Learn About Adsense

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Have you ever clicked on an advertisement on a site while surfing the Internet? That ad was probably a Google AdSense ad. The site’s owner gets money every time someone views or clicks on their ads. This is something you can do with your blog, too.

You don’t need to be an expert web developer to install AdSense on your blog. Our step-by-step guide shows you how easy it can be to integrate AdSense to your site and start making money with your blog.

Please note that this is not a quick way to get rich. It depends on how much traffic your site has, and building that up takes time. But, that’s exactly why you’re here, so let’s get started!

What is AdSense?

Google AdSense is an advertisement program run by Google. They generate over 2.5 billion dollars every quarter from AdSense alone. With AdSense you can place ads related to what your readers are looking for at your site. Whenever someone views or clicks on your ad, you get paid into your AdSense account. So there are two ways you can make money:

  • Impressions: based on the number of pageviews of pages or posts with ads
  • Clicks: based on how many people click on your ads

When you reach the payment threshold of $100, you get paid into your bank account. The payment threshold varies per country, you can check yours here.

AdSense is the most trustworthy and popular advertising network there is, so you don’t need to worry about them not paying.

How does AdSense work?

When you sign up with AdSense, Google provides you with a special code to put on your site. This code reads the content of your page and knows the browser history of the user, so Google can show content-specific ads on your site.

Step-by-step Guide On How to Install AdSense to Your Blog

First things first: Privacy Policy

Before we get started, you need to add a Privacy Policy to your site. This is required by Google AdSense and in many countries it’s even a legal requirement. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Go to your WordPress dashboard and add a new page.
  2. Go to a Policy Generator for AdSense and fill in your site’s information OR use the template below.
  3. Put the text titled “Privacy Policy” on the new page and publish it either as part of the menu or as part of the footer.

Privacy Policy Template:

Google AdSense is an advertising service provided by Google. [insert your site’s name] uses the “Doubleclick” Cookie, which tracks use of [insert your site’s name] and user behavior concerning ads, products and the services we offer. You may decide to disable all the Doubleclick Cookies by clicking on: google.com/settings/ads/onweb/optout?hl=en.

Personal Data collected: Cookie and Usage Data. Place of processing: USA. You can find the AdSense Privacy Policy here.

Step #1: Go to Google AdSense and sign up with your Gmail email address

You need a Google account to sign in for Google AdSense. Gmail is a Google account, so you can use your Gmail email address.

Don’t have a Gmail email address? Then first create one at Google Gmail.

Step #2: Submit your AdSense application

Enter the name of your website, agree to the terms and policies, submit your AdSense application and wait for your acceptance into the program. You should get a message in your Gmail account in a couple of days.

Step #3: Get the code & post it on your website

Once you’re accepted, you’ll receive an AdSense code from the email Google sends to you. Then:

  1. Post the AdSense code into your HTML code for your website. Or you can also install a plugin like Ad Injection on your WordPress blog and determine your ad settings easily.
  2. Google will start analyzing your content and within 24 hours you should see content-specific ads on your site.

Step #4: Follow the AdSense program policies

This is a very important step! If you don’t follow AdSense’s program policies, they have the right to disable ad serving to your site and disable your AdSense account. This is particularly annoying if you’ve already have some money in your account. Regularly check the policies for updates to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

  • Most importantly, don’t click on your own ad.
  • Don’t encourage others or even pay them to click on your ads.
  • Don’t place ads on pages with prohibited content (e.g. adult or violent content).
  • Make sure you only use copyright-free content.
  • Don’t place ads on pages where you sell or promote counterfeit (e.g. fake brands) goods.
  • Don’t use more than 3 ads on one page. More on this in our section Best Practices below.

Best Practices to Make Google AdSense Work For You

1. Write high-quality content

Write high-quality content. It’s very simple, but essential for your success. Regularly publish high-quality blog posts in which you share your experience, knowledge, research, or other valuable information.

