How To Make More Money With Google Adsense

Google AdSense is a Pay-Per Click (PPC) service. Webmasters are paid a portion of the revenue which Google collects from advertisers each time a web site visitor clicks on an AdSense advertisement.

Each click may pay anywhere from a few cents to several dollars. The average click seems to be worth about $.20. The more clicks AdSense advertisers receive from your web pages, the more money you make.

The basic formula for thinking about revenue from Google AdSense is:

Revenue = (Impressions * CTR * CPC)

The methods of increasing your revenue from Google AdSense are:

Increase Impressions

Increase Click-Through-Ratio (CTR)

Increase Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

Increase Impressions

The most basic method of increasing your number of impressions is to increase the traffic to your web site.

The topic of increasing traffic to your web site is beyond the scope of this article, and most likely something you are already working on.

One technique for increasing the number of Google AdSense impressions without an increase in traffic to your web site is to motivate your users to enable JavaScript. Google AdSense ads require JavaScript. Visitors to your website who do not have JavaScript enabled in their browsers will not see your Google AdSense ads.

To encourage your users to enable JavaScript, create content for your web page which is only available via JavaScript. Implement browser JavaScript detection in your HTML to notify visitors without JavaScript enabled that they are only receiving a portion of your available content.

Increase Click-Through-Ratio (CTR)

A small increase in Click-Through-Ratio can mean a large increase in revenue. A rise from a CTR of 1.0 to a CTR of 1.1 should mean an increase in revenue of 10%.

Several on-page factors can influence your Click-Through-Ratio. These factors include:

Ad placement

Ad color

Ad unit style

Total number of links

Ad placement

The best location to place ads is wherever the web site visitor will be looking.

Open up your web page. Where on the page does your eye immediately focus? Place an ad there.

The best performing ads seem to be ads which are inline with content. However, it can be very challenging to place inline ads across entire web sites.

Placing ads across an entire web site is usually accomplished with Shared HTML (shtml) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This effectively limits ads to appearing in the same locations across a wide range of web pages.

Ads On the Top of the Page

Ads in the page header perform moderately well. The location is a good one to catch a visitors eye. However, many web users have developed a condition known as “ad blindness” where their brains automatically skip over advertisements.

One technique to reduce ad blindness is to place the advertisement below the page header and as far into the content space as possible. If your content space can be divided into multiple sections, this may work well for you.

Ads On the Bottom of the Page

Ads at the bottom of the page perform poorly. Web site visitors tend to read a page from the top down, and may never reach the bottom of the page. In addition, web site visitors have many different browser sizes, which may cause them to never see the advertisement unless they scroll down to it.

Ads On the Right Side of the Page

Ads on the right side of the page perform moderately well, and are currently in vogue. They appear to perform slightly better than ads on the top of the page at the current time, most likely due to better resilience to ad blindess.

When using ads on the right side of the page, it is important to test your web page at several different screen resolutions in several different web browers. Your web pages should automatically resize to ensure that the advertisements do not scroll outside of the browser window or get “bumped” down below the content.

Internet Explorer appears to have a bug which can cause right side ads to be “bumped” down below the content if the total width of all sections of the web page is equal to 100%. To work around this bug, ensure that the total width of your web page is 96% or less.

Ads On the Left Side of the Page

Ads on the left side of the page may perform the best. The left side of the page is normally reserved for the web site menu. This means that users frequently look to the left side of the page.

The difficulty is determining where to place your web site menu when the left side of the page is no longer available to you. A top menu might work for you, depending upon the design and content of your web site. Placing your menu on the right side of the page is another option, but one that may confuse some web site visitors.

If Google allows more than one ad unit per page in the future, the left side of the page might become an excellent location for a single ad, either above or below the menu.

Ad Color

Many webmasters report that brightly colored ads which contrast sharply with the color scheme of the rest of the web page return excellent results for them.

My experience has been that ads which mimic the look and feel of the rest of my web page return the best results. This is most likely because the Google AdSense ads closely relate to the topic of the page and therefore appear to the visitor as additional content.

Ad Unit Style

The Google AdSense programs offers a wide variety of ad unit styles and sizes. The ad unit styles include:

Ad Unit Dimensions

Leaderboard 728×90

Banner 486×60

Half Banner 234×60

Button 125×125

Skyscraper 120×600

Wide Skyscraper 160×600

Medium Rectangle 300×250

Large Rectangle 336×280

Small Rectangle 180×150

Square 250×250

Leaderboard and Banner ad units are obvious choices to placement in page headers and footers. Leaderboards are preferable, because they are able to show more ads. Banners are a classic web format, and may be necessary where the width of your available space is limited.

