Adsense Optimization tips

1. All publishers may now participate in AdSense referrals regardless of their own location. Now you’ll only earn commission if those you refer come from North America, Latin America and Japan.
2. The commission paid will be $100 when the publisher you refer makes $100 in their first 180 days (there is no more $5 or $250 payments and no more $2000 bonus)
3. There have been some publishers who can’t see any referral earnings in their reports - this is a glitch and will be fixed
4. Publishers using the ‘Google Pack’ referral program will only earn $1 per referral (previously it was $2) as of the third week of February
5. Publishers using the Firefox referrals program to China will see reductions in payments (this won’t impact anyone you refer who is from outside of China).

Adsense Script Tools

These are the tiny little programs you install on your server (blech!) or locally on your machine that help you analyze your adsense clicks, CTR and earnings. Some of them are easy, some of them are difficult, and some of them help you make pretty graphs. To be honest none of them are worth recommending. You could do just as good a job by setting up your channels properly and dumping a CSV file into excel. If someone has a specific one or wants to send me a review copy of thier software, I will look at it. DO NOT send me anything that has to be installed on a server. I run multiple websites on multiple hosting companies, so I don’t need something that requires more maintenance thank you very much.

Adsense Preview Tools

The Adsense Sandbox comes via Digital Point. You put in a URL and it lets you preview what ads are most likely to appear on a URL. Pretty handy IMHO.

Adsense Tracking

While not set up to be an Adsense tracking tool per se, the free log analyzer from AddFreeStats is actually pretty good. You put a small graphic tracking bug on the bottom of each of your pages and it gives you standard logging reports. You can also activate adsense tracking to find out what ads are being clicked on what pages. Combine this with an excel spreadsheet and channels and you are good to go. You can upgrade to a paid version and get an invisible tracking bug. TIP: Lock down your stats under a password, I’m fascinated how many people leave that open.

[#3: Edit Options>MightyAdsense>Adsense Code]

1. Use channels to analyze. My best performing pages do 100 times better than the worst. Know where to spend your time.

2. Create a separate site to target high paying keywords only. When Adsense doesn’t know which ads to pick, it seems to draw conclusions from the surrounding site.

3. Write about things people are actively searching for. This should be obvious, but so many sites seem to forget.

1) 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. 2) advertise your high EPC pages with link on the low epc pages

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

/. 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. 2/. Plough your income back into content. Think of every $ you don’t spend on pizza now as $10 next year.

3/. Read the posts here, but not so much that you don’t have time for content.

Of course, the foundation is quality, original content. 1. 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.

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

3. 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

1. 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.

2.

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.

One of the main objectives of this adsense forum is to help each other improve earnings based on a quality website that plays by the rules. Many new members come here looking for just such advice and older members can validate or dismiss practices based on the information they accumulate here over time .

With this in mind, I thought it would be nice to have one thread that puts all the best tips and advice together from old and new members - for the benefit of old and new members.

It’s also my hope that we can put together a high impact thread worthy of being bookmarked and referred to, as well as to take the wind out of the sales (pun intended) of those who sell $75 overpriced adsense eBooks that never deliver on what they promise. [And at the same time, hope those same opportunists don’t violate the copyright on this thread and produce another eBook based on this information].

To start, here’s 3 of my best adsense tips.

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.

One Final Note: I think it’s okay for members to repeat tips as it validates the importance of such tips and shows some priority as to what publishers can focus on.

Thanks,

Freedom
MediaSpree

#:1438400      1:02 pm on July 21, 2005 (utc 0)

1. Follow Heat Map for SURE!

2. 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)

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

1. AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor.

2. Impression count is basically referring to your traffic. It means the number of times AdSense block is displayed.

3. 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%.

4. Cost-per-click (CPC) is the earning you get per click. While traditionally it refers to the amount advertisers pay for each click, it can also mean the amount publishers get for each click.

5. Smart-pricing is AdSense method to determine how valuable clicks from your site is worth. If clicks on your site doesn’t provide good value to advertisers, e.g. from visitors’ geo-location that seldom translate to sales, you will only get a fraction of the supposed CPC.

