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Monetize Your Site with Google Advertising Programs

Posted on 20. May, 2010 by Editor in Web

Overview:

If you are a googler then you must know about the Google advertising program. Google has two types of advertising program AdWords and AdSense accordingly. With this article we will go through the overview of this advertising program explain some of the advertising term like Web Traffic, CTR, eCPM etc. and give you some tips and tricks to earn the maximize revenue from Google AdSense. First we should know what this AdSense and AdWords means.

1. AdWords:

   AdWords let advertisers to promote their product or website through Google or other AdSense integrated website. When you search in Google with a keyword you may find some links highlighted under the search box and the sidebar and a text ‘sponsored Links’ will be found under the box. This links are sent through AdWords. That means some of the advertiser paid Google to show the links in its site. AdWords are most preferable for advertisers as they have option for geo-targeting, Contextual ads and show the ads on the most relevant content.

2. AdSense:

   AdSense is an opportunity for the publishers to earn money from the Google Advertising program. Your web portal will be advertised with relevant ads through AdSense and the ads will come from the advertisers on AdWords. AdSense is preferred by both publishers and users as they are less disturbing and annoying compared to loud and flashy banners. After you make a registration, a Mediabot will crawl through your website and find some appropriate keywords so that your website can host the most relevant advertisement.

Requirements:

Before we can start through AdSense program, we should know the minimum requirements to earn.

1. Your own website ( you have to access the source code of your website to incorporate the AdSense code into your website, so the website must be your own as anybody will not let you to place AdSense code into his website).
2. A computer with internet access.
3. Basic web-design knowledge to make a good website.

Relate yourself with some advertising terms:

• Web Traffic:

  Web Traffic determined by the number of visitors visits your site.

• Backlinking:

  Determined by number of website linking back to your website. More backlink is the more opportunity to gain more traffic.

• CPC:

  Acronym of Cost-Per-Click. As the name suggest, you will be paid from AdSense only when anyone click the hosted ad in your web portal.

• CPM:

  Acronym of Cost-Per-Mille. This advertisement will pay you when it gets thousand impressions from your site, impression means how many time the ads has been shown up in your website.

• CTR:

  Acronym of Click-Through-Rate. This measure what percentage of your website-visitor had click on your ads. As an example you got 100 visitors in a day and 5 of them clicked on ads after visiting your site. So your Click-Through-Rate will be 5%.

Getting Started:

You may relate yourself with basic advertising terms now. Getting started with AdSense program is very easy. After you apply your website for Google AdSense program a mediabot will crawl through your site and find the relevant keyword from your site. Before you apply your site in AdSense program you have to ensure that you are generating good web traffic in your web portal. You will get a notification from AdSense to let you know whether your site has been approved in AdSense networking or not. Google AdSense has a strict guideline on how the Ads should be displayed in your site. If mediabot will unable to crawl through your site, it will not display sponsored advertisement in your site. Please check if your website meets the requirement of Google Program policy and Terms & Condition before applying. If you site has been approved you have to create an ad campaign to select the size, look and feel of your adslot. A JavaScript code will be sent to you. You need to incorporate that code into the source code of your website to start host ads.

Types of AdSense:

• AdSense for content:

  This is the general and mostly used AdSense type. You can place ad box on your web page with this program.

• AdSense for feeds:

  If you have an atom RSS feeds for your blog that can be advertised through this program.

• AdSense for Mobile:

  It will show ads if somebody navigates to your site through mobile or PDA devices.

• AdSense for search:

  A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search, allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites. When a user searches the Internet or the website with the search box, Google shares any advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner.

Optimizing your site to earn maximize revenue:

The principal of having a good CTR in your site is to attract more people to your ad slot. You can reach this goal in many ways by optimizing ad placement, dimension of ad box, choosing the best color pallets to fit your site etc. We will go through all this optimizing tips now. A good CTR for your website is 5%, below 3% means mediocre and below 2% indicated you that you have to do more with your ad placement and colors.

• Optimizing Placement:

  Optimizing the best placement for your AdSense ad box is very easy. You have to determinate where the people attract most in your website. That may be in a important article in your website or that can be determined by the way a visitor will browse his eyes in your website.

Google has produces a heat map based on with ad placement had earned more revenue. The Color had fade from dark orange (Strongest performance) from light yellow (Weakest performance).

Google AdSense Heatmap

But if you are maintain a blog then the image below would be the map for the best placement for your ads.

Google AdSense Heatmap for Blogger

The image below is the image for forum ad optimization…

Google AdSense Heatmap for Forum

The image below is a reference from EyeTrack III. This image shows how a man browse his eyes on the homepage of a website.

Eye Track III

This is a heat map image produces by EyeTrack III.

Eye Track III HeatMap

According to Google’s research, if positioned well then a 336x280px large rectangle, 300x250px medium rectangle, 160x600px Wide Skyscraper medium rectangle will help you to earn most revenue from Google AdSense.

• Optimizing Ad Color Palettes:

  There are three types of color palettes available for optimizing your AdSense AdSlot. They are Blend, Complement, and Contrast.

  • Blend:

    This type’s color palettes should designed with the same border and background color with the background where you are placing ads. This types of color palettes should be used where the background color is very light.

  • Complement:

    Use the color already used in your site but should not be same as the background color. You can use this types of palettes both in light and dark background.

  • Contrast:

    Choose a color that strictly against your background. Use it only in dark background.

Below is the reference of three types of color palettes from Google.

Blend Color Palette

Complement Color Palette

Contrast Color Palettes

• Optimizing revenue from ad review center: Go to your AdSense account > AdSense Setup Tab > Ad Review Center. You will find ‘Category Filters’ there. This will help you to block specific category of ads from showing on your website. Just block the categories which are against your website. That will help you to earn more revenue from AdSense.

Google AdSense Category Filtering

Video Screenplay:

Still under confusion? Then watch this video below. This is a official video from Google demonstrating the optimiztion of AdSense through a screenplay. I am sure that this video will help you as a beginner level AdSense optimization. So Happy earning!

Tags: adsense, advertise, adwords, google