Skyscrapers are an excellent choice for advertisements, because they appear to be less vulnerable to ad blindness than the horizontal ad formats. Google recently added the wide skyscraper format. This new ad unit displays one more ad than the classic 120×600 skyscraper unit. If you are currently using the 120×600 skyscrapers, switching to the new wide skyscraper format may increase your revenue from the Google AdSense program.

Rectangles, Squares, and Buttons are best used when placed inside a content area. This makes rectangles more difficult to place, but also gives then the best revenue potential.

Total Number of Links

Reducing the total number of links on your content pages can increase revenue from AdSense by reducing the options for a visitor.

If your web page has fifteen links and one AdSense wide skyscraper on it, the visitor has a total of twenty options for leaving your page without closing the browser window.

This means that, if the user clicks on a link, the random odds that the visitor will click on an AdSense link are 5 in 20.

If you reduce the number of other links on the page to 5, the total number of options presented to the user is now 10. This means that the random odds of a user selecting an AdSense ad are now 5 in 10.

Another option, but one which may annoy your web site visitors, is to open all external links in a new window. This will leave your page open in the users browser, giving them another opportunity to click on an AdSense link. This can be done by adding target=”_new” to your HTML links, or by converting your outbound links to JavaScript.

It should be noted that Google AdSense never opens ads in a new window.

Test, Test and Test Again

Testing is the key to increasing your CTR percentages. Change your ad colors, wait a week and look at the stats. Do the same with different ad units and different ad placement.

Increase Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

Not all Google AdSense ads are created equal. Google AdWords advertisers bid for keyword combinations, and some combinations are much more expensive than others.

The Google AdSense robot, Mediabot, automatically scans your web pages and determines the appropriate ads to display on your page.

It is possible to create web pages which are designed specifically to attract certain keywords from the Google AdSense program.

To determine which keywords have a higher Cost-Per-Click, create a Google Adwords account in the Google AdWords advertiser interface. This will enable you to determine roughly what AdWords advertisers are paying for each keyword combinatiom.

Based upon this information, you may decide to create a new web page or a whole new web site.

AdSense Alternate Ads

Google AdSense is not always able to find an advertisement which matches the content of your web page. Normally, AdSense selects a Public Service Ad (PSA) and displays it in your ad space. These PSA’s generate no revenue for you.

Google has created the ability to load an alternate ad when it cannot find a matching ad. This is accomplished by setting a variable called google_alternate_ad_url in your AdSense layout code:

google_alternate_ad_url = “/adsense-alternate-ad.shtml”;

These alternate ads can include advertisements from Google AdSense competitors, such as Clicksor.

This capability enables you to tap into a revenue stream which would normally by lost to AdSense PSAs.

Future Improvements to AdSense which will Increase Revenue to You

Google is constantly improving the AdSense program. Many of these improvements will mean additional revenue in your pocket.

Google has recently improved the speed with which MediaBot accesses new web pages. This means that you start earning revenue more quickly.

Google is constantly working to improve the relevancy of AdSense ads. Ads which are more relevant are more likely to be clicked on by web site visitors.

Google is currently working to give webmasters the ability to place multiple AdSense ad units on the same web page. This will enable the webmaster to place five small single-ad units around the web page, instead of one wide skyscraper. This should considerably reduce losses from ad blindness.

Google Adsense And Adwords – Like Yin And Yang

Many websites include a section or two with the “Ads by Google” above it or below it. These are ads displayed via Google’s AdSense. When you do a search on Google and see ads in the search results pages, they are generally AdSense ads.

AdSense – The Yin:

Google’s AdSense is programming that “senses” the content of a page or search. It finds keywords on a web page or in a search phrase to determine the subject of the content. It does this by either “reading” the page, or taking a look at the search term that was typed into Google Search. It can “Sense” which ads in the system are relevant to the content or search and display them – thus: “AdSense.”

