Tag Archives: AdSense101

AdSense 101: Building your brand

8 minutes to read
Now that you’ve got your account setup, and you’re writing winning content, it’s time to build a quality brand and create a sustainable revenue stream with AdSense.

What separates a website from a brand? Credibility, consistency, and community.

Think of the websites you visit most - chances are they’re updated regularly with content that’s familiar and trustworthy. You can also navigate these sites intuitively, without putting any thought into how you’re consuming the content you love or where the links you’re looking for are positioned.

In this blog, we’ll cover how to effectively measure how well your site is performing, how to use experiments to uncover new insights, and how to lay out your site in a way that engages your readers.

Measure your performance with reports

Only by digging deep into how visitors engage with your site can you identify the roadblocks that may keep them from returning.

To make sure you’re up-to-date with everything you need to know, check the ‘common reports’ tab in your AdSense account dashboard. Focus on the following key areas to analyze your overall account performance.

The reporting dashboard gives you a quick summary of three main reporting metrics: estimated earnings, page views, and revenue per thousand impressions (RPM). It’s a great way to quickly check the overall health of your account.
The entire account by day report helps you analyze daily performance, and gives you a better understanding of why your earnings change over time. If you’ve made recent changes to ad units or placements, then it’s a great way to measure how the adjustments affected click-through rates.


	To find this report, visit the Performance reports tab, then Common reports on the left-hand panel, select Ad units and then add Platforms from the top as a secondary dimension.

Use Ad units + Performance to measure your campaign success by device. CTR and Active View Viewable (AVV) are the key metrics to monitor here, with AVV showing you how many of your total measurable impressions were truly viewable. If an ad’s active view percentage is below 50%, then consider placing it in a more prominent area to improve engagement. To learn more about viewability, check out DoubleClick's 5 Factors of Display Viewability.
The Platforms report identifies how ads are performing on different devices. For example, you may find that your ad units are performing better on mobile devices than on desktop (or vice versa). If that’s the case, then measure your web traffic and make sure that your ads are optimized for the devices you receive most traffic from.
If you manage multiple domains within a single account, then use the Sites report to compare performance. The report is especially helpful if you have different mobile and desktop versions of the same site, allowing you to find new ways to optimize UI for consistent experience across devices.

Every website is different, so if there are specific metrics you want to target, then learn how to create your own reports to measure what matters to you.

Use experiments to discover new opportunities

AdSense Experiments split your site traffic into two different ad settings, so you can compare performance and make more informed decisions.

There are three different ways to run experiments on your content:

Design it yourself by choosing the ad setting and variation you’d like to test.
Choose an experiment from an opportunity on your Optimization page.
Use automatic experiments, which allows AdSense to run experiments on a small portion of your web traffic that are tailored to your website.

Experiments can help you to measure the impact of both ad content and ad style on your earnings. Discover whether ‘text only’ or ‘text and display ads’ capture the attention of your audience, and whether or not changing the colors of your ads helps them to blend in.

We recommend allowing automatic experiments on your site, as a time-efficient and easy way to inform your decision-making.

Improve the usability of your site

Great content can get lost when it’s hosted on a website with poor usability. Pages that are slow, needlessly complex, or difficult to navigate are more likely to disrupt your visitors focus and drive them away.

For a better UX, we recommend focusing on the 4 S’s: Speed, scroll, style, and simple.

Speed: A recent study by Google found a strong correlation between page speed and key performance indicators like revenue, bounce rate, session duration, and viewability. Web users are impatient when it comes to loading times, and are likely to get frustrated and abandon slow pages.

To measure the speed of your website, use PageSpeed Insights or the Web Developer Kit. And if you’re looking for some quick fixes to improve loading times, consider asynchronous loading, lazy loading, or AMP.

Finally, use the mobile web speed toolkit for in-depth and tactical recommendations to get your website up to speed.

Scroll: Infinite scroll continues to add new content at the bottom of your page, taking away the need to load new pages.

It’s ideal for publishers that post lengthy articles, tutorials, or slideshows, and works particularly well for websites focused on mobile consumption.

Style: Your website needs to look attractive and consistent across all pages to build immediate trust with new visitors. Focus on two areas: content style and ad style.