6. Apply for AdSense account via blogger.com for faster approval.

7. Once you get your AdSense publisher code, you can put it any of your websites without requiring further approval.

8. Read and reread Google AdSense Program Policies and Terms and Conditions.

9. Don’t click on your own ads, or ask people to click, even if you are using proxies.

10. Don’t use click-bots.

11. Don’t encourage your visitors to click on ads. The only acceptable text is “Sponsored Links” and “Advertisements”.

12. Don’t put competitor contextual ads on the same page as your AdSense, for example: Yahoo Publisher Network, Clicksor. Non-contextual ads are ok.

13. Don’t put your ads on objectionable material, e.g. adult sites, gambling sites, mp3, etc.

14. Basically, don’t cheat AdSense. Google will catch you, sooner or later.

15. Viewing your on website will not get you banned. Just make sure you don’t click on the ads.

16. However, repeatedly reload your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned.

17. When in doubt don’t hesitate to contact the AdSense team. They are very helpful.

18. Choose a high paying niche without too much competition.

19. You can try highest paying keywords from cwire.org, but know before-hand that you’ll face very fierce competitions.

20. Use Overture Bid Tool and Search Engine Keyword Tool to find suitable keyword.

21. Consider signing-up for AdWords and create a mini campaign. It can help you to understand the working of AdSense.
    
    Target a specific audience. Get Google AdWords.

22. Put your targeted-keyword on Page Title.

23. Repeat the keywords in your content.

24. Learn HTML.

25. Put emphasis around your keywords by using HTML tags like <h1>…</h1>, <h2>…</h2>, <strong>…</strong>, <b>…</b>, e.g. <strong>AdSense Tips</strong> .

26. Get domain name that contains your targeted keyword.

27. Submit your website to directories for inclusion, e.g. dmoz.org, yahoo directories

28. Submit your URL to search engines for crawling.

29. Create and submit your sitemaps to Google Sitemap (sitemap.xml) and Yahoo (urllist.txt)

30. Google is not the only search engine. Optimize for different engines as well. You are very likely to face less competition than in Google.

31. Invest for original fresh content. Write or pay for contents regularly.

32. Use copyscape.com to find content theft. You invest for your content. Don’t let it be taken by unscrupulous webmasters.

33. Article marketing is one of the best way to deliver traffic to your site. Write and submit articles to article-submission sites. Include short summary and hyperlinks to your website in the author information box.

34. Don’t use objectionable methods to draw visitors to your site; buying traffics, spyware, hidden-texts, page cloaking etc will get your AdSense account terminated.

35. New visitors have higher chance to click on the ads than regular visitors, thus higher CTR (click-through rate).

36. Regular visitors have higher chance to recommend your site to others.

37. Search engines are where most of your new visitors come from. Learn a bit about Search Engine Optimization, or pay people to do it. Doing it yourself will save yourself from troubles created by not-so-honorable SEO (Search Engine Optimizer).

38. Don’t create mirrors. These are sites with different URLs but same contents. It hurts search engine ranking.

39. Its easier to create many websites with low earning than few websites with high earning.

40. Forum generally have high impressions count, but very low CTR.

41. CTR isn’t everything. If your CTR is high but gives low conversion rate for the advertiser site, it will trigger AdSense smart pricing.

42. 42. Follow good design guidelines. Avoid the common design mistakes.

    43. Help your visitors by creating easy navigation. You want your visitors to stay for as long as possible.

    44. Use Google Analytics to see your website statistics. It can help you optimize your site.

    45. Google AdSense Heatmap works. Just above your main content is the best position to put your AdSense block

    46. Forum sites have different Forum AdSense Heatmap. Best positions for AdSense for forums are: on the left panel, after the first post, and just below the last post before the footer.

    47. Forum is interactive medium. Be sensitive to your visitors concerns.

    48. Try 300×250 medium rectangle, 336×280 large rectangle, or 160×600 wide skyscraper ad formats. These are the best performing AdSense ad formats.