Before ads on a page are displayed, AdSense searches its database of advertisers and finds ads that are associated with keywords on the page or in the search. Now AdSense needs to decide which of the thousands of ads vying for position are actually displayed. To make this decision, AsSense looks at the advertiser’s bids for the relevant keywords. The advertisers that have a combination of the highest bid, keyword relevance and best click through get displayed first.

Google tracks clicks on ads and advertisers pay Google the bid price for each click. When the AdSense ad is on someone’s web page, Google pays the website owner a portion of the payment for each click. The term “monetizing” your site refers to taking your existing site and placing ads like AdSense on it to make money (or finding other way to make money with websites). If you get 10,000 visitors and 10% of them click an ad that pays you, theoretically, $0.75 per click, you just made $750! Not bad for just copying some AdSense code (which Google provides) into your popular website’s HTML (if your site is not popular, learn about SEO – Search Engine Optimization – from sites like AcmeWebResources).

AdWords – The Yang:

The other side to AdSense is AdWords. AdSense ads have lists of relevant keywords associated with them. Each keyword is bid on by the advertisers for placement in the results pages and on web sites around the world. The words that will prompt a display of an advertiser’s ad are bid on by the advertiser. When an ad matches the words on a page, the ads are displayed; thus: AdWords. AdWords is the system in Google that is used to place ads that display in AdSense.

You can enroll in AdWords to pay for AdSense ads to drive traffic to your site. The first step is to sign up with Google. The next step is to associate keywords to associate with your site.

The idea is to drive traffic to your site through the use of relevant ads. The more relevant the ad to your content, the more targeted your traffic will be. Compose your articles around your list of keywords. Next, write an ad based on the keywords and assign keywords to the ad. You will bid on the keywords at the time you associate keywords with the ad. If one of your keywords is searched for or relevant to a site, and you have a good bid and relevant ad, your AdWord ad will be displayed. Only when someone clicks your ad are you charged by Google.

The more popular keywords are wanted by many competitors, so the prices per click can get pretty high. It is not uncommon for a click to cost $5 or even $10. If you have 10,000 ad clicks, after you account for your conversion rate (the rate that you convert visitors into buyers) you better be sure you are making more than the ad click costs! But it should never break your bank because you can set the bid limits and the monthly budget.

What if you can’t afford $5.00 per click? Since the more popular keywords are so expensive, it is best to bid on less popular keywords because the cost per click is lower. Google presently has a minimum bid of $0.05 per click. If you can get those, you can reduce your advertising budget.

A popular site can make a lot of money, however, a lot of money and time can be wasted. To avoid waste, you have to learn as much as possible and get the right tools to do the research.

Explain Adsense Sandbox Tool?

Google Adsense has been the major earning source for many webmasters but one thing Google has always been criticised is that it does not allow the webmasters to know what ads are being displayed on their forum. The problem solved to some extent with Google releasing Google Adsense Preview Tool. But this preview tool was not sufficient for webmaster as its utility was limited. Now a new tool is developed by Amit Aggarwal of Labnol that is far better than the Google Adsense Preview Tool. It has been named as Google Adsense Sandbox Tool v 1.0 which work for all browsers unlike Adsense preview tool which can be used only for IE.

Google Adsense Sandbox Tool v 1.0 give you two options for adsense preview

1. Keywords: You just type in the keywords for which you want to preview Google Adsense in the “Type URL or Keywords” box and click the submit button.

2. URL: This is one of the major tool that Adsense Sandbox has. It allows you to preview all the adsense ads coming on a website whose URL is provided by you in the “Type URL or Keywords” box.

One of the main feature that I liked about Adsense sandbox is that it allows you to view all the ads that are being displayed on your website based on the Ad format such as 728 x 90, 250 x 250 etc. So that you can know what are the ads that will be displayed on choosing a particular ads format.

The other feature of Adsense Sandbox that Google Adsense Preview Tool also have is the geotargetted adsense preview tool. You can set the country in the adsense sandbox tool you wish the result should display. You can also set it to “Auto” which I think sets the country automatically according to your IP address.

One more important thing at the last which I know you might be thinking of. Will the advertisers be charged of this. The answer is Absolutely No. The Adsense Sandbox tool works by taking a random publisher ID so you will not get any earnings from viewing these ads just as in Adsense Preview Tool.

I think this tool could be a revolutionary tool in Adsense as it allows webmasters to have a more detailed looks on the ads being served by Google on their blog. Finally, my heartiest thanks to Amit Aggarwal who provided us with such a great tool.