Tag Archives: Learn with Google for Publishers

How to optimize your Adsense ad placements for mobile users

This is the final guest post from AdSense publisher Brandon Gaille. Brandon has built his small business marketing blog, BrandonGaille.com, to over 2 million monthly visitors in less than three years. He’s featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his personal blogging experience to help AdSense publishers grow earnings. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Every year more people are using their phones and devices to browse web pages. In 2013, mobile made up only 17% of web traffic. In 2016, this number has risen to over 38%. Within the next couple of years, mobile traffic will easily surpass 50%.

This is why you need to take time to optimize your AdSense ads for mobile traffic. Although you can easily grab a responsive AdSense ad unit, there are more ways to optimize your ad units for mobile. It may be the easiest way, but I’ve found that the easy way usually does not always produce the best results. I’ve tested the responsive ad units on my blogs against manual optimization, and the results were staggering.

The manual optimization of my ads produced a 54% increase in my AdSense revenue.

Here’s what I learned from the tests I ran:

#1 A large mobile banner at the top of the page earned the most money on my site

The highest producing location was below the title of a post and above the first paragraph. It’s important to know that AdSense amended their policy on ads above the fold on mobile devices, and you can no longer use the 300x250 ad above the fold on mobile.

#2 Hide the sidebar ads in tablets and mobile

The sidebar is going to be pushed down to the bottom of the post when it is viewed in mobile. This is essentially banishing any ads in the sidebar to no man’s land. Most premium WordPress themes will allow you to turn off ad spots in the sidebar. This will allow you to drop in an additional AdSense ad into the post to get maximum monetization from mobile.

#3 The best ad grouping was top, middle, and bottom

Out of all the mobile ad groupings, this one easily produced the most revenue for me. The grouping was made up of three 250x250 ads. The first ad was below the title and above the first paragraph. The second ad was placed after the 6th paragraph of the post. The final ad was placed at the end of the post.

In addition to mobile optimization, I applied four AdSense optimization strategies, which resulted in an overall revenue increase of close to 300%. Whether you are making $500/month or $5000/month, a 300% increase can make a huge impact on your yearly earnings.

Go here to read all of my “5 AdSense Optimization Strategies that Will Increase Your Earnings.”

Posted By
Brandon Gaille

Brandon Gaille is an AdSense publisher. You can learn more about Brandon at BrandonGaille.com and listen to his popular blogging podcast, The Blog Millionaire.

If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Source: Inside AdSense

How to create better blog titles that can drive more traffic to your ads

This is the third of five guest posts from AdSense publisher Brandon Gaille. Brandon has built his small business marketing blog, BrandonGaille.com, to over 2 million monthly visitors in less than three years. He’s featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his personal blogging experience to help AdSense publishers grow earnings. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Over the past three years, I’ve crafted titles for over 5,000 blog posts and have received over 58 million unique visitors to date. With that many titles and that much traffic, it’s allowed me to identify what types of titles get the most traffic.

The title of your page or blog post will play one of the largest roles in how much traffic you receive. From my extensive experience, a really great title can move your blog post dis and increase the number of social shares by over 300%.

The bottom line is… If you fail to write a compelling title that gets people to click, then your post is doomed to wallow in mediocrity.

Here are a few title optimization tactics that have proven to drive the most traffic.

#1 Place a number at the beginning of your title

If you have a list formatted post, then you need to be using numbered titles every single time. Titles that begin with numbers are proving to drive traffic. This is largely due to the increased consumption of users reading list posts more than any other type of blog post. A list post typically has anywhere from seven to forty key points, which are listed out numerically.
This makes it really easy for anyone to scan through the big takeaways and decide whether to dive deeper into the article. When people see the number 13 at the beginning of the title, they know they can scan through all 13 key points in a matter of seconds.

A numbered title paired with a list post will drive more clicks to your post and list style posts have one of the highest engagement rates. Posts with more clicks and higher engagement often are rewarded by becoming more discoverable to users.

Here are a couple of examples of numbered blog titles:

11 Tools to Create Share-Worthy Content
17 Incredible Social Media Statistics

I recommend crafting numbered blog post titles for more than half of your posts.

