Google Adsense Guide for Bloggers:
AdSense is a content-targeted advertising system that allows you to quickly and easily display ads on your site that are relevant to your site content. Google, the owner of AdSense, pays you every time a user clicks on one of your ads.
AdSense is easy to set up, but unless you know what you’re doing, no one will click on your ads. Follow these guidelines to ensure success with your AdSense:
Circulation
Just because you build a website and put ads on it doesn’t mean that anyone will come to your website (let alone click on your ads!). The first thing your site will need is traffic.
Quality
Your site doesn’t have to be professionally designed, but the content on your site should be something that users can enjoy. Some of the most popular websites on the internet are weak in design, but traffic keeps coming in because these websites have quality content. Creating a website for the sole purpose of getting advertisements and then adding content later is not the right way to do it. Try to build your website, add content, and then consider adding ads.
A reason to come back
Users need a good reason to come back to your website, and you need to provide one. If you are able to keep users coming back to your site even though they have been to your site before, your site traffic will increase, which means that in the long run more of your ads will be clicked on. In order for users to come back to your site, your site must either be a site with a lot of information so that the user sees your site as a resource, or your site must have constantly updated content such as a blog or a news section.
Another great way to increase traffic is to use mailing lists. However, make sure that you collect your own mailing lists and that the users on the lists have agreed to be on them. With these legitimate mailing lists, you can freely remind people on your lists to come back to your site by submitting new content and emailing people on your list about the new content.
What your ads should look like
If you want people to click on your ads, you need to make sure that your ads look the way they should.
Mixed
One of the worst mistakes websites make with ads is that the ads don’t look like part of the site. People have been desensitized to advertisements on the internet, so if you don’t personalize your advertisements properly, they’ll be shouting “ADVERTISEMENT – DON’T CLICK HERE” to every visitor. Never use borders and make sure your ad’s background color is the same as the background color it will be placed on.
Image or text?
AdSense offers either text ads or image ads, or both. Text ads typically get a lot more clicks (and therefore earn more money) because they are viewed by users as interesting links rather than banner ads. Sure, image ads get you more money per click, but they usually never get clicked because users see them as intrusive ads rather than helpful links.
However, if your site doesn’t have a lot of images, image ads can be a great way to add color to your site while still making a profit. If so, be sure to use image ads for visual appeal, as well as for-profit text ads so that everything balances out.
Ad placement
Correct positioning of your ads on your website can triple your AdSense earnings, and poorly organized your ads can cut your profits in half.
At the top of your page
Putting ads at the top of your page can be a bit risky in that it can reduce the visual quality of your site, but it’s usually a place that users will turn to a lot. Just make sure the top-of-page ads don’t interfere too much with the look of your site.
Near navigation
User cursors always hover near navigation bars, which is why your ads should be as close to your navigation bar / links as possible. This way the user will have to use minimal effort to click on your ads, and their attention is already close to the ads.
Inside the content
If done correctly, the s Ads in the main content of your site can generate a lot of income. You need to make sure that you have at least two ads – one or more in the content and one at the bottom. That way, as the user reads your site, they read the ad that is inside the content. Since they’ll read it inside the content, they’ll associate it with the content on your site. By the time they get to the bottom of the content, they’ll have associated the ads with the content on your site and will be much more comfortable clicking on the ad at the bottom.