The Seven Worst Adsense Mistakes You Can Make

The Seven Worst Adsense Mistakes You Can Make

7. Not Enough Content Per Page - It looks like if there's not enough content per page, Google has a hard time justifying giving you lots of Adsense ads (or, in some cases, any Adsense ads). As an experiment, I made two posts on the same subject - with the same words, and I just reordered the words in the sentences and repeated them. The first post simply read -

"Google Adsense - Fantastic for pay per click advertising."

(It should have more accuratety read "Google Adwords - Fantastic for pay per click advertising."but I needed my keywords in there.)

The second post repeated those words about 20 times in varying orders and what looked to me like keyword spam. The results were surprising - I initially thought that I would see the same types of ads. What actually happened is that I saw various unrelated ads and public service announcements (PSAs) for the short post. On the longer post (which I basically keyword spammed with "Google Adsense" and "Pay Per Click Advertising" and the word "Fantastic") I saw many Advertising related ads. The moral of the story? Try to write at least a paragraph per page, or Google won't give you any ads. I say shoot for 75 words minimum. Google specifically mentions this as well (search for "Your web page may not contain enough content"). If you have a blog, keep the "About this Blog" section filled with general keywords on what you discuss, to give them something to go on, and use section targeting. Not familiar with section targeting? See Mistake #5.

6. Poor Optimization of Content - As I note in my post Using Adsense to Judge How Good Your Blog Is in Sid On Blogging, Google Adsense provides quick feedback about what it thinks of your page. If you're not seeing the ads you want (or worse, only seeing PSAs) fix it! Go back and put some more keywords in that are related to your topic, tighten up your writing a bit. A quick way to give Google a better idea of your page: provide definition of keywords (phrases used to drive contextual advertising such as Google Adsense) that contain your keywords (see?).

5. Not Telling Google What Content To Use - Ok, so every paragraph you have can't be keyword heavy. What if you have a case study or a letter from a reader you want to post and respond to? Use Google's Section Targeting. From Google:

The HTML tags to emphasize a page section take the following format:

You can also designate sections you'd like to have ignored by adding a (weight=ignore) to the starting tag:

You can read more about section targeting in this article on Google.

4. Poor Choice of Location - Just like real estate, it's all about location, location, location. Many beginners (myself included) simply place adsense in some obscure location on the
side of their page and leave it there. Sure, YOU'LL notice it because you know it's there - but your readers won't. Make sure you put your adsense ads somewhere prominent, and review them from time to time. There's a good chance you won't get it right the first time. Review Google's Heat Map for what their research has found. Basically, keep the ads close to content, and usually above and to the left seems to perform especially well. Related to this:

3. Not Paying Attention to Where The Ads Are In Your HTML Code - I couldn't come up with a good name for this mistake, but the tip is sound: make sure your most prominent location is the first ad in the HTML code for your page. Google mentions this as well. Why? Because if google runs out of Adsense ads for your page, you'll end up with public service announcements (PSAs). If you have 3 ad units on your page, and the first two are buried in a left sidebar, there's a decent chance your third "main" unit displayed right above your posts is going to be a PSA. Further, the first ad unit Google Adsense sees on your page also is the one where Google figures to make the most money, and therefore YOU would make the most money as well.

2. Putting Adsense There and Letting it "Do Its Thing" - Don't ignore your Adsense account! They have reports there for a reason. You should constantly be aware of how your Adsense ads are doing. Log into your account regularly, track ads in channels, and rotate low performing formats out and try new ones. If you have ANY ads that are not in channels, shame on you! On the other hand - don't overanalyze your reports either . Focus on getting quality content and a strong following. If you don't have a following yet, don't sweat this too much - there's very little analysis to be gained until you have some significant number of impressions and clicks to play around with. Even if you don't have much traffic yet, make sure you get give each location a channel.

And, The Single Worst Mistake You Can Make Is ...

1. Having Adsense Ads That LOOK Like Adsense Ads!! - Huh? Don't ALL Google Adsense ads looks like...well, Adsense Ads? Yes and no. When you first sign up with Adsense, Google gives you a default ad format that probably doesn't match your color scheme. If you just went ahead and placed the ads on your site and waited for the money to roll in, odds are you're still waiting. Don't sabotage yourself - blend your ads with the theme of your site. If you place them in content, make the border and background color match your background and the link and text colors match the colors used on your site. Web users are a savvy bunch - they're used to seeing ads, and they know what they look like. They've come looking for content, not advertising, and they'll tune it out if they immediately recognize it as an Adsense Ad. Stand out from the rest of the crowd who are using the default ad color template from Google, and customize it to your site.