A Conductor study on headline preferences also backs up what I’ve found to be true on my blog.

blog headline statistics numbered titles

#2 The odd number gets 20% more clicks than the even number

Although no one has figured out exactly why this happens, the odd numbered titles get more clicks than the even numbered titles. Here’s an example.
Odd Numbered Title: 11 Keys to Earning More Money on Adsense
Even Numbered Title: 12 Types of Ads that Convert

Before you hit publish on the blog post titled, “8 Crazy Ways to Double Your Ad Revenue,” take a moment to either add one more tip or remove the least valuable tip. This will allow you to capitalize on the extra twenty percent of clicks by having an odd numbered title.

Learn more about creating better blog titles from my blog and read all of the “17 Ways to Create Catchy Blog Titles That Drive Traffic.”

Posted By
Brandon Gaille

Source: Inside AdSense

Increase your earnings by using the right keyword research techniques

This is the second of five guest posts from AdSense publisher Brandon Gaille. Brandon has built his small business marketing blog, BrandonGaille.com, to over 2 million monthly visitors in less than three years. He’s featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his personal blogging experience to help AdSense publishers grow earnings. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Last month, my blog received a little bit over 1.7 million visitors that originated from Google organic search. More than 95% of this traffic came from long tailed keywords.

If you do not know what a long tailed keyword is, then here’s a crash course. In keyword research, there are two primary types of keywords:

#1 Head Terms

These are your one and two word phrases that get loads of searches on Google. A few examples would be cars, credit score, and real estate. They are phrases that are very broad and are usually a top level category.

#2 Long Tail Terms

Then you have the long tail phrases that are made up of three words or more. A few examples of long tailed terms would be; red convertible sports cars, how to improve a bad credit score, and luxury real estate in upper New York. These terms are more descriptive and the searcher is usually closer to making a buying decision.

If you are just looking at the top 10,000 most searched phrases, then you will see mostly header terms. However, as you can see in the chart below, the top 10,000 searched phrases only make up 18.5% of all searches. The long tail terms make up over 70%.

long-tail-keyword-statistics-total-google-traffic

Additionally, Search Engine Watch published the results of a Conductor study, which found that long tailed traffic converted to sales at a rate of 250% greater than head terms.

I always tell the students of my online course that the battle for Google traffic is won with deep keyword research. It really is no different than gold prospecting. You have to dig through miles of dirt and rock to find the keyword phrases that are worth their weight in gold.

Here are the five keyword research tactics that will make your Google Analytics look like a hockey stick:

#1 Target keyword phrases that your domain name can rank for

If your website is CNN.com, then you can write about anything you want. The reason why is because their domain authority is 94 out of 100. Domain authority is a scoring system, created by Moz, that is based upon the link profile of each domain name. The more quality links you have, the higher your score is.

Having the luxury of managing over 100 blogs of my own and my clients, I was able to statistically identify what type of keyword phrases (based on number of Google results) different domain authorities can effectively rank for on Google.

When you type in a phrase to Google it will come back with a number of results. The number of results shows how many pages and posts are competing for that particular phrase. The higher the number, the harder it is to rank high enough to get traffic.

Here is the breakdown of what different domain authority sites can rank for.

Domain Authority Less Than 30 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 50,000 Google Results
Domain Authority 30 to 35 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 100,000 Google Results
Domain Authority 36 to 40 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 250,000 Google Results
Domain Authority 41 to 45 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 500,000 Google Results
Domain Authority 46 to 50 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 1,000,000 Google Results

My blog has domain authority of 44. If I spend my time writing posts on keyword phrases with less than 500,000 Google results, then I am going to consistently get high Google rankings for every post I publish. The screenshot below shows the simplicity of how to choose the right keyword phrase.

If you’d like to dive even deeper into keyword strategies, check out the “5 Long Tail Keyword Research Tactics that Every Blogger Should Master.”

Posted By

Brandon Gaille

Brandon Gaille is an AdSense publisher. You can learn more about Brandon at BrandonGaille.com and listen to his popular blogging podcast, The Blog Millionaire.

