The first thing that comes to mind when i think of website monetization is Adsense, Though Adsense is best for blogs than Company websites, but giant companies like monster.com is using Adsense for monetization, before we move on to the actual topic, let's see some advantages and disadvantages of using adsense.
For a change, let's discuss disadvantages first,
Advantages and disadvantages of Adsense
Disadvantages of Adsense
- You could be banned anytime, even when you have 999$ in your adsense Account by giving unacceptable reasons.
- Higher CPC? Well that's only for US and UK audience, if your audience are Asians, forget your reason of using adsense.
- You're losing your audience, who may have bought your 100$ ebook instead of clicking on ad that gives you 0.5$. In addition, all the ads opens in the same tab unless your visitor chose to do so.
- Reduces your website speed : Each image ad can be as big as 150KB, and speed influences SEO.
- Most of your visitors hate ads and it also makes your site look messy.
That's not it, we have advantages too
Advantages of Adsense
- You can control the type of ads to be seen by your audience
- If your site is famous, companies will be competing with each other for ads in your site and CPC boosts like never before.
- You can decide the position of ads, so if you don't want to lose audience in websites, place it in blogs
- Quality ads: Unlike other ad networks, Google has minimum standards for ad to be approved and Google doesn't show pop up and pop under ads :)
Let's come to the actual topic,
How to increase Adsense Revenue?
Google Introduced custom search engine long back, but it was paid and for commercial purposes only, Keeping in mind the future of search engines, competition in SEO and SMM, made it available for free.
Google custom search engine ( Google CSE) is a search engine powered by Google.
Google CSE Features
- You can include or exclude any sites you want.( You can also include only your site).
- You can promote any site for any Keywords
- You can modify the design of results
- You can customize the entire search engine
- Each time a user clicks on an ad that appears in your search engine, you get paid. The money gets credited to your adsense Account.
- High CPC Compared to display ads.
It is simple to create custom search engine, after which you'll be given JS code to be inserted in your site.
2. Ad Exclusion
In Adsense, The publisher has full access to the type of the ad being shown in his/her site.
- Go to your adsense Account> Allow and block ads
- You can select 200 exclusion categories for the entire account and additional 200 separately for the sites running Adsense
- In the advertiser Urls section, you can block an ad directing towards an url by specifying the URL, for example: if same low cpc ad is being shown in your site for most of the time, you can include it in the advertiser URL section.
- In sensitive category section, you can block sensitive categories ads to be excluded in your blog.
Highly preferred not to exclude these categories as click through rate and CPCs are generally high.
a. Dating : Though CPCs are usually average, the click through rate is very good for dating sites.
b. Downloadable utilities: Again very High CTR but low CPC.
The rest depends on your blog niche and your ideas.
- In the ad review center, you can see the served ads along with impression score and size of ads , you can directly block the ads which you think your audience won't click.
- In the ad serving section, the options are:
a. Personalized ads: The ads shown will be according to the viewers interest (collected by Google by chrome history and search history).
b. Third party ads: Third party ads accesses the advertiser site's audience and shows ads only to those people that Google thinks is similar to.
c. enhanced text ads: the text ads will be enhanced for more clicks.
d. display ads: similar sized display ads if enabled compresses similarly sized ads to fit in the ad section, I recommend to untick it. Enhanced display ads enhances performance of display ads by showing extra extensions. Animated and VPAID display ads allows the use of animated and video ads respectively. It should be noted that these ads can slow down your site. Expandable display ads are the ads that may get expanded when the viewer hovers on it.
- In general Categories, you can exclude the categories of ads that you do not want users to see, Generally these categories are blocked as the ads are of low CPC and CTR.
a. Law and government
b. Autos and vehicles> driving instruction and driver education.
c. Beauty and personal care>Hygiene and toileteries, Perfume and fragrances,
d. food and groceries> tobacco,
You can block the ads According to CPC or your audience interest.
If you are using Google analytics in your site, go to Audience> Interests> overview, Note down the top categories and enable only those categories in your adsense.
3. Using Page level ads
Go to Adsense> My ads> Page level ads and enable them, copy the code to your website.
