Google Adsense, Back to the Basics

It's funny that a lot of people jump into advanced techniques of doing something, when they do not even have the basics down. This Hub contains a basic outline of how to optimize Adsense Ads in your site. If you don't have these things down, your advanced techiniques are worthless.

1. In Adsense, LESS is MORE - Some people create a website and then throw 3 blocks of Adsense ads in their page and expect it to make them boat loads of money. Well, thats just not going to happen and that has to do with how Adsense and Adwords (network where people bid to have their ads displayed in the Adsense Network) works. The trick is that if you only have 1 block of ads being displayed, the 2 ads being displayed will be the ones with the top bids. If you have 15 ads being displayed, the value of the clicks you get fall dramatically. Therefore, the tactic is to have targeted placement of as few ads as possible.

2. Keyword Research- Are you creating content that will display ads that pay .05 cents per click or $5 per click? If you're trying to make money, I would recommend targeting high paying keywords. You may see that some keywords such as "insurance" and "mortgage" cost around $10-$20 per click on Adwords, but don't expect to get that much so quickly. First, those are very broad keywords and you would still only get a percentage of that payout, AND Google pays you depending on many factors such as the Click-Through-Rate of the ads on your site, Quality of your site, and many other factors. All of these factors may reduce the payout you get, nevertheless the moral of the story is, "if you start with a keyword that typically pays out .10 cents and you have all these factors working against you, you're going to get .01 cents per click. Yet, if you have a keyword that pays $10 per click, even with everything against you, you may still get $1 for it! Yay!

3. Ad Placement- Put ads where people are going to click them! Some people think putting ads on the top of the page is the best idea. Some braniacs also think that putting a big block of adsense ads that cover the whole upper half of the page is the best idea. WRONG. First, people have learned to naturally scroll their eyes down right to the content and not even look at the ads on the top of the page. May I also ask, since when do you go to a website and then click right through an Ad without even looking at the website? So what makes people think that a big block of adsense ads covering the top half of the page will give them the highest CTR? Beats me. So when placing your ads, place them in targeted locations.

Examples include: Ads in the middle of the content after you ask a question, which may be answered by the headline etc of the ads and intice people to click them.

The biggie: Ads after a Call-For-Action such as "Go find places to make money online!" which then has a few ads right below that may say " The Secret way to make money online". Trust me, people will probably click those ads.

4. Pay for Cheap Targeted Traffic- The famous Adsense Arbitrage. However, people always think that they can only buy traffic from Adwords and that they are going to get in trouble with Google. First, Arbitrage is not something bad, it is just a market inefficiency, and Google Knows about it. As long as you add value to the user which is what Google wants, you should not have a problem. However, my point here is that you can buy traffic from other ad networks such as Azoogle ads, Facebook, etc. Hence, as long as you have a page that converts with ads that on average pay more than your cost, you are golden.

5. Track Everything- Create a Channel for each Ad Block you have and know which ones people are clicking on. This means getting rid of other ad blocks or editing them. Change the placement, colors, etc and see what works. Hence, the moral of the story is "testing, testing, testing". Never just put ads in a website and not track its peformance. Your goal is to maximize your profits, and believe me, there is ALWAYS room for improvement.

I hope people remember that before they follow the more advanced techniques out there, they should have these basics down. Now go make some money ! :)