AdSense Checklist
Have a website with no AdSense on it? But if you are considering to do so, then we’ve compiled a list for you so you know exactly what to do and don’t miss out on anything. You can also make a visit to our Complete Adsense Guide on DuoBlogger.
Step 1: Signed Up?
Already signed up with AdSense? If not then read our sign up for AdSense post and follow the steps, as well as tips, there.
If you already have an AdSense account then you’re good to go.
Step 2: Review your possible placements
Review your own website where you want your ads to be placed.
If you think logically here:
Do I want to maximize my earnings?
- Inside your content
- Mainly above the fold
- Aggressive placements (ever visitor MUST see the ads, every visitor that has not seen a ad is a potential loss of click)
- Place link units at your site’s navigation menus
- Place all possible ad units possible per page. (depending on how many advertisers there are for that specific niche)
- 3 Content Ads
- 3 link units
- 1 or 2 custom search boxes
- General niche site? Consider placing the ads only on subpages and not on homepage as that will only give you unrelevant ads
- To solve that part, if you’re using a blog, go for 1 post on the homepage
- Ads on individual pages instead? -> more relevancy
or:
Do I want to keep my website user-friendly?
- Ads should jump out more, meaning other URL/text/title color, making it look more like an advertisement (let the visitors choose to click the ads if they are interested in it, don’t draw attention to them instead)
- Placing your ads at positions which already contain links to other resources (bottom of page or post)
- Below the fold and right sidebar
- Make sure that the ads are not in the way for browsing visitors
- Ideal for webmasters that want to use AdSese to cover the costs of their website
Step 3: Creating the Ads
Did I choose the right ad formats?
- Make sure you avoid Banner Blindness, by making sure you don’t choose leaderboards or horizontal ad formats
- Make use of Rectangles/Squares
- Am I using Link units? They always bring in a buck or two
- Use image ads or not?
Did I choose the right colors?
- Am I using the standard ad colors? (better for non-profit websites)
- Am I blending the ads using the same colors as my website does? meaning:
- Same title color as the link colors, usually something like: standard #0000ff or navyblue #000080
- Same text color as my websites content colors, mostly black #000000
- Using the same URL color as text color? (light grey is also an option)
- Is the background color the same as my websites default background color?
- Never ever use borders, period.
Am I tracking each ad unit per page (and per website) with channels?
- Did I create a channel for every ad unit?
- Did I include a description for every channel? (why? see further below)
- Are the channels targetable? (same reason, see below)
Step 4: Implementing the Ads
This part is completely up to you :) If you are unsure how to add AdSense to certain parts of your website then drop a comment below or send us an email.
Step 5: Review your website again
Are you happy with the placements? Are the colors ok? Are the Ads not too aggressive (within the TOS)?
Tweak a bit in the coding whenever you feel like AdSense in not yet placed correctly.
Step 6: Promote your Website using Google Ad Planner
- By creating your own promotion page for AdWords user to placement target your channels (which are linked to your ad units – that’s why I told you to include a description for every channel, let the advertiser know which place the ad is and how it will perform vs other places on your website. This simple system from Google could massively increase your CPC by a whole lot.
- It’s best if you read our Google Ad Planner blog post, as it’s more detailed
- Example: D3scene
There are 2 ways to quickly promote your website to AdWords users: place a link to your Ad Planner page at the bottom or top of your website. And search google for your keywords and therefore advertisers and send them an email instead to placement target your website. Give them a good reason to do so, else they will just ignore the mail.
Step 7: Watch, Learn and Enjoy
Now that you completely integrated AdSense into your website, you can site back and watch your money flowing in. However it does not stop here, there are always ways to increase your earnings – which is good – but it sucks up time.
Because you, if you followed step 3, integrated channels into your ads, you can monitor how each is performing and tweak the placement/colors a little.
AdSense comes down to experimenting experimenting and experimenting. There’s no way around it, if you want maximum profit from it. Try a different set of ads and placements each week and see how they perform, you can always revert back to your original placement set.
Some other things of note:
- Do not, and ever, click your own ads, even with proxies or whatever – Google will know in the end and won’t pay out, simple. (you might even want to consider keeping your websites private from your family as they often want to help you get money and click the ads which might get you banned) – it’s nice if they want to help you, but you must think about the advertisers as well. They have to pay for those clicks and they aren’t getting any conversions for it. Which could lead to Smart Pricing.
- When in doubt of your placements/colors or anything else from AdSense, consider taking in AdSense Consulting from us.
- Stuck on increasing CPC and CTR? Your only option for increasing your revenue is increasing your traffic. Try targeting other keywords to drive in more traffic.