If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Source: Inside AdSense

How to earn money blogging with AdSense

This is the first of five guest posts from AdSense publisher Brandon Gaille. Brandon has built his small business marketing blog, BrandonGaille.com, to over 2 million monthly visitors in less than three years. He’s featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his personal blogging experience to help AdSense publishers grow earnings. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to build a residual income with Google AdSense. However, most bloggers are doing it the wrong way, and that’s keeping them from growing their earnings to a whole new level. Today, I’m going to share with you the four pillars that helped me build my blog traffic to over 1 million monthly visitors in less than 18 months after my first blog post.

My blogging success story is rather unique. For most of my thirties, I was mentally and physically disabled because of damage done by a small pituitary brain tumor. I was fortunate enough to find a doctor that identified the right combination of medicine to bring me back from the depths of nowhere. My mental cognition was regained a mere months before my pregnant wife was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. I was able to be there for my wife. Our first son was born healthy, and my wife officially beat cancer two months later.

The fear of our health problems returning led me down the road of creating a blog. One of my top skills is reverse engineering successful systems and rebuilding them into a more productive system. Before my health was ravaged, I had built several multi-million dollar companies on the back of this unique skillset.

Before I made my first blog post, I spent six months researching the blogs that received the most traffic from Google organic search. I identified the specific tactics from over 70 high traffic blogs. Then I ranked the tactics by the most productive, and I eliminated the bottom 80%. This is what I built my blogging system upon. Within four months of launching the blog, I had surpassed 100,000 monthly visitors. Today, my blog receives over 2 million monthly visitors.

Here are the four pillars that my system was built upon:

Pillar #1 – Keyword research

Most amateur bloggers fail miserably at keyword research. The reason for this is because they are overwhelmed by all of the data, and they are usually using the wrong tools. I will be breaking down my simple system for identifying keyword phrases that serves as the topic and title for future blog posts. This will allow you to blog with a purpose. And that purpose is to create blog posts that consistently produce organic traffic.

Pillar #2 – Compelling blog titles

You can write an epic 4000 word post, and it can doomed for failure because of a poorly chosen title. The post title is actually more important than the post. I’ll be revealing my Perfect Title Formula, which will allow you to craft blog headlines that drive a ridiculous amount of traffic and social shares.

Pillar #3 – Engaging content

Over the last three years, I’ve perfected my blog’s ability to engage new visitors. The average visitor spends 5 minutes reading one of my blog posts. I will be sharing the eleven techniques that I apply to my blog posts to achieve absolute engagement.

Pillar #4 – Getting High Quality Links

The key to remember here is quality over quantity. Do not waste your time chasing low quality links or adding your blog to a directory. A single high quality link can increase the rankings of every single post on a blog, which can double your traffic in a matter of 90 days. There are two strategies that work better than everything else, and I will show you exactly how to execute them.

Over the next four weeks I’ll be sharing tips on how to increase your AdSense earnings right here on the Inside AdSense blog. In the meantime, go here to keep reading “How to Build a Blog to Over 1 Million Monthly Visitors” and find out how to apply the four pillars to your blog.

Posted By
Brandon Gaille

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

3 easy tips to build a relationship with your audience

Drawing new visitors to your site is only half of the battle. Having a plan for them to follow once they get there is the key to encouraging repeat visits and building a meaningful relationship with your readers.

To engage user-focused design for your site, it’s important to consider the following:

1. Keep It Simple

Gating desirable content can be a great way to learn more about visitors by prompting them to fill out a form or sign up for your newsletter to access it. However, roughly 67% of users will abandon an effort to obtain information or purchase something online if there are too many steps to take. Make sure your users get what they need in as few steps as possible. Matched content is another way to keep visitors from checking out too soon by increasing your odds of presenting them with content they are directly interested in.

2. Identify User Moments

People often look for inspiration and ideas while they complete a task online. Anticipating your visitors’ needs can help you set up your site to better serve them so you can capture and capitalize on these important moments. Whether they are purchasing something or just browsing, presenting this information in the right format can greatly increase the amount of time they spend on your site.