For content style, choose a theme, layout, and color scheme, then stick to it. Consistency is key to developing a brand that your readers will grow comfortable and familiar with.

Responsive web design improves UX by maintaining the same look and feel to your site regardless of the device it’s being viewed on.

With ad style, the first thing to consider is how they will affect the flow of content on your site. Placing ads at natural breaks in your narrative, or in areas where the user’s attention may have waned, can improve UX and may encourage a higher CTR (click-through rate).

When placing ads, take some time to consider your options. Responsive ads automatically adapt to your user’s screen size, while native ads and matched content may help you unlock new ad revenue.

Simple: The best digital content is scannable, snappy, and intuitive. By focusing on simplicity, you’re removing the roadblocks that potentially stop users from enjoying your content.

Here’s some tips to make sure your site is as easy as possible to engage with:

Make it touch-friendly for mobile users
Format your content the right way
Use minimalist design where possible.

If you think AdSense is a fit for your website, then sign up and get started.

Posted by Jay Castro, @jayciro

Source: Inside AdSense

Create and share winning content

6 minute read

Content is everything we consume online. Users arrive on a site to be educated, entertained, inspired, or complete a task.

Content is how you win new site visitors, and how you entice them to return. So it’s important to remember that, though ads are driving revenue, content should be the focal point of every page.

With that in mind, part three of our series for new publishers focuses on how to plan, write, and promote great content. If you missed part one (AdSense 101) or part two (AdSense best practices), then check them out and get caught up.

The keys to engaging, shareable content

Be targeted, consistent, and frequent: Take the time to figure out who is reading your content and which topics they engage with most (we’ll get into the mechanics of this later on). Update your site as often as possible with fresh content, tailored to your audience.

Use video where possible: People crave video, users from around the world are now watching a billion hours of YouTube’s incredible content every single day! Video personalizes your brand and can boost the amount of time user’s spend on your site.

Be readable: Successful online content is scannable and snappy; follow these best practices to make sure your articles look enticing to viewers:

Don’t use more than 7 sentences per paragraph
Keep your column width between 700 and 800 pixels
Organize your content with headers and subheaders.

Stay on top of trends: Use online tools like Google Trends to identify subjects your audience is interested in, and discuss them while they’re still fresh. Trends is also really useful for location targeting - identifying popular topics and keywords in your target areas.

Incorporate evergreen content: Evergreen content is information that stays useful and relevant no matter when it’s consumed. While trending topics should be used to generate buzz, evergreen content will bring a consistent source of referral traffic that may boost your position on organic search pages.

Figure out what works, and do more of it

If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to link Google Analytics and AdSense. Otherwise, the following recommendations will not be applicable for you.

Content groups allow you to bundle your content into different lists, to analyze the themes that drive most engagement with your audience. For example, if you run a digital marketing blog, you could create content groups around SEO, social media, PPC campaigns etc.

After setting your groups, use the AdSense page report to view and compare metrics. You may discover that your audience is interested in one particular theme - if so, try to focus on that topic more at the expense of groups with less engagement. For example, if your foodie blog has more views on food truck review articles than any other group, then adapt your content strategy to include more of that content.

The Landing Page report in Google Analytics helps you understand where users landed on your site, and where they left from. This will give you insights into the type of content that draws visitors from external sites, and may highlight content that should be re-worked due to poor metrics.

To get the most value from the Landing Page report, track the following:

Look for pages with high bounce rates. If you find that one or two areas of your site drive your users towards the exit, then ask yourself what you could do to improve them.
If you’ve got quality content that’s not attracting new visitors, then play with the headline or experiment with different primary images to promote it.
Analyze page speed. 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. If some of your pages are slower than others, then it’s likely they contain bloated elements. Consider compressing images or getting rid of animated files. Check out the tactical recommendations to increase page speed in part two of this series.

Plan ahead with your audience in mind

Use the Demographics and Interests tab in your Google Analytics account to understand who’s reading your content, and what their interests are (you’ll need to enable this feature before getting started).

The Demographics report will give you insights into the age and gender of your audience, and allows you to segment these groups to see how different people react to your content.

Use the Interest report to shape your content to your audience’s interests, and identify upcoming events they may be interested in. For example, if fans of your digital marketing blog are also interested in new technology and gadgets, you could mention these learnings across your social channels to increase your following.