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“Place all possible ad units possible per page. (depending on how many advertisers there are for that specific niche)”
I disagree. By flooding your page with ads, you destroy your user experience. This leads to a high volume of low-quality “get me outta here” clicks, which leads to smart pricing in the longer term. Additionally, you run the risk of exposing your visitors to bottom-feeding advertisers (arbitrage MFAs), resulting in rock-bottom CPC.
I humbly think that a better advice would be to place one (or in some cases: two at most) instance of each ad unit type on your site. Using correct placement, you will then expose your visitors to the best-paying ads, causing overall stats to skyrocket.
Most of this is backed by experience; I’ve seen drastic earnings increases after reducing the amount of text ad units to one!
That’s an interesting point and correct. Of course, those “get-me-outta-here” clicks aren’t beneficial for your CPC.
However, those clicks aren’t necessarily missclicks as they are done by the user, not accidentally clicking on the ads. They still have a solid-conversion rate.
Nonetheless, going for 1 Ad-unit should increase the CPC. The question is however, what overweighs, the CPC increase or the CTR decrease?
Btw. Mark is from Papendrecht too :-).
How effective an additional ad unit will be, greatly depends on the ad inventory for your specific niche. If you have a niche rich in well-paying advertisers, it might well be worthwhile to consider adding an additional ad unit. Note however, that Google ranks the ads according to a simple metric: profitability, or simply CPC * CTR. The higher the CPC*CTR, the more google -and consequently the ad publisher- earns of a specific ad.
That doesn’t take away the fact that a specific ad on your second ad block might well be perfectly suited to your visitors on a specific page. Adding more ads is therefore always worthy of consideration; experiment and learn. In the end, it all boils down to serving ads that supplement your content.
Don’t forget that you are entering treacherous waters when overstuffing your site with ads. Even though the conversion rate of runaway clicks might in some niches still be reasonable, Google doesn’t like them for several reasons. First of all, they bring shame upon the adsense program as a whole. Secondly, they are a factor in the development of ad blindness.
Oh, and as for Papendrecht: I got here through Andy. Mark knows him.
Awesome. Andy is a good friend of me too. We are going together on vacation in July :-).
I believe he’s learning the ‘make money online’-game too. Who knows, you guys might want to buy tripleblogger.com or trioblogger.com :P
I like to switch between text only and image ads for a month and see which ones are performing better. Standard banner sizes often perform at the same levels though text ads do really good for square ads.
I believe Google uses adsense in a really cool way on gmail. A dedicated place shows web-clips and ‘sometimes’ it shows ads.
Have you tried a similar approach? Tips or offers or navigation on a location 90% times and ads 10% times. This might help reduce banner blindness. Will this be against their TOS?
For me it’s users first, ads later. Because if users don’t feel good on the site (constantly attacked by ads) there’s a huge possibility they’ll just leave and never come back.
Thanks for all the tips. You have gone into all the details which I find very helpful. I have used adsense but have certainly not considered all the above points, thanks for the eye opener!
Sigh I wish I could still run adsense. I made some mistakes using it early on and years later they still hold a grudge. It is a good source of income for nearly any type of website.
That’s a second interesting topic I’ve found here. Really helpful tips for beginners. Keep up the good work!
I agree… I think getting bombarded with ads is so overboard and neither the advertisers or the sites get anything from this.
Done in a tasteful way… very effective.
I recently decided to turn on adsense after my post. The ads look great and content is awesome I just can’t see the impressions in Adsense. I have always used adsense code and inserts it into to certain areas and tracking no issue with channels.
Just wanted to say what a great post this is because I’ve been thinking about putting Adsense on my site and you have cleared up a few things for me. Many thanks!! :-)
What are you waiting for? You are missing money :).
It is very detailed checklist.It is nice to share it for free :)
This is a very informative post for anyone looking to make some money from their website or blog. Although click prices are down from a few years ago, it can still be a great source of income. As mentioned, you do have to be careful how you implement it, or the ads could overwhelm your visitors.
Fantastic help, I had never heard of Ad Planner and am going to research it, and possible join now.
For your interest (and the interest your readers) I have written an article on how to set up AdSense, for those people who are a bit lost on how to do so. See: http://www.blog.christopher-roberts.co.uk/Technology/Archive/2009/Google-AdSense.asp
Thanks again :)
To me, if I browse to a website that has a lot of confusing ads laying out everywhere, then most likely I will leave. It just looks unprofessional to me.
why i have low income dollar if my visitor blog click my adsense ads. I am only got $0.01 for 1 click. What wrong ? can you give me suggest ?
Thanks for the checklist, it was exactly what I needed!
Let’s hope it improves my Adsense earning now :-)