For example, if you’re an eCommerce site selling chocolates, having recommendations alongside each product such as gift boxes, complementing candy, and drink pairings can get your site visitor thinking about the holidays or gifts for their loved ones.

3. Create engaging Calls to Action

Bold “sign up” buttons and friendly prompts or reminders move visitors to take action. From bold colors and text to exaggerated size and other visual clues, there are a number of ways to make these important actions stand out on your site and even fun for users to engage with. In fact, our own AdSense team tested different campaign graphics on our marketing campaigns and saw higher implementation and engagement rates.

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

Posted by Jay Castro

From the AdSense Team

@jayciro

Source: Inside AdSense

More defenses roll out to thwart Clickjacking

At Google we defend our ad systems from fraud using technology in a variety of ways. Often our investment in these defenses goes beyond protecting against only known threats. Our engineering and operations teams are continually working to identify new and emerging threats. Once a new ad fraud threat is found, we move quickly to defend our systems against it using a combination of technology, operations, and policy.

Recently we identified “Clickjacking” (aka UI Redress) as an emerging threat to cost-per-click display ads, and we’ve rolled out new defenses to protect advertisers against this threat. Clickjacking is a type of web attack where the appearance of a website is changed so that a victim does not realize they are taking an important action, in this case clicking on one or more ads. For example, a user may intend to click on a video play button or menu item, but instead clicks an invisible ad unit.


	Figure 1: An example of a clickable ad hidden behind a video playback button.

Moving quickly to thwart Clickjacking attempts

Earlier this year when our operations team identified Clickjacking activity on our display network, they moved swiftly to terminate accounts, removing entities involved in or attempting to use this technique to trick users. Our engineering team worked in parallel to quickly release a filter to automatically exclude this type of invalid traffic across display ads.

This approach delivered a one-two punch to publishers who violated our policies: our operations team, which forms an early line of defense against invalid traffic, cleaned out publishers from our ad systems, while engineers built a new filter as a durable defense to protect against Clickjacking traffic.


	Figure 2: An example of mouse-tracking, which leads to a page with lots of ads being opened regardless of where a user clicks.

Even as there are ongoing attempts to perpetrate this type of attack, our ongoing and proactive hunt for emerging types of invalid traffic has enabled us to move early and quickly to address Clickjacking threats on several occasions.

A combination of defenses

Our Clickjacking defenses operate at considerable scale, analyzing display ad placements across mobile and desktop platforms, evaluating a variety of characteristics. When our system detects a Clickjacking attempt, we zero-in on the traffic attributed to that placement, and remove it from upcoming payment reports to ensure that advertisers are not charged for those clicks.

This latest effort also is a great example of how our work against invalid traffic is at the intersection of technology, operations, and policy. Each piece plays a key role in keeping our ad systems clean and defended against ad fraud.

Equally important, our efforts also promote a level playing field for good publishers on our ad systems. And while our Ad Traffic Quality team works hard to keep our ad systems clean, we also rely on publishers to do their part in contributing to a healthy ads ecosystem.

Best practices for publishers

Publishers play a crucial role in delivering a good ads experience. We’ve included some relevant best practices below to remind publishers of ways that they can improve the ads experience on their web properties.

Double and triple-check implementations to verify that your sites contain no programming errors, conform to AdSense policies, and display correctly across different browsers and platforms.
For mobile devices, plan your layout carefully to accommodate limited screen real estate.
Avoid placing ads close to other clickable content to prevent accidental clicks. For more guidance on how to implement banner ads see our best practices video.
Monitor analytics often to spot traffic anomalies. For example, setting up Analytics alerts can show if an unusual amount of traffic comes from a particular ad placement or site.
Lastly, if you find suspicious activity, please report it via the Invalid Clicks Contact Form.

We’re proud of our work to protect our ad systems against emerging threats like Clickjacking, and we’ll continue to be vigilant as we fight the good fight against ad fraud.

Posted by: Andres Ferrate, Chief Advocate, Ad Traffic Quality

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Tag Archives: Learn with Google for Publishers