Secrets to Quadrupling Your Profits: Google Adsense

I've been reading a few forums and blogs about Google Adsense tips lately, and thought it would be helpful to consolidate as many as possible in one place without the comments. I've also thrown in a few tips of my own. We start out with some of the basic general stuff and move to the more specific topics later on.

When you're deciding to become a website publisher you will fall into one of two broad categories:

* Publish 100 websites that each earn $1 a day profit
* Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit

The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithm's, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but you'll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.

You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field.

Once you've gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords; you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don't try to run with the big dogs if you can't keep up. If you have to ask if you're a big dog, then chances are, you're not.

When you're building a new site doesn’t put adsense on it until it's finished. If you put up a website with "lorem ipsum" dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for Google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted.

I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it's only one file I have to work with. I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.

Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you're going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it's easier, if it's an existing site it's more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I'd say if you just slap the adsense code in, you'll end up with a frankensite monster. While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I've done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you're doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn't work out.

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscrapers. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard; I don't really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance.

728 leaderboard works very well if it is just above the end of the "above the fold" area on what would be considered your viewers average resolution/browser window size if there are few other enticing links above the fold. Makes for an interesting layout but if you're building a site for AdSense it may be worth it. We consistently receive very high CTRs from doing this.

Another 'trick' that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black. Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.

Another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google's TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click through you'll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there.

Try to build sites that allow you to quickly try any and all of those locations outlined in the heat map guide or at least allow you a wide degree of freedom to easily change ad/content locations.