    49. Choose colors that blend with your content.

    50. Wrap the AdSense block around your content.

    51. Put images next to or above your AdSense block can help improve your clicks-rate.
        Edit: take note, however, to make it clear that the images are not part of the ads. If not sure, consult AdSense support before doing this.

    52. Use channels to track the performance of different format, colors, and positions.

    53. Opt in for both image ads and text ads. Google will choose better performing ads for you.

    54. AdSense have both CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click) ads, and will choose the one it thinks can perform better.

    55. Both image ads and text ads can be either CPM or CPC.

    56. Put link unit ads. They can add to the bottom line.

    57. Try Google Search unit. They provide value to your visitor while adding to your bottom line.

    58. Put in lots of efforts in creating contents and promoting your website. AdSense is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

    59. Clear low-value links from your site. You want your visitors to exit through the ads. Put only links that are really useful for the visitors.

    60. Search “AdSense Tips” on Google. Most webmasters continuously try to optimize their AdSense and many are more than willing to share their result.

    41. CTR isn’t everything. If your CTR is high but gives low conversion rate for the advertiser site, it will trigger AdSense smart pricing.

    42. Follow good design guidelines. Avoid the common design mistakes.

    43. Help your visitors by creating easy navigation. You want your visitors to stay for as long as possible.

    44. Use Google Analytics to see your website statistics. It can help you optimize your site.

    45. Google AdSense Heatmap works. Just above your main content is the best position to put your AdSense block

    46. Forum sites have different Forum AdSense Heatmap. Best positions for AdSense for forums are: on the left panel, after the first post, and just below the last post before the footer.

    47. Forum is interactive medium. Be sensitive to your visitors concerns.

    48. Try 300×250 medium rectangle, 336×280 large rectangle, or 160×600 wide skyscraper ad formats. These are the best performing AdSense ad formats.

    49. Choose colors that blend with your content.

    50. Wrap the AdSense block around your content.

    51. Put images next to or above your AdSense block can help improve your clicks-rate.
        Edit: take note, however, to make it clear that the images are not part of the ads. If not sure, consult AdSense support before doing this.

    52. Use channels to track the performance of different format, colors, and positions.

    53. Opt in for both image ads and text ads. Google will choose better performing ads for you.

    54. AdSense have both CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click) ads, and will choose the one it thinks can perform better.

    55. Both image ads and text ads can be either CPM or CPC.

    56. Put link unit ads. They can add to the bottom line.

    57. Try Google Search unit. They provide value to your visitor while adding to your bottom line.

    58. Put in lots of efforts in creating contents and promoting your website. AdSense is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

    59. Clear low-value links from your site. You want your visitors to exit through the ads. Put only links that are really useful for the visitors.

    60. Search “AdSense Tips” on Google. Most webmasters continuously try to optimize their AdSense and many are more than willing to share their result.

    61. If you blog, Darren has some tips for you.

    62. Inside AdSense is official AdSense blog, where you can find latest developments about AdSense.

    63. You can get help of other AdSense pulishers at AdSense Help Group.

    64. If you are serious about making money from AdSense, get Joel’s AdSense Secrets.

    65. Don’t put too many ad blocks on your site. Find out the highest CTR block and remove the others. Few clicks on the 1$ ads are better than many clicks on the 3-cent-ads.

    66. Experiment, experiment, and experiment. You can never stop trying for new ad format. Even if you think you can’t improve anymore, one slight change might increase your earning significantly.

    67. Remove the “Advertise on this site” from your AdSense block until your site is big enough to attract real advertisers. This will help to clear off many MFA (made-for-adsense) sites. You can disable it from AdSense account setting.

    68. Use AdSense Preview Tool to test the ads that will appear on your site. You can click on ads in the AdSense preview tool, as the advertisers are not charged from it.

    69. AdSense uses geo-location to deliver advertisement. So, what you see on your site might not be what your visitors see. Use AdSense Preview Tool to view your AdSense advertisement displayed for visitors from other places.

    70. Use AdSense Competitive Ads Filter to remove scrapper sites ads. Scrapper sites are sites without real content. They are either link farms, content theft, or meta search engine.

