The Ultimate and Complete Guide to AdSense

AdSense is the popular choice for the majority of bloggers and webmasters when it comes to monetizing their site. Here’s Binary Turf’s Ultimate and Complete Guide to AdSense Implementation. We’ll attempt to focus on all considerations to maximize AdSense returns and revenues while retaining visitors and traffic etc. Additionally you can also save this as a PDF e-book using the link at the bottom of the article.

• Before You Begin
• Implementation
  • Blending, Complimenting and Contrasting
  • Blending vs Complimenting vs. Contrasting
  • Image vs. Text
  • Ad Formats
  • Placement
  • Color considerations
  • Web-Design considerations
  • Fonts
• How to Get  Better Paying Ads
• How to Get Traffic
• Improving Earnings
• Premium publishers
• Reference and Resources

Before You Begin

Here are a couple of prerequisites before you begin implementing our suggestions. If you are reading casually don’t bother.

1. You’ll need and AdSense account. This will ensure that you have have been approved by the AdSense team with an approved blog or a website.
2. A working AdSense Account: If you have issues with the PIN or any other issues, this article may not help.
3. Read the AdSense Program Policies.
4. Familiarity with web tools. You should be comfortable setting up and managing your site etc. Familiarity with AdSense, advertising and related jargon.
5. YMMV: Your mileage may vary.
6. Binary Turf Disclaimer: Please do not hold us responsible for the outcomes of using our advise. We are not responsible if you violate the AdSense TOS. Additionally, this guide is not for the beginners. This is for AdSense publishers who have at least a few months of experience with earning through AdSense.

Now that you have a website, an AdSense account and we assume you’ve already been making some money, let’s try to make more out of it.

Implementation

There are many factors which come into play during the on-site implementation of AdSense code. The majority of these considerations are related to advertisement visibility. Thus a lot of science and theory goes into backing up our advice.

• Blending, Complimenting and Contrasting: Blending makes the ads appear inline with the content and blend with it. This is different from obfuscation though so make sure you do not confuse your visitors else you violate the TOS. Complimenting means you want the ads to use the site colors and theme like using the header background color for the background of the ads etc. Contrasting means you are using colors which contrast your site colors. Like having yellow ad background on a site with green or black as the primary color.
• Blending vs. Complementing vs. Contrasting: All other things being equal, basically more clicks mean more money. Blending the ads makes them look like the actual website/article content. While adverts which stand out attempt to attract visitor attention by their visibility. As a safety practice and to abide by the TOC, if you are placing the ads in the content, ensure that you leave a decent margin around the ads. This will make sure that Google does not accuse you of confusing the visitors. When blending the ads, make sure that ads do not have a border, the background is that same as that of the content and the links have the color of the links in your content. If you are blending image ads there’s not much you can do. But you can try to place the ads in the place of the post-image thereby replacing it or moving it down the post. Blending works best for in-content ads and complimenting and contrasting works better when ads are implemented in sidebars or adjacent to the post because they are able to draw visitor attention with their colors.
• Image vs. Text: Generally speaking, image ads work better when they compliment or contrast the post/site/blog content and text ads work better when they blend. However the ability to customize the text ads means you have more control over how you want to implement them — blend them, compliment the content or create a contrasting effect. Google has its own algorithm which decides whether to show text or image ads. However depending on your preference you may want the ad units to be only one kind — image or text. There’s no clear winner here though we’ve heard claims that one works better than the others. However in our experience its how you implement that is more important that the kind of ad-units you implement.
• Ad Formats: When blending make sure to use an ad format which aligns and lays out well with the content. At other times use the generally popular ones recommended by AdSense while you create the ad-unit.
• Placement: If you are blending the ads they generally perform the best when placed in-content. However contrasting ads are more likely to perform better when places adjacent to the content like in sidebars etc. Place the ads above the fold where the visitors will notice them without having to scroll down the page. Ideally your page length shouldn’t be more than 1.5 times the vertical screen resolution of the majority of visitors. You can check out the screen details of your visitors if your web analytics program allows you to.
• Color considerations: Color considerations mostly come into play when you are implementing text ads and want to retain the beauty of the web design and when you want to contrast the ads. At other times you basically use the colors of the site or the content. Here’s a handy tool to generate a color scheme for contrasting and complementing colors. (Note: Contrasting and complementary colors have a different meaning in the context of color-theory. In this article we’ll use the words as adjectives and not in their literal meaning in the color-theory context).
  
