Google Adsense is one of the most popular forms of monetizing a blog or website. The vast number and variety of publishers in the Google network makes it easy to start making money quickly with ads directly relevant to your content. I’ve been using Adsense for quite sometime and have a created a steady 2nd steam of income in addition to my full time job. Below are 5 secrets for being successful with Google Adsense that I have picked up along the way.
Have a Common Theme for Your Blogs Content
Having a blog focused on one general topic makes it much easier for Google to show the most relevant ads for your visitors. In order for you to receive clicks from your visitors the ads must be relevant to what they are looking for on your site. When a blog is completely random and the topics of each post vary widely, Google will do its best to serve an ad, but it may be completely unrelated to the content on the page. This will result in a much lower CTR (click through rate) and a much lower check for you to cash each month.
Blend Ads Into Your Content
It is important to have your ads match the theme of your blog. Many people just take the default color scheme and stick the code on their website while not paying attention to how it really looks. There are many studies that show that blue links with a white background have a higher CTR because that is what people are use to seeing. This may be true, but more important is the fact that your ads should blend perfectly with the background and link color of your regular links. People are much less likely to click on an ad if its blatantly an ad.
Place Ads Above and Below the Fold
Second to blending your ads, the location of your ads is next in importance. I’ve found that scattering your ads throughout the page will result in the best CTR. Having ads above the fold, meaning you can see them without scrolling down at all, results in every visitor to your website seeing the ads and may result in a click. I also like to put an Adsense ad at the bottom of posts so that if a visitor does scroll and they can no longer see the ad at the top, they are presented with another one. Many people tend to place ads in the sidebar of their blogs. This can sometimes be an effective location, however many people tend to ignore the sidebar and focus on the main content in the middle of the page. Each blog and its visitors are different, so it’s important to continually tweak the location and size of your ads in order to find the best combinations.
Use Channels when Creating your Adsense Ads
Channels allow you to monitor which ads are being clicked on the most frequently and are resulting in the largest amounts of revenue. When setting up your ad color and size, be sure to assign a channel name to each ad type that you will be able to distinguish. I tend to use things like domainname-top-linkunit, or domainname-sidebar. Having Channels assigned to your ads will make it much easier to determine which sizes, locations, and colors are working best for your blog.
Use Text-based Ads Rather than Images
I’ve found that text based ads from Google Adsense tend to perform better than using image ads. The reason for this goes back to point number 1. Blending text with your text content is much easier than with an image. Having a big rectangular image promoting something typically screams “HEY IM AN AD”, and people will completely ignore it. This point is a rule of thumb though. If your blog or website is about a certain type of product, or offers product reviews, then image ads may actually perform very well for you if implemented strategically.
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