Understanding Google Adsense (Website Tips)

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Understanding Google Adsense (Website Tips)
(2006/01/16)

Understanding Google Adsense
By Brad Trupp (c) 2006

Google AdSense is certainly the most popular Pay Per Click or PPC program in our industry today. All you have to do is enroll your site under the Google AdSense program and add some code to your web site to display ads on your web pages. You earn each time a visitor to your site clicks on one of these ads.

Visitors don’t have to buy anything. After all, this is a pay per click program and not a pay per action or CPA program. They just have to click on the ads and nothing more but the advertisers hope visitors do more than just click and look The advertisements on Adsense come from advertisers using Google’s Adwords program.

Ads are definitely not random, but instead are selected to be contextually relevant, meaning, that they are selected based on their relevancy to the subject of your site.

By providing high quality content and careful use of keywords, you provide an excellent base for individuals looking for information about specific products and services, and an excellent vehicle for advertisers targeting those individuals.

There are three determinative factors for the revenue of a site enrolled under the AdSense program.

1. The Cost Per Click or CPC of the ads appearing to your site.

2. The number of page impressions, or simply put, the amount of traffic that passes through your site. If you have a lot of page impressions, you have a better chance of getting a lot of clicks.

3. The Clickthrough Rate or CTR, which is the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. The higher your CTR, the more you should earn.

Getting more Impressions!

Here are some ways to increase traffic at your web site.

You can create more web pages adding with relevant and focused content.

You can create more internal links to your web pages by cross-linking topics.

List your web site under relevant categories in more directories.

Set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant reciprocal links

Write relevant articles. Ensure that your site information in the resource box at the end of each article. Submit to article directories such as http://www.IdeaViewer.com.

Advertise with pay per click search engines.

Getting more Clicks!

Clickthrough rates are the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase Clickthroughs by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placement of your ads.

You cannot choose which ads Adsense shows on your site, but you can influence the relevance of the ads through your choice of content on each web page and across your web site.

If every page on your site focuses on the site topic, it is more likely that the Adsense ads will too. For example, if the focus of your web site is all about books, and the word “book” appears several times on every page, it is likely that your Adsense ads will relate to books.

The best placement for Google ads varies from page to page, depending on content. Some locations tend to be more successful than others. Wider ad formats tend to outperform their taller counterparts. Google has a "heat map" at http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html that shows how the placement of ads affects the clickthroughs. The colors of the ads also has an effect.

The best way to optimize your web site is to use the Adsense channels feature to track your ad formats and placements. It then becomes all about testing and tracking to see what performs best for you.

What is Effective CPM?

Effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings per thousand impressions. You can increase your Effective CPM by selecting topics that might attract higher bids from advertisers, and building pages and whole websites based on higher paying topics.

Even though Google does not release much information about the value of Adsense bids, you can get a good idea of top paying topics by looking at information tools on Adwords and other pay-per-click search engines. There are also many keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that can help you find high paying topics.

Succeeding with Adsense!

It is a really simple set of rules to help increase your Adsense income.

Build pages and websites with focused content for the best Effective CPM.

Place and format your Adsense ads to maximize clickthroughs.

Promote your sites. Drive targeted traffic to your web pages for maximum impressions.

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