Adsense misconceptions
Browsing through a marketing forum I found a guide about increasing your Adsense earnings. I must say that I have never seen so many adsense misconceptions in one article. Sure, there were also some good tips but the majority of them were simply bad. Some of them were quite black hat and consequently a potential danger to your adsense account.
Andy El runs a blog about making money online. If you like you can read through his adsense tips. Read carefully and you will see how bad researched they are. This leads me to my misconceptions about Adsense. Note that not all misconceptions are from his site.
- You should influence the ads by adding high paying keywords to your website. That is not exactly true and could be a potential danger. Google has algorithms to display content relevant advertisements. You can do that if you have high-paying keywords related to your content! But don’t do that in any other case. It will reduce the niche-relevancy of your website and could lead to smart pricing. The reason behind that is very simple: Google checks the conversion rate and the return of Investment for the advertiser. If people just click high-paying keywords without purchasing anything (that happens if the keywords are not related to your website’s content) then the conversion rate goes down. Google will smart price you to make sure the advertisers still get decent money from advertising and consequently invest which will get google more money. I made the experience that Google does not care about publishers, they only care about advertisers.
- You should filter low paying keywords. No, no, no and no! Don’t even think about doing that. If your site gets low-paying ads then the reason for that is your website. Google only displays as relevant ads as possible. If there are no high-paying ones then it could be your niche (Gaming websites, video sites, general blogs are extremely bad for Adsense (if you run one consider getting direct advertisers). Filterting low paying ads results in smart pricing as well because you will then most likely get ads that are not as relevant to your content as the ones before. Same reason as in point 1.
- A high CTR will not get you smart priced. Why should a CTR have any influence on the conversion rate and ROI of the advertiser? It does not, if you get less clicks it does not nessecarilly mean that your conversion rate goes down. CTR is no factor for getting smart priced. Read my guide on smart pricing for more details and a better understanding of the smart pricing phenomenon.
- Place images next to your ads for a higher CTR. In fact this works but is highly illegal. Humans always need something visual, they will look on the image ad and see the text ad next to it. A result is more clicks on the text ad. Be very careful here, placing arrows or anything else that encourages clicks could result in getting banned from adsense. A picture of yourself is more or less white hat, but the best is to place two adsense ads next to each other – one of them text only and the other one image only. Have a look and see if that works for you. It usually does especially in forums with 2 large rectangles next to each other.
- Use as many ads as you can. If you want to decrease the amount of returning visitors, then yes go ahead. Instead think about placing your ads wisely. Don’t use the 468*60 or the 728*90 it will not get you any clicks. Instead perhaps only go with 2 large rectangles. You will get more Clicks and your website will look better with rectangles. Horizontal banners are just Web 1.0 and I always get annoyed when seeing them, especially if they are eye-catching image ads. Quality > Quantity.
- Use ad sharing software in forums for more clicks. Yes, you will get more clicks but the conversion rate will most likely go down as well. It’s almost like a clicker-community – the people will click but not buy anything. Google will result the cost per click to make sure the advertiser still has a decent ROI.
- Adsense can not detect false clicks if done properly. Yes perhaps they can not but still, same reason as above applies. Lower conversion rate means smart pricing. If you only get 0.5 cent per click then you could also consider joining PPC sites and you will get more…. Never cheat Adsense, it will somehow influence your account.
If I forgot any misconceptions then please let me know and I will add them to my post :-). You need to read and learn, that’s the only way to be successful with Adsense. Oh and sorry Andy, 50% of your post was in fact wrong.
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I have a tip, rather then a misconception (I think!)….apparently having a single ad block on your page increases your earnings. This is because all your highest earning ads are in this block.
If you have serveral ads blocks on your page there is a good chance that you will have some low paying ads in them.
The disadvantage is that you will probably get less clicks of course! As there is only 1 ad block.
I don’t understand why one block should contain the highest paying advertisements :-). Google displays the most relevant advertisements on all your blocks – at least, that would be the most reasonable.
Great post Donkey Blogger. Oh. Lol looks like you changed your site domain… Why’d you do that? Would you like me to link to this domain instead?
Anyway, great post. I actually took some ads off of my sites the other day. Quantity over quality is definitely true.
I mean, if a site looks like it has one advertisement, people won’t click. However, if your site looks awesome, people will.
I used this tactic and made a load of money today. Lol
Great article.
Hey Taylor. Yep, I merged my blog with Mark’s blog (previously: ownblogger.com). We thought that that might help us in various ways :-). Would appreciate if you could replace the link. Thanks!
thank you for the information. I’ll take this into consideration. I have my ads pretty much set, but I just want to put one more before the last posts on my forum. I want more traffic first. I would rather have more users not clicking, than no users not clicking.
First of All, Thank You Hendrick.. Because I regularly Search for Adsense Optimizing Techniques and read various blog posts about them. But Your Post was Different and Truthfull. Otherwise Most people tell about similar stuff.
I have felt that adense performed better when I knew nothing of adsense optimization (content and keywords) .When i found out about high paying ads and keywords stuff. I started Implementing it and really suffered. My Cost per Cliked dropped Very low..
My Newbie Experience says one should focus on his blog rather that adsense & stuff. because good content will produce fans but good adsense performance won’t.
I have felt that I feel uncomfortable with Blogs with Ads … other might feel the same way too
Amen
You are right with one point: Focusing on high paying Ads is definitely not a good tip. Changing your content to attract those ads results in loosing the niche relevancy of your website. For example: You have a website about cars and you then try to attract a life-insurance ad and you will no longer be really related to cars.
Google Adsense works best for niche-related websites. General websites get general ads. General ads are usually low-paying.
I am searching the discussion of duo blogger of having more money without adsense,I difficult to find the topic about it,however I asked you here,I meant how you can make blog money without adsense?is there any other service better then adsense.I am sorry if I miss question here,but del me if it is neccesary
Thanks
To start earning money with your blog, initially use Google Adsense but gradually as your traffic increases, keep adding more and more money making programs to your site.