16. Regular updating of site with fresh content.
17. Regular website promotion.
18. Open mind for experiments within Adsense TOC.

19. Periodically monitor for content theft. This can be done a number of ways, including back-tracing links to your site, monitoring your serps, doing searches for unique text on your pages, and using a content monitoring system. This may not overtly seem to be an adsense tip, but do you really want the unique value of the content YOU created to start popping up elsewhere on other adsense sites, thereby diluting it’s value (ASA, will google ever devise a registration system so site/content owners can at least certify that, on a certain date, the content was on their site and not on a thief’s. this would even be a good revenue stream since many webmasters would pay a nice fee for the added protection)

20. Do not prejudge your pages! It’s amazing to see that pages you had little expection for turn out to pay very well.

21. As much as possible try to get targetted traffic. Well targeted traffic can really affect CTR and earnings.

22. Broaden your view of your content topic(s). Some very well paying, very relevant, subjects are completely missing on many sites.

23. “Less is more”

Don’t be tempted to splatter each and every page on your site with three adsense banners, one adlinks banner and a google search box! Use channels to track every banner, and if it isn’t paying then dump it. The resulting increase in CTR will probably feed through to an increase in earnings.

24. “Experiment”

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different banner types and placements. If it doesn’t work then restore it to the previous version. If a banner doesn’t work on a page, don’t assume that the page will never work with adsense. Give it a few weeks then try something different inthe way of banners/adlinks.

25. “Don’t assume the ads selected are always the best payers”

Google targets ads based on what they *think* will be the best financial bet – not on highest bidder. This usuallyworks well, but you may find that there is some really bad targetting on occasions. Use the adsense preview tool to look at the ads that appear, and if they are scrapers, directiories or webmasters buying traffic as opposed to people selling things then consider dumping them. WARNING – this is against the conventional wisdom, but the technique has worked well for myself and others here. It won’t work for everybody, so if you intend trying this please be careful to dump advertisers sparinglyand slowly.

26. Diversify your sites.

27. Listen to the pros.

28. Never give up.

29. Work out your business case. Calculate the ROI from one article in a month, three months, a year. Calculate your ouTLAys and investments, set your targets based on realistic hard facts only.

30. Plough your income back into content. Think of every $ you don’t spend on pizza now as $10 next year.

31. if you have high EPC pages and low EPC pages remove adsense from low EPC pages. This will make your site less predictable and more interesting to the users.

32. advertise your high EPC pages with link on the low epc pages

33. split long pages into several smaller pages with one ad block on each page. Optimize for slightly different keywords (within subject) on pages.

34. READ THE ADSENSE TERMS & CONDIDTIONS AND THE HELP PAGES FROM COVER TO COVER and then don’t rely on answers from others when you are unsure about borderline issues, ask Google directly as they are the only ones that can give you a definitive answer that won’t get your site banned.

35. Mix advertising and content. This stops visitors from getting ad blindness

36. Don’t play with the adsense code.

37. Put keyword relevant images above or beside your ads, so they are lined up properly (Google allows this).

38. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to replace your google ads with affiliate ads over time. The greater the number of affiliates you use, the less chance that losing one will harm your overall income. That’s the biggest risk with Adsense. Look to see what ads are appearing on a page and being clicked through often (using channels), then find an affiliate program similar to that ad (you can use the same ad copy!). This is a lot of work, but sooo worth the insurance, and probably the extra income in the long run.

39. Make your pages validate. Otherwise you may find that one syntax error means that the spider ignores vast chunks of content, resulting in poor targetting.

40. Force yourself to take a break very now and again. Don’t take it so seriously and don’t expect it to pay the bills or the mortgage, for example. Walk away and do something else for a while – maybe a couple of weeks. Then come back with fresh eyes and try again.

41. Serve the user. If your site has intrinsic value, users will come back, and you’ll earn far more than you would from a single visit. (You’ll also benefit from word of mouth and unsolicited links from other sites.)

42. Be fair to advertisers. If you try to artificially boost your clickthrough rate by disguising ads as content or overwhelming the visitor with ads, your clicks won’t convert well for advertisers. This may result in higher “smart pricing” discounts for your clicks (meaning less money for you), and you’ll be a poor candidate for site-targeted CPM ads.

43. Think long-term. Ask yourself what will happen if you’re dropped by AdSense, if advertisers get more control over where their ads appear, if “smart pricing” becomes more aggressive in cutting revenues for sites whose clicks don’t convert, or if other changes affect the status quo. It’s tempting to go for the quick and easy money, but unless you have the technical and business smarts to earn a lot of money that way, you’ll probably be better off with content that can earn revenue in multiple ways over the long haul.

44. Watch your server logs – I have noticed that sometimes I will just mention something in an article for one sentence that brings in a lot of visitors so I go and write an entire article on that subject. The results have been stellar. You’ve been given a big hint that people are interested in this and if you ignore it you are missing a big opportunity. I have more than a few articles that have been linked to all over the web because they are almost the only decent material on this subject.

45. Don’t fret too much when your income and/or traffic are low for a few days. These peaks and valleys are normal but you should still investigate the matter to see what factors could be causing this like an algorythm update.

46. Use proper grammar and spelling so that your articles are professional. Use bullet points and bold headings for sections.

47. Write content that is as specific as possible. Don’t write an article that is super long unless it is necessary. If you can break it up if it seems logical to do so.

48. Create sequentially related content spanning multiple related pages and encourage visitor flow.

49. Have patience. You may have good ideas that won’t even start to pay for six months from now.Use good title and description tags, plus Urls that look static even on a dynamic site. Helpful not just for Adsense, but to get search engine traffic as well.

50. Read the terms Read the policies Never EVER click your own ads and TEST, TEST and TEST

Note, as I mentioned at the top of the post, this is from WW all credits to the posters.

I would like to people register, or comments posting more tips. Another 50 Tips will come soon.

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