    71. Use AdSense Competitive Ads Filter to remove irrelevant ads.

    72. AdsBlackList.com have good list of URLs to block. Try it.

    73. Try variations of AdSense colors, format, position on different pages to make it more unpredictable for your visitors.

    74. Learn some CSS.

    75. If you are putting multiple ads block on your website: put most clicked block to appear first in the HTML. Higher position in HTML = higher paying ads. You can do this using CSS.

    76. Try to put contents on different subject topics. If it can draw visitors, write more on that topic.

    77. If you have dynamic pages, use htaccess rewrite rule to make it appear as static, e.g. http://www.hundredtips.com/100-google-adsense-tips.html instead of http://www.hundredtips.com/?p=6.

    78. Validate your site HTML and CSS.

    79. Break your long articles to few short articles; this way the users are exposed to the ads for more times.

    80. Keep each article focused on one topic.

    81. Watch your statistics and pay attention to articles that bring in visitors.

    82. Write more articles within the subject that attract visitors.

    83. Web-savvy visitors are less inclined to click on ads.

    84. Have patience. You need time to build the traffic, and to optimize it.

    85. Think long-term. Analise what your visitors need, provide value and good experience to visitors.

    86. Consider buying websites. If you do it right, you can get back your investment in a relatively short time.

    87. Watch your AdSense earning. Notify AdSense Team if you find anything suspicious. Your competitors might try to sabotage your account, or your well-meaning friend keep on clicking on the ads thinking they are helping you.

    88. Use Google AdSense section targeting to help AdSense deliver more relevant ads.

    89. Use AdSense Alternate Ads in case if AdSense can’t find any relevant ads.

    90. Use rotating color ads. It keeps your visitors from getting AdSense blind.

    91. Try other contextual advertising networks too. Yahoo Publisher Network is still in beta and only available in U.S., or you can try Clicksor, Bidvertising, etc. Just make sure you don’t put the on the same page with the AdSense.

    92. You can put your clickbank, amazon, or other affiliate links on the same page with AdSense. You can also put other advertising network, so long as it is not contextual ads. Try Chitika, and disable the contextual ads option.

    93. If you don’t follow the Terms and Conditions, your AdSense account will be disabled and you’ll get banned for life.

    94. If you didn’t do anything wrong and your AdSense account is disabled: write them a polite and professional email, be patient and be persistent. Offer them your server logs to prove your innocence.

    95. Spread the links to your website: put it on your email signature, put comment on blogs, participate in your niche forums.

    96. Promote your articles in social bookmarking sites: del.icio.us, digg, reddit are good start.

    97. Provide �Email a Friend� option to visitors.

    98. Familiarize yourself with AdSense earning report. It can help you determine where your money is from, and optimize accordingly.

    99. Offer newsletters for visitors. It give you chance to get the visitors back regularly.

    100. On AdSense support page, you can find almost every information you need about AdSense.

Your AdSense account application might have been rejected. To get the AdSense account approved quickly, apply via blogger.com

Here is step-by-step for applying AdSense account via blogger:

1. First, go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a new account. Do as normal registration. Fill in the details like username, password, etc.

2. Fill in your blog information

3. Choose a template

4. Now, your blogger account is ready.

5. Write a post. Preferably this will be useful content, with subtle indications of long-term survivability of the blog. For example, you can write “This is the first part of 10-part series optimizing AdSense. For more tips about AdSense optimization, visit again in a day or two.”

6. When you are done, publish the post. Write 2 or 3 more posts.

7. Now, it’s time for the AdSense account. Click “Template” tab on top of the page. It will show your current page template code.

8. Then, just below the Template tab, choose AdSense. It will now display the AdSense application form.

9. Fill in all the details and click “Create Account“. Probably, it will display an error saying “The specified email address is already in use.” That is specially if you used this email address on your rejected AdSense application. Apply using another email address. You can get a GMail invite here.

10. If everything goes well, you will see AdSense block on top of your page now.

11. Choose the ad format and color that match your template. Read the 100 Google AdSense Tips. Then, Save. Your pages will be republished, now with the AdSense blog.

Now, your job is done. You’ll get confirmation letter from AdSense team in 1 or 2 days.