Consider your reader. What do they get from your site and your blog posts?

2. Keep your site clean

Imagine someone visiting your house. You’ve invited them, so you want your place to look nice and clean. The same thing applies to your site. Keep the pages looking clean, uncluttered and inviting, so visitors enjoy hanging out with you and want to come back again. The more they come back, the more money you make via AdSense.

  • Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Create a clear menu. Make sure your visitors know where to find what they’re looking for.
  • Choose an ad style that is easy for your users to read.

3. Keep your ads looking like ads

You don’t like the way your ads look? You can choose an ad color that matches your site, but make sure that you keep your ads looking like ads. Don’t align images with your ads or try to blend the ads into your content as if they weren’t ads at all.

Why? First of all, it’s against Adsense’s policies. And secondly (more importantly), you need to be honest with your readers. People hate hidden advertisements. This will only damage your name and kill traffic to your site.

4. Call them what they are

Same goes for your ad labels. Don’t mislead your readers; just call them “Advertisements” or “Sponsored links”. Avoid placing them in locations where they might be confused with your menu, header, other images or download links.

5. Don’t put too many ads on your site

Three ads per page is the maximum number of ads that AdSense allows on your site. You can put a combination of banner ads and text/link ads on your site, but you need to make sure that you place more content than ads on your site. Also, keeping Best Practice #2 in mind: lots of ads on your site makes the place look cluttered and messy.

6. Try out different ad styles

You can choose from different ad styles. There text ads and display ads. Here are the top performing ad sizes:

Top performing ad sizes (source: Google’s guide to ad sizes)

Experiment with different ad sizes and styles. Your visitors will like different types of ads. Look in your AdSense account and see what ads attract more visitors and what ads don’t work as well.

7. Check how it looks

Double-check how your ads look on your site. How do you think first-time visitors experience it? Check if the ads and their labels appear correctly when you’re using a WordPress template.

8. Make your ads (and site) mobile-friendly

Do you have a lot of mobile traffic on your site? When you go to your AdSense account, one of the things you can see is what type of device your readers use when they visit your site: mobile or desktop.

If you get lots of mobile traffic, you need to make sure that the ads are displayed correctly on smartphones. Even if you don’t know what your traffic is, or your mobile traffic isn’t that big yet, do make your ads and site mobile-friendly. Nowadays, people use their mobile more for searches than their desktop.

Google’s research shows that 53% of mobile users will abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. And 74% when a page takes longer than 5 seconds to load. So make sure your site runs smoothly and looks top-notch on mobiles!

9. Find the best ad placements

Where do you place your ad? If you don’t know that yet, check other popular sites related to yours and see where they place their ads. They probably know what works best, so learn from them. It doesn’t matter if they’re using a different advertising program than Google AdSense.

Or, use Google’s resources for best ad placements for news sitesclassified sitesgaming sitesforumsblogssports sites, and travel sites.

10. Promote, promote, promote

The better you promote your site, the more traffic you’ll get, and the more money flows into your AdSense account. Avoid spamming people (consistently forcing unwanted information on people), but instead look for natural opportunities to promote your content and site.

  • Use social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, whatever is relevant for your site). Set up your social media accounts for your site, but also use your private accounts to share valuable posts with your friends and family. They are your first and biggest fans, and will share your post on their turn, increasing your traffic even more. Make sure you only share valuable posts that help people, otherwise you will get the opposite response and people may even unfriend you on Facebook.
  • Engage with others on social media. Comment and like other people’s posts as well. This will not only help to build up quality relationships, but it’s also a way to get your content and name more visible on social media.
  • Join forums, Facebook groups or other social media groups related to the content on your site. Provide quality answers to questions in those groups, and add a link to your site or relevant post.
  • Comment on blogs and build up relationships with other bloggers. You can even refer to other bloggers and their sites on your own blog. Someday they might return the favor.
  • Check out our other tips in “Learn How To Reach Out to People”.