10 Tips To Improve Google Adsense Earnings

As predicted in last months MyBlogEarnings, my Adsense income has taken a bit of a hit this month as advertisers start to reduce their spend. So far this month my CTR has remained fairly constant, but my CPM has dipped by a few dollars.

I haven’t really worked on my adsense optimisation for a while, as after growing my adsense income from a few hundred dollars to over $4k in 8 months, I’d assumed that I pretty much had it cracked.

However, after this months CPM reduction I’ve added adsense optimisation to the list of things I’m going to focus on this month. Here are 10 Tips To Improve Google Adsense Earnings that have worked for me in the past, that I’m going to focus on this month to get my CPM back up for the rest of the month.

Make The Most Of Google Love

One of the common reasons bloggers don’t make a lot of money from Google Adsense is because they don’t write about topics that people are searching for answers on i.e. using Google. Just writing interesting articles isn’t going to get you a lot of clicks on ads as your readers won’t be searching for answers or certain products.

If you take a look at my top posts in the sidebar you will see that most of the posts are giving tips, or useful links for services, or are product reviews i.e. posts that get lots of Google love which sends lots of click happy people through to my site. If you post more articles of this ilk your adsense earnings will increase. These articles are also timeless and will continue to get Google traffic long after my regular readers have moved onto newer material.

To maximise your Google traffic don’t forget the basics like making sure your post titles are clear and that your first paragraph clearly explains what the post is about, so that even if you are not the top result you have increased your chances of being clicked on. Take a look at my top posts - every one of the post titles makes it clear what the post is about, which is why they do well on Google.

Smart Pricing - Less Is Better

I’m stunned by how many blogs haven’t factored in Google Adsense Smart pricing into their site design. If you haven’t come across Adsense Smart Pricing before, then in one sentence this is where Google looks at your site’s overall CTR and if it’s low then it will display lower value ads and if it’s high it will display higher value ads.

So, for many sites a quick way to improve earnings is to actually display fewer ads i.e. to remove poorly performing ad units like sidebar ads, or ads that are below the fold etc. This will increase your site’s average CTR, which will make Google display higher value ads in your better performing spaces which will raise your overall earnings.

Smart Pricing works across your Adsense account, not just on a site by site basis. So, if you are displaying a significant number of Adsense ads on other sites that have a poor CTR then you should remove them as your main sites will benefit.

If You’re Going To Place Ads Put In Best Spots - Don’t Kop Out

In my view, if you are going to run ads on your site then it doesn’t make sense to do it half-heartedly i.e not put your ads in the best slots. If you do you’ll never get to see the full benefits - if you’re going to do something in my view, then do it right!

This heatmap shows where the best positions for Google Adsense Ads are.

Blend Your Adsense Units

Following on from the previous tip, again if you are going to add Adsense ads to your site then again I think you should make sure that they are fully optimised. The best way of doing this is to blend the ads into your site by making sure that the text and link colours match.

To maximise CTR you should also wrap text around your ads. Many sites have tried placing ads above text or even before articles, but in my opinion this is a bad move, as all it does is encourage readers to ‘jump’ past your ads straight to the content.

Get A Good Stats Package

One of the difficulties with Google Adsense as it’s virtually impossible to see for certain which posts have a high CTR. But, if you have a good stats package then at least you can see which of your posts are popular so that you can try and write more of the same to further grow your traffic.

How to Test Google AdSense Ads (and Improve Your Revenue)

Improve your revenue from Google AdSense ads by using this simple PHP code to test your ads and identify the ones that pay better. You could run one ad format for a week, then run the second format and compare results. Better yet, test formats simultaneously and start getting side-by-side results to compare the same day.

Lots of articles suggest trying out different types and formats for your ads. Then they say you will figure out the format, size and placement that gives you a better click-thru rate and increased revenue. That's all very nice. But, because of all the ways you can vary your ads (different sizes, shapes, locations on your page, link colors, text, border colors, etc.), this can be a long process. That is why I wrote this.

This site recommends Google AdSense for targeted ads This article is written specifically for Google AdSense ads. You might be able to modify it for other types of ads. Because ad providers and their code is always changing, this article is about Google AdSense only, but the general concepts might apply to other advertisers.

The Ad Testing Code

Google lets you vary many settings including colors of links, borders, text, backgrounds, plus ad sizes and shapes. Modify the default Google AdSense ad format and you are likely to increase your earnings.

In our example, we test an ad without a border against an ad with a border. This page has a white background, so “no border” means the color of the border is set to white. I wrote this code to test ads and found that ads without a border had better click-thru rates than ads with a border.

Take a quick look at the two ads formats we are evaluating in our coding example before we get too deep into the explanation. Only the border color is different. Everything else remains the same so we do not confuse and confound the test. (The channel ID assigned by AdSense changes, but that is not part of the appearance of the ad.) You could easily vary some other setting for your own purposes.

Building the Ad Testing Code

Log into your AdSense account and create 2 custom channels for your site. One channel is for each format you are going to test. (Adsense help explains how to set up custom channels.)

In the PHP code on your site, generate a random number of 0 or 1. We use this number to serve up one of two AdSense ads.

srand(time());
$random = (rand()%2);
?>

In your AdSense account, generate the AdSense code for the first channel. Our first channel has no (a white) border. Paste it in to your PHP code. Then, back in AdSense, generate the code for your second channel, selecting the appropriate custom channel and setting the border color. You will build something like the following:

To make it easy to see below, the border color we are varying is in bold text.

if($random == 1)
//test with white border (no border)
{
?>


}
else
//test blue border around ads
{
?>


}
?>

Let the ads run. In your reports you will see roughly equal numbers of each ad being served up. When you determine which format is better, try changing another setting to see what will give you even better click-thrus and revenue.

Download the code source (adtest.txt)

View page with both ads showing so you can see the differences.

Notes About Testing AdSense Ad Formats

Just like we tested two different border colors, we could have varied another setting. For example, if you want to see whether black link titles perform better than blue, set one color:

google_color_link = "003366";

and a second color:

google_color_link = "000000";

You can run a more complex test, with, say, three options for a single variable. Modify the random number generating portion of the code to generate a 0, 1 or 2. You should test only one variable at a time (holding all other variables constant). If you test too many variables, you do not know what is performing better.

When you get more comfortable with custom channels and with testing various ad formats, you can get more sophisticated with your tests and how you use my little PHP script.

AdSense’s Terms and Conditions require “not modifying the JavaScript or other programming provided to You by Google in any way.” The above ad test does not modify Google’s code. We are simply randomly serving up one of two scripts. When you look at the HTML source for each format that PHP generates, the scripts are exactly what AdSense generates. We have not modified Google JavaScript or programming in any way.