So you want to make money with Google Adsense? I don't blame you, who doesn't want residual income! This article will show you how to better optimize Google Adsense to make more money from your web site(s)...
Before we get into it, learn more about Google Adsense here: http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/
First and foremost is: Positioning
Where you position your Adsense link boxes and banner ads is extremely important. Trying to make money from the bottom of your pages within your website just won't cut it. You need to add your Adsense links right in the heart of your template or right in the heart of your content. I would personally suggest both actually.
Adding Adsense in the heart of your template:
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. Adsense is very popular with webmasters; who doesn't want to make some extra money. However, don't forget that many of your visitors are also used to seeing Adsense within a website, and need a good reason to click on them.
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.
Just remember that Google allows up to 3 ad units per page. Using these 3 strategies will help to better optimize Adsense for positioning! Let's now go onto targeting...
Optimizing Adsense: Taking out non-related ads!
Do you ever wonder how ads like "business card specials" ever get displayed on to your website when your company content is all about baby clothing? Since the introduction of "Adwords Site Targeting", we now have to keep an eye on the ads being displayed on our website(s). Companies may now specifically target your website for more exposure. There is no restriction whether the website is content related or not, just more marketing exposure for the advertiser.
Filtering Adsense Advertisers:
Within your Adsense manager, you have the option of using the "Competition Filter" which allows us to remove certain websites from the ads being displayed regularly. This is going to be an on-going optimization task in the future. Without filtering the ads being displayed within your website, you might find yourself with ads unrelated to your industry and possibly some ads that have a negative effect within your site.
If you don't remove all the unwanted ads being displayed on your website, you might end up hurting your Adsense performance online. The more targeted you can get your Google Adsense ads to display on each page, the better your chances at being able to make more money. Try to take a moment every week to study the ads being displayed on your website.
Open up a note pad, or word document and record all the websites you don't want to be displayed anymore. Add these sites to your "filter list" within your Adsense account.
Remember to add the website (within your filter list) like so: smartads.info - without the www. Adding anything after or before the url will only prevent the company from displaying one of their many ads like so (www.site.com/ads/1.html). This way you stop anything from the entire website from showing up within your Adsense campaign online. The more you optimize your Adsense filter, the better your performance will pick up and the less non-related ads will be displayed on your website.
One constant that holds true with Adsense:
The more pages you have with your Adsense campaign being displayed, the more you WILL make. People who have online networks immediately can profit from Google Adwords because they have the power to add their Adsense boxes & banners onto multiple websites, possibly 1000's of pages.
Should you add Adsense to your website?
If you own a small company that has a brochure type website that gets maybe 50-100 visitors a day, I recommend NOT adding Adsense to your site. It will never make enough money with that kind of traffic. Remember: Your Adsense campaign needs to make over $100 to get paid out.
If your company receives around 500-1000+ visitors a day, you can now start considering to make money through Google. Adsense is all about numbers. Play the numbers to make more money. In fact, try making goals for yourself to make X amount of dollars through your Adsense account by a certain time. Doing this will only increase your business and make your company more powerful online by increasing the amount of traffic it receives.
For multiple websites, channels are important:
Google allows you to track the performance of multiple websites all in one account which ultimately gives you the ability to track how many visitors you're getting for each website. It also allows you to work harder on those sites that aren't up to par.
I consistently look at each individual website channel to work harder at promoting the ones that aren't performing well. By doing this, we increase the amount of promotion going into the websites that under perform, and in turn eventually increase the business for those websites as well. The more you promote your website, the more the exposure you will ultimately deliver for your Adsense campaign and your company.
Google Search with Adsense:
To top all that off, you can add Google search within your site to give visitors a search function for your content and to allow people to also click on your Adsense program. Please note that for Google search to work, your website and all of its content pages must already be indexed by Google. Adding the Google search bar to your site right away won't help your visitors at all.
