Optimizing Adsense
So you have got your Adsense account at Google, you have put
a few adverts on your page, and the money is rolling in. Erm, probably
not,
and here's why.
How to make your adunits work harder for you
Where to put your Adsense code on the webpage
How to blend Google Adsense adunits with your content
What you hope for with Adsense is that you will be able to get the best
income possible by getting the highest paying adverts shown in your adunits.
Unfortunately Google doesn't give you much in the way of being able to figure
out what ads are paying the best and what size adunits are best for your
situation. Fortunately there is a tool which you can use which will help
in this regard called AdSpyTracker which
is a script (or program) you can install on your webserver which will give
you much more detailed stats on your Adsense ads. It includes adunits, adtext
and search stats and all you have to do is put one line of code in your webpage
and it will report on all the Adsense ads on that page. In fact if you have
more than one site, it will report on all of them for you with just the single
installation. AdSpyTracker needs
a Linux/Unix server to be installed on, but once installed, you can get reports
on pages hosted on a Windows server just as easily. We use it.
So far as relevency is concerned, the url seems to be very important. That
is why this page is called optimizing-adsense.html which gives Google an
idea what it's about. It would be better for us to not be called Wood Communications
as Google tries to make something of the woodcom.co.uk bit as well. On our
in-house test server we check to make sure that Google is serving up ads
for Timber & Plywood Crates and the Price Of Wood. It's only really amusing
if it's not your site that it happens to, so make a point of checking the
ads you are being served!
There are a couple of very important things to bear in mind
when you are considering Adsense placement. Physically where you place
the code and what text is near it.
You can put up to five different Adsense ads on one page, but be careful
not to place too many for the text content you have on the page. Yes
the idea behind Adsense is to make some money. But if you don't have
content that is worth reading, Google won't index you and people won't
stay long enough to read the ads and click on them.
Tests show that the best place to put Adsense is within content that
it relates to, much like this page. That way it becomes an extension
of the content and visitors will find their eyes drawn towards it.
Because of the way Adsense optimizes itself, the links should be of
interest to your visitors who are visiting that page because they are
interested in the topic.
How to blend Google Adsense adunits with your content
First question I suppose may be 'why would you want to?' Simple really.
You have taken a great deal of time and effort to design your website
with colours that work together and give it a certain look and feel.
Google's standard adunit colour scheme is not bad for a generic look,
but since you can change almost every aspect of the colour scheme quite
easily, why wouldn't you. Simply log into your Adsense control panel
and change whatever you want to in the Adsense setup section.
If you are using adlinks rather than adunits, you can disguise them
to the extent where visitors click on the links because they think
they are part of the navigation. Whether you think this is an OK thing
to do depends on how well Google dishes up relevent ads. Just one little
point whether you use adunits or adtext, your visitors know that links
are blue and underlined and they should
click
on them.
Don't
disappoint
them
and
make it
harder for them to click on the links, keep them blue and underlined.