  • Colors on the opposites sides (of point O equidistant from the center) always create a contrast. Though you’ll still find certain other color combinations to create good contrast like yellow on green or black.
  • Colors on the same side of point O create a monochromatic effect which better compliment each other. You can rotate this arm on the center O  to get colors you want. In most cases they’ll create beautiful color combinations.
• Web Design considerations: Ads deteriorating the site design, look and feel is a major concern of publishers. Ads get blended in a minimalist design or just plain simple web page. But for a beautifully themed wordpress blog effective implementation means retaining the look and feel of the design while being to make revenue from ads. Well designed sites are orderly and organized. No doubt these sites are built for long term visitor loyality. As such placing ads such that they are not obtrusive or confusing becomes very important. Thus make sure to use the elements of space, border and colors to distinguish the ads from content while keeping the effect subtle. Google sets the best example here. Remember the Google Search results containing the sponsored links? The ones which show at the top have a subtle yellow background and the ones on the right have a subtle blue border. Such implementation not only retains the look and feel of the design, it also ensures maximum benefit for advertisers, Google and you above all. Such ads have a better conversion rate too.
• Fonts: In our experience the default AdSense font or Verdana appeared the most legible. Others showed up small or illegible and also performed poorly. Larger font sizes increase the visibility however “larger” and “medium” are relative sizes and render different text sizes for different layouts. For certain ad formats they have no effect at all.

Additionally Effective implementation of link ads, AdSense search units, AdSense for feeds, AdSense for mobile and AdSense for Domains are the things you want to use for maximum monetization.

How to Get Better Paying Ads

The better the targeting the more the ads are likely to make you revenue. Having better targeting is a result of good SEO while better paying ads could also relate to the niche of your site or blog. Thus, let’s break it into two parts.

1. SEO: Search Engine Optimization or SEO effectively ensures that your site shows up to the search engines and bots as what it is intended to be. Thus the layout and content should be semantic. To see how your website appears (more or less) to a search engine try to see your site in an all text browser like Linx or disable all javascript and CSS in your browser or the site itself. What the search bots see additionally see are the meta tags, the page title etc. The wordpress theme by default takes good care of the SEO mechanics however ensure that you place the relevant keywords in appropriate place like the meta description, headings etc. When the AdSense bot knows what your site actually is about, AdSense will show more relevant advertisements which are more likely to be useful to your visitors. Additionally use AdSense section targeting and visit our recommended reading SEO links.
2. Niche: There are certain niches which pay more for advertisements and others that pay less. As a blogger or a webmaster, if your sole purpose is to monetize your site, creating a niche site is the answer. Do your research and create content that is useful for the visitors and advertisers.
3. Relevancy: Additionally Google AdSense manually allows you to review the site ads and block ads of certain categories which do not perform as well or are not relevant to your site content. Use this feature under AdSense Setup > Ad Review Center > Category Filters. Additionally review the placement targeted ads periodically.

Additionally use the Competitive Ad Filter to block ads that advertise competing products and services.

How to Get Traffic

Ads will earn you nothing if you do not get visitors to your site. Thus the first step is to get your site indexed by the search engines. Once your site starts showing up in relevant search results you’re more likely to start getting visitors. Until then spreading the word of mouth or links to your blog in forums etc. is the way to go. But most importantly the actual concern for you would be to get more traffic than just getting the usual visitors. Here are some of the sources which can get you good traffic. Read our article on 11 Surefire tips to increase blog traffic.

• Guest posts on popular blogs
• Mentions and links to your site on other sites
• Useful information on your site that visitors are search and seek.
• Useful downloads or applications
• Useful online tools or web application that visitors can find handy
• Popular social media sites which rank your content well.
• Regularly updated content
• Advertising and promotion
• Announcing events or awards
• Breaking the news

Improving Earnings

We mean learning and refining through experimentation. After all this entire post is dedicated to improving earnings already. Here are certain tools you can use to understand the advertising dynamics and site performance.

• Google Analytics allows you to see the site overlay under the “Content” section in addition to providing site analytics.
• Click Heat allows you to create a heatmap and a click map of your site.
• Crazy Egg is a paid service which allows you more comphrensive data like Click Heat.
• Use Section Targeting.
• A/B Split Method of testing allows you to alternatively display two ad units and compare their results. This method has been suggested and approved by AdSense.
• Track performance through AdSense channels.
• Use Google Webmaster tools for effective site management.
• Keep updated with the Inside AdSense Blog — the official blog of the AdSense team.
• Review and practice Google’s suggestions for improving performance.

Premium Publishers

Premium publishers have a premium AdSense account which provides them additional benefits like designing their own ad sizes, negotiation their own share of earning through ads etc. While they have better control on the ads and earnings, there still is opportunity to squeeze out better performance than counting on revenue-sharing-negotiations.

Reference and Resources

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Inside AdSense Blog
• Google AdSense Help