In blogger and some other platforms, Page level ads code may not work so,
Replace
<script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
by
<script async='//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js'></script>
Please note that we're not changing code, we're correcting it as the original code doesn't work in blogger and other platforms
Please note that we're not changing code, we're correcting it as the original code doesn't work in blogger and other platforms
There are two types of page level ads:
- Anchor or overlay ads: Mobile Ads that sticks to bottom of the page.
- Vignette ads: Vignette ads are interstitial ads ( full screen ads) that appears when a user navigates from one page to another.
Page level ads usually have Higher CPCs since the ads are placed such that it grabs user attention.
4. Number of ads and ad position
Bloggers and website owners generally think more the number of ads, more will be the clicks and revenue, but that's dead opposite here's why
- It slows down your site so much, that people may exit the page.
- It looks like you're selling your audience for price, the site looks messy, the brand trust may decrease
- More the number of ads, lesser will be the CPC Because advertisers can easily bid for one of ad positions even if other competitors are bidding on your site.
So how much ads should you display in a single page, if you ask me, I'll say maximum of 3.
It is also seen that the text ads works well in most of the niches, In blogger platform you can also choose the background color of text ads, text ads yeilds great results when the background color is Same as blog post background.
To select an ad as text ad go to
My ads>ad unit> edit and type and change to text ads only.
Coming to the best ad positions,
- One in the middle of the article: place the ad just after 2 or 3 paragraphs, the ad will have maximum impressions and may get good number of clicks.
- Just after the article: This position gets maximum clicks through rate, as the user has finished reading the article and is ready to exit the site without interference.
- Sidebars: Bigger Banner ad on to the right gathers user attention, and surely has better CPC. Best if you use display ads here.
5. Site value
Best advertisers usually select few sites to place their ads According to the recommendations by the Google display planner, when your site becomes famous, your site will get recommended for the niche. So more the number of advertisers bid on your site, more will be the CPC.
The second way is getting high CTR on existing ads, when more people click on ads and take appropriate actions in the advertiser site, Google serves better ads in your site, which in turn boosts your ads CPC.
6. Experiments
After all Adsense is an experimental game, As time passes, observe the categories, ad networks which doesn't convert well and block them, try experimenting with different categories, you can also set up experiments in Adsense, to start experiment, go to
Optimization> experiment> create experiment
Google will run the experiment for 90 days and if it performs better than original keeps it or reverts back automatically. Google suggests experiment, opportunities time to time for better revenue.
Hope it helps :)
Wow, this will be really useful for bloggers and online businesses! Thank you for sharing these tips!
ReplyDeleteIt's my pleasure
DeleteThese tips are very useful. Gonna apply it in immediately and see if there's any improvement on earnings.
ReplyDeleteSure maya,do contact me if you need any help
DeleteI like your post..now l know more about Adsens Ad
ReplyDeleteThanks :)
DeleteLucky for those who have google adsense on their blog. I don’t even have one.
ReplyDeleteWe even guide on how to easily get Adsense approval emi
Deletewooo thanks for the tips...ill try to apply that on mine!
ReplyDeleteSure Cindy
DeleteThank you very much for compiling these AdSense tips for the benefit of fellow bloggers who are trying to earn from AdSense programme. I remember ten years ago, my friends and I had to set up blogs of various niches to fit the ads that were served by AdSense. Those were the days. LOL
ReplyDeleteThank you Emily
Deletethanks for these great and invaluable tips.. appreciate it...
ReplyDeleteThanks meira
DeleteThanks for sharing! Will keep these in mind, or rather bookmark your page ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks for bookmarking
DeleteI dont have adsense but this post is definitely great for bloggers like myself!
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll surely write an article on how to get Adsense approved in 15 days
DeleteInteresting topic, I enjoy reading your post, thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteHope the tips improved your Google Adsense revenue
DeleteThanks for sharing! I might try out some using tips and ads here to earn revenue for my blog!
ReplyDeleteOur pleasure
DeleteAwesome tips, but I usually use only link ads in my blog and getting good cpc. Do you think I should use display ads as well..... Please reply..
ReplyDeleteHi Rahul,
DeleteLink ads may look spammy if it's used multiple times in single page, I suggest you to use link ads at start and end of the post and display ads in middle of post and sidebars.
Additionally link ads will work well with mobile visitors, but display ads works well with desktop visitors, so i recommend you to use combination of link, display and page level ads.
Hope it helps,Thank you