A Complete Guide to Optimize Google Ads and Maximize your AdSense Earnings

I have been an Adsense Publisher for more than five years now. Google Adsense has been a primary revenue channel for me in the initial phase of my Blogging. AdSense has rewarded with few Premium benefits where am allowed to display more ads than an ordinary user with a dedicated support. Now Adsense has become a part of my earnings, but we don’t completely rely on Adsense anymore. My journey with AdSense has been very smooth, and I must mention that AdSense is best when it comes to Display Advertising.

The best thing about AdSense is, they come with a lot of new features based on the technology trends. As you know, Technology has been moving at a faster pace in the past two years. We have clearly seen a shift from Desktop to Mobile First to Mobile Only generation. With these things taken into consideration, AdSense has come up withResponsive Ads, Page Level Ads, Matched content and more in the past few months.

AdSense is an excellent revenue source for individual bloggers. I also know many small companies who rely on AdSense to run their businesses which of course, not recommended as AdSense income is dependent on several factors like CPC, CTR, Advertisers demand, etc. We have seen a lot of decline in CTR of Display ads as there was a shift from Desktop to Mobile technology.

In this entire blog post am sharing my 5 years of experience as a Google Adsense Publisher and things I have learned to boost my AdSense Revenue without violating any Google AdSense Terms of Service.

In case you missed I already wrote an article on “How much Revenue one can generate from Google Adsense” read it first.

What is AdSense Optimization?

Optimization is improving the business or product or service with the existing resources itself. So, when you talk about AdSense Optimization, it means optimizing your current traffic for better revenues.

Please note that Optimization is a never-ending process, and you have to keep on experimenting to find what works best at that particular point in time.

Mobile First Approach:

Before we get deep into the optimization part, I want to make it very clear that the number of visitors that we receive from Mobile has gone damn high. Slowly we are moving from Mobile first to mobile only scenario. So, you must make sure that your website/blog is well optimized for Mobile users. A responsive design is highly recommended in this case.

Watch the complete video tutorial on AdSense Optimization:

Key factors that you need to Tweak to improve AdSense Revenue are;

1. Ads Placement.
2. Using right Ad Formats.
3. Displaying a maximum number of Ad Units.

Few more aspects which we will discuss in depth in this article.

Using Right Ad Formats:

When I say right ad formats, not all AdSense ad units perform best in all the placements. Generally, text links at the end of article perform better than a Banner Ad. So, you need to choose the right format based on your audience and Template of your blog/website.

Big is Better:

Bigger ad units like 300*600, 728*90, 160*600, 336*280 and 970*250 ads perform better as the CPC for bigger ad units will be high. In the desktop version of your website, it’s recommended to use bigger ad formats. Of course, you cannot use these ad formats in Mobile/Tablet Version.

300*250 is your go to ad unit:

If you are not sure about what kind of Ad unit to use then you can blindly go with 300*250 ad unit. As this is both Desktop and Mobile optimized with maximum fill rate.

Right Ad Placement:

This is the most crucial area and its a never ending process. We also have a Tab called experiments on Google AdSense Dashboard in My Ads section. You can head over to experiments and split test ad units and check what’s performing the best in a particular placement.

Above the fold.

Generally, above the fold is the area that loads first when you open a web page. And this is where the maximum exposure of a visitor goes into. Placing more ads above the fold in right ad formats can boost your income multiple folds.

• Do not waste the above the fold space, make sure the above the fold section is occupied with content blended with right ad formats.
• Do not push the ads and content below the fold by displaying the menu bar or a Big size logo.
• It’s recommended to use 300*250 or 300*200 ad units above the fold.

Place Ads within the Content:

Some people place more ads on right sidebar or footer which is not at all recommended. Visitors come to your blog to read your content, and that’s the place where you should place a maximum number of Ads for high CTR.

• An ad unit below the title, one random ad within the post and one ad unit at the end of the article would be an ideal approach. But make sure that the content is lengthy enough to place these many ads.
• If your content is short or having less number of words, then it would look clumsy with a lot of ads which is not at all recommended.

Top Ad Recommendation:

Placing a Responsive ad unit would be fine in this case, but a responsive ad units automatically fit according to screen resolution, and we do not have any control over this ad unit. So, I would recommend to use a custom-sized ad unit and make it responsive.

• Do check my article on how to make custom ads responsive.

Using this method you can display a bigger ad on Desktop version and a 300*250 or 300*200 ad unit on Mobile version as well. Currently, this is the best-performing Ad Unit for me on all my blogs.

Random Ad and Bottom Ad:

Random Ad, go with the same approach as the Top Ad. In the case of Bottom Ad, you can even follow the same approach as the Top and Random ads, along with it you can also use Text Link ads at the bottom of the post, and it performs better than Banner ads at the end of the article.

But however you have to split test yourself and find out what’s working best for you.

• WordPress comes with a lot of ready made plugins. You can either use Quick AdSense or Ad Injection to place random ads.
• In the case of Blogger you need to tweak the code a little – do check out my article here.

In my case, I use text link ads on AllTechBuzz (check this post) and on my other website AllIndiaroundup I use a banner ad at the bottom and text links in the middle of the post.

F-Pattern and Heat-Map:

As per few case studies, it’s known that that F-Pattern placement can yield high CTR ad the visitors look for the content in these patterns most of the cases. You can additionally use a premium tool called CrazyEgg to understand what your visitors are looking at.

Color Combinations:

Most of the publishers go with the default style but if you are using a light background or dark background trying contrast color scheme can help you in improving the CTR.

DFP and Ad Exchange:

Generally, AdSense allows only 3 Banner ads and 3 Text link ads per page for all the publishers. Of course, few publishers are allowed to use more than 3 Banner ads per page with an exclusive agreement. However, it’s not that easy to fall into that category as it requires very high traffic and consistent earnings.

Other publishers can either use DFP to show more than 3 ads, i.e., 2 more. But, DFP must be used when you are using third party ads. Just using DFP for the sake of using 2 more ads would be a violation and could lead to Adsense Ban – However chances are very less, and Google hasn’t confirmed anything regarding this.

Ad Exchange : There are few certified Adsense partners who tie up with Adsense and are allowed to display 5 ads per page. Additionally, Ad exchange has RTB system which will yield you high CPC and CPM ads. You can join a reputed network who take a flat 8-15% commission of your Adsense Income generated from their ad units.

EZOIC:

This is one of the best platforms that I have been working on in the past few months, and they have improved a lot of features that help in not only boosting your AdSense revenue but they will directly show the best possible ad unit on your blog from the hundreds of ad networks they are working with.

I will be writing a separate article on EZOIC explaining its features. But, EZOIC is a must try platform to boost your revenue of your blog.

• The best thing about EZOIC is you can start using 5 ads from the day 1.
• Am still experimenting different features available on EZOIC. I have a strong feeling that EZOIC can easily boost your income by 200%.
• Get started with EZOIC now.

Final Words:

If you follow all the above-listed tips, then you should definitely see a spike in your earnings. Additionally, if you are looking forward to a review from an expertise, you can try our consultancy, and we will guide you the right approach to boost your income without wasting much time.

You can watch the complete video on YouTube and check the PPT on SlideShare.

article from alltechbuzz