At this point, you’ll have accumulated data from content grouping, as well as the Landing Page, Demographics, and Insights reports. Use it all to paint a picture of your average user, what they enjoy, what they dislike - then use those insights to build a content calendar.

A content calendar will allow you to plan a content strategy that’s focused on the topics you know your audience enjoys. Be sure to research seasonal events related to your industry or product, so you can discuss them while they’re still relevant.

Build an audience on social

Growing an audience on social media can provide publishers with a consistent source of referral traffic to their sites. As with content, the best way to compel users to follow your social accounts is to provide them with consistent value.

Here’s some tips to help you set up and maintain a strong social presence:

Don’t be too self-promotional. You’ll want to link back to your content, but if that’s all you focus on, potential followers will lose interest.
Use your content calendar to prepare posts around upcoming events in advance. Users care less about an Oscars tweet a week after the ceremony.
Create relationships with influencers. Retweet them, mention them in a favorable way, and link to their content. These relationships can lead to guest-blogging opportunities or retweets from an account with a large audience. This tactic can help you break through your current organic reach to access new users.
Build relationships with your users. Answer their questions promptly, engage with them in conversations. If your audience feels valued, they’ll be much more likely to help you promote your content.
Use Google Trends to discover trending topics on a daily basis, and tie in posts with popular conversations.

For a list of helpful tools to help you manage your social accounts and build your audience, read our ‘Amplify your content with social’ blog post.

And make sure to check in next week, when our series for new publishers continues with a post on improving performance to potentially maximize profits.

If you think AdSense is a fit for your site, then sign up now and get started.

‘Til next time.

Posted by: Jay Castro, @jayciro

Source: Inside AdSense

Did You Receive A Policy Violation Warning?

Have you received an email from [email protected] with a warning that you’ve violated the AdSense policies? These warnings are usually issued in instances of mild violations that we believe can be fixed quickly.

In addition to an email, you’ll receive a notification in your AdSense account under the “Status” tab. Both the email and notification will explain where your violation occurred and how to fix it and by clicking the link provided, you’ll be sent to the page where the violation has occurred. To resolve the issue, you can either fix the content that violates AdSense policies across your site or remove the AdSense code.

Remember, your site must be compliant in order to participate in the AdSense program. When you’ve made all the necessary changes to your site, check “Resolved” on the site level violation notification in the “Status” tab of your AdSense account. You don’t need to notify us when you’ve fixed the violation; however, you do need to resolve it in a timely manner.

There are cases where ads stop appearing on your site altogether. This can happen when a publisher fails to respond to policy violation warnings, receives multiple warnings, or displays egregious violations across their site(s). Violations are categorized as egregious when we believe they can cause significant harm to advertisers, Google, users, or the overall ads ecosystem.

In these cases you’ll receive an email and a notification in your AdSense account under the “Status” tab to notify you of this change. A link will also be included to show you where the violation appears. You can resolve it by either removing the content in question or by removing the AdSense code from the affected page. It’s important to note that a very small percentage of sites have their ads disabled after receiving a policy violation warning.

Once you’ve corrected the violations across your entire site, you can submit an appeal from the “Status” tab in your AdSense account or by using the AdSense policy troubleshooter. Please bear in mind that we can only review appeals from sites that have AdSense code enabled.

Stay tuned for some best practices to help you avoid a policy violation.

Posted by: Anastasia Almiasheva from the AdSense team

Source: Inside AdSense

Learn the top triggers of policy violation warnings

Today we’ll highlight some of the top triggers of policy violation warnings to help you avoid common pitfalls. If you haven’t already, download the All-In-One Policy Compliance Guide to help you understand the what's and why's of our policy processes so you can always stay one step ahead.

As a general guideline to building a strong policy compliant foundation, ensure that the pages within your site offer a unique value for users and comply with AdSense policies. Let’s get started.

1. Copyrighted Material

Google ads cannot be placed on pages that infringe on copyrighted materials. Don’t try to monetize content that isn’t yours or you don’t have permission to use.

2. Deceptive Layout

Because users come to your site for the content, it should then be easy for users of your site to distinguish ads from content at all times. Ads that blend in or that are situated too close to content and navigational icons can cause invalid clicks. AdSense will deduct clicks that are determined to be invalid and, where possible, reimburse advertisers.

3. Explicit Text

Text descriptions that include excessive use of profanity or erotic stories, jokes, or discussions are violations of AdSense policies.

4. Mislabeling

Placing ads under misleading headings like “Resources” is a policy violation. Users should not be mislead or asked to click on ads. Acceptable headers are “Advertisements or “Sponsored Links”.

5. Sexual Content

Content that’s sexually explicit – or suggestive without being explicit, such as lingerie – isn’t allowed. If you wouldn't show it in polite company, we don’t want AdSense advertisements appearing there.

6. Unnatural Attention

Drawing unnatural attention to ads by using visuals, call-outs or placements that call too much attention to ads aren’t permitted either.

7. Violent Content

Content that features bloodshed, fight scenes, and gruesome or freak accidents is not permitted by the AdSense policy.

8. Webmaster Guidelines

Webmaster Guidelines require publishers to make sure their content is original, adds value, and is intended primarily for users, not for search engines. Failure to adhere to these adds up to a violation of AdSense policy.

There you have it: eight common triggers for a potential policy violation warning. We recommend that you refer back to this blog post and use Google Search to identify if you have any violations in your content as you review your site and upcoming content.

Coming up next – what to do if you receive a policy violation warning.

Posted by: Anastasia Almiasheva from the AdSense team

Source: Inside AdSense

Have you experienced an unauthorized access issue with your AdSense Account?

Unfortunately, even for AdSense publishers, there’s always the risk of an unauthorized source compromising your secure login credentials. In these instances, you might be locked out of your AdSense account. Here’s what you can do to recover your account and avoid the same issue in the future:

For starters, these triggers can help you identify if your account has been compromised.

You’ve noticed suspicious account activity (for example: there are new users that you haven’t granted access to; the payment details have changed without your permission; your security settings have been updated; and your email notification settings have changed).
You cannot login to your AdSense account.

If you’ve found that your account has been compromised, follow these steps to resolve the issue:

Run a malware scan on your devices
Visit our Login Troubleshooter. If you’re locked out of your account, the troubleshooter will help you recover your Google Account. Once you’ve recovered your Google Account:

Change your password to something unique and unused. Here’s tips on how to create strong password.
Visit myaccount.google.com to review your security settings
Enable 2-Step-Verification.

Then, the troubleshooter will take you to the Account login issues form, which will direct you to an AdSense account issues specialists.

The specialist will start an investigation and communicate next steps (including the investigation report and reimbursement options).
For a speedy resolution, be sure to include the following with the form as accurately as possible:

Proof of your identity and address using acceptable documents.
Proof of a recent AdSense payment, such as a copy of a check, Western Union receipt or bank statement clearly showing a recent AdSense EFT deposit.
The URL of a test page of your website. This is to prove that you own and manage the domain listed in your account.

It’s important to note that the Account login issues form cannot be used to report disputes between authorized users. The administrator of the account is responsible for all user permissions. In general, it’s a best practice to remove former employees and inactive users from your account to help prevent unauthorized changes.

Unfortunately, in some cases with ongoing security concerns, account reinstatement may not be possible. The AdSense specialist team will let you know if this is the case.

We understand that compromised login credentials may be a huge problem for you and your business. Bookmark these valuable help resources to help retrieve a hijacked account:

If you have questions about this topic, join us on Twitter or Google+ for one of our #AskAdSense office hour sessions.

Posted by: Hievda Ugur, from the AdSense Team

Source: Inside AdSense

3 tips to make your content easy to consume

Over the last month we’ve taken a look at what makes strong content including topics, length, and shareability. But telling a good story is only half of the process. You also have to present it in an easy-to-digest format for today’s distracted audience.

According to a Think With Google study, “67% of users will switch [to another site or app] if it takes too many steps to purchase or get desired information.” Different forms of media can greatly improve your content’s appeal, if it’s used strategically. With people giving less and less time to the things they read online, it’s up to you to keep visitors engaged and entertained. The following tips will help give your content a stronger impact.

1. Share your content visually

Whether it’s lists, infographics, images, gifs, or video, adding in dynamic elements to your story telling will keep things fresh and memorable. Visuals highlight your key points, and leave a greater impact on both loyal and new visitors alike. In fact, sites with video have been proven to encourage an extra 2 minutes of time on page compared to sites that don’t.

2. Break things up

Images can be a great way to break up long text. Unbroken, continuous text is time-consuming to read and can make visitors “check out” prematurely; no matter how interesting the topic is. By breaking up a longer content piece with related imagery, you can increase the chances of you audience staying to read more, and hopefully, fulfill a desired action on your site.

3. Make it Social

Seeing how “liked” or “shared” an article is naturally prompts visitors to share their opinion on it, too. Social proof is a powerful influencer when it comes to users engaging with your content. Ways to gain social proof include providing like actions, sharing actions, and even custom actions such as testimonials and reviews.

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Posted by Jay Castro
Audience Development Specialist
@jayciro

Source: Inside AdSense

The secret to share-worthy content

People love to share things with their friends, family, and colleagues. Presenting your users with relevant and unique content is the best way to encourage sharing and give you a competitive advantage. Content that is underscored by emotion, in particular, can help you strengthen your brand’s presence.

Here are some tips to help you get into the minds, and hearts, of your audience:

1. Be relatable

Taking the time to research what your visitors are interested in is the first step to creating shareable content. Diversify to cover multiple facets of your audience’s interests by including work, lifestyle and social topics to keep things fresh and engaging. Contextualizing your stories also increases the chances of your audience relating to and wanting to share your site.

2. Know what’s trending

Staying up-to-the-minute can require a lot of time and research. Luckily, online tools such as Google Trends can help you identify what’s important to your audience as well as offer helpful insights about people in specific regions you are trying to target. Being a thought leader means not only sharing up-to-the-minute industry news with your audience, but also offering insightful observations and predictions of what this may mean down the road. A trusted source is a followed source.

3. Increase your content’s shelf life

While timely articles are great for generating instant buzz, having content that maintains its importance over time yields higher traffic rate overall. Evergreen content is information that stays relevant no matter when it is consumed. Make sure to interlace trendier content with evergreen pieces every so often.

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Posted by Jay Castro
Audience Development Specialist
@jayciro

Source: Inside AdSense

How to make the most of Matched content

Matched content is a recommendation tool that allows you to promote relevant content from your site and sponsored content to your visitors. Matched content can help capture visitor attention and loyalty by showing relevant content which could increase pageviews on your site. Here’s a few tips to help you get started with Matched content.

Strategically place your ads to improve viewability.

According to a Think With Google study, “56.1% of all impressions are not seen.” So when determining the placement of your Matched content units, think about which spot(s) would improve viewability and engagement. To increase these metrics we recommend placing this unit directly below your article and either above or below your ad unit. This way readers can easily click on the next piece of content that is interesting to them. Placing it directly below the article often drives higher click-through rates (CTR) than other placements.

Since Matched content units help your users learn more about similar content, you should think about placing it at points in your website where your user will engage more with the content.

Track performance.
To determine if your placement is effective for your site, be sure to track the performance of your Matched content units. Understanding performance is key to maximizing your ad revenue and satisfying your readers. On your Performance reports tab, you’ll see an updated way to view two metric families -- the Overview metric family and the Matched content metric family:
Overview metric family

Selecting this metric family will allow you to understand how much you’re earning from your Matched content units and how these units compare to other ad units on your site. You can also review metrics such as impressions, clicks, and estimated earnings.

Matched content metric family

To get a more detailed performance of your ads and recommendations, use this metric family to view metrics like total impressions, ad impressions, ad clicks, ad revenue per thousand impressions (RPM), and recommendation clicks. Since this metric family is more specific, you should be able to use this data to optimize the ad unit itself.

To see all metric offerings and how they work, take a look at the AdSense Help Center.

By optimizing your Matched content units, you will allow your readers to learn more about topics they are interested in and potentially increase your site’s engagement rate and revenue. If you do not currently have Matched content but are looking to add the feature, determine if you’re eligible by viewing our Help Center article.

Posted by Bserat Ghebremicael
From the AdSense team

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Tag Archives: AdSense101