Tag Archives: Tips to earn more

Put your users first with the four S’: Speed, Scroll, Style, Simple

We’re all consumers of web content. Yet as content creators it can be easy to forget what we need as users. But don’t worry, you’ve got this, and we’ve got you covered with just four S’.

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

1. Speed

We all know how frustrating it is when a page takes forever to load. We twiddle our thumbs and look from side to side. And after just three seconds, we bounce.

But somehow publishers aren’t responding to this primal need that we all know as users.

According to Google's research from the Mobile Speed Matters report, the average load time for mobile sites across the web is 19 seconds. This is a LONG time. Usain Bolt can run 200m in 19.9s - think of what your users can do with a tap and a swipe.

But how does this impact me? Well, the report also states that…

53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Publishers whose mobile sites load in 5 seconds earn up to 2x more mobile ad revenue than those whose sites load in 19 seconds.

By now we think you’re sold on speed. So what’s next?

Understand your site’s speed with these resources

Consider one of the following quick fixes

Get our mobile web speed toolkit and...

Measure your site’s performance
Assess the different components impacting speed
Prioritize the order your site loads
Test, remeasure and repeat to improve your site speed

2. Scroll

The magic scroll. It’s an infinite, endless, perfectly loaded stream of content. There’s no need to click, to wait for a page to load, to navigate to that tiny ‘next’ with your giant thumb. It’s all right here, content, just waiting for you to consume it.

There are, of course, a few caveats before developing an infinite scroll. Like almost everything online, this isn’t a one size fits all solution.

Infinite scroll is great for ...

UGC publishers with constantly evolving content - think Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest.
Sites with lengthy articles or tutorials. No one wants to click ‘more’ or ‘page 2’ anymore. It’s just too dang hard.
Publishers using a slideshow with pagination. Consider a lazy loaded infinite scroll instead. Users love it.
Publishers considering mobile first (aren’t we all?!).

Watch out for …

Crawler errors & SEO impact and check out this article for creating a search friendly infinite scroll.

3. Style

Style should never be an afterthought. You and your users want to interact with something that looks good and feels good.

There are two primary components to style: content style & ad style.

First: Content Style

Great websites are able to maintain a consistent style across pages and platforms. Consistency gives users a sense of familiarity when interacting with your content.

Choose a color scheme and stick to it
Choose a layout and stick to it
Choose a theme and stick to it

We can’t stress this enough - stick to it.

As the industry continues to migrate towards a mobile first perspective, consistency across device types and platforms becomes increasingly important. Responsive web design enables your site to adapt to various device sizes without changing the overall look and feel or compromising user experience.

If you're up for the challenge, check out more on responsive design.

Second: Ad Style

In the internet of yesteryear it was nearly impossible to monetize without stripping a site of what made it beautiful. The good news? It’s 2016 and now you have the ability to make a profit and maintain your site’s style.

When implementing ads think about what makes sense for you and your users.

Consider responsive ads that automatically adapt to the user’s screen size
See if native ads are right for your site. If so, you can modify to match the look and feel of your site
Add matched content units, allowing your users to interact with more relevant content

Here's a sample of a native ad design.

Most importantly use ads to complement the content of your site. Since content is king, it’s important to ensure that you give your users what they're looking for in a format that’s easy to find and navigate, this includes the ads on your site.

Place ads at natural breaks or where the user’s attention may have waned. Not only will this improve user experience but it also may encourage a higher CTR and increased audience engagement.

4. Simple

Keep it simple, folks.

This rule underlines most everything that is targeted towards consumers, but it is even more important for a mobile first audience.

When it comes to consuming digital content, we’re a generation of hungry hippos. We want headlines, snippets, concise and clear information. We want minimalist design with streamlined content and easy navigation.

Tips on keeping it simple

Make it touch friendly. What’s easier than that?
Bullet points make your content easily consumable
Be brief in sign-ups. If your site requires users to sign-up or sign-in, keep input requirements to a minimum or consider adding a Google sign-in option to speed up the process

So there you have it; the four S’ of user experience: speed, scroll, style, simple. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up today and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Posted by: Sarah Hornsey, from the AdSense team

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

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

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

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

Source: Inside AdSense

Boost your mobile performance with the right ad sizes

We’re paying special attention to improving the mobile ad experience to help empower content creators, news organizations, and publishers. As mobile continues to grow, choosing high-impact mobile ads are key for businesses to generate revenue from a mobile audience.

When choosing the right mobile ad units for your business, it’s a best practice to ensure that each and every mobile impression receives the highest value possible, which can be determined by a mix of metrics like viewability, size, placement, and demand.

It’s also important to protect the user experience by choosing the right ad formats and placements for your site to engage mobile users so that you don’t interrupt their desired intent.

Start by choosing a high-impact mobile format: medium rectangle (300x250), large rectangle (336x280), large mobile banner (320x100), and rectangular responsive ad units tend to get the best results. Here’s why we recommend these formats:

Each format works well on both desktop and mobile (with the exception of the large mobile banner). This gives advertisers the opportunity to appear on a variety of screens which increases demand, upward auction pressure, and potentially even earnings. The large mobile banner will also allow 320x50 display ads to appear within this format, which increases competition. If the 320x50 ad unit wins the auction, it will always be vertically aligned to the top.
These formats are bigger and more engaging than smaller mobile units, so they'll grab user's’ attention. Here's an example of what the medium rectangle looks like placed above the fold, yet below the main content.

For additional changes for incremental revenue gains, you may want to consider trying link units. Link units are designed to be responsive, so they work with both mobile and desktop. You can add up to three link units in addition to the default limit of 3 ad units per page.

However critical mobile is to your business today, it will be more critical tomorrow. Energize your mobile strategy today by using high-impact mobile ads, they’re a great way for businesses to generate more revenue and engage your users.

Be sure to follow us on Google+ and Twitter we’d love to hear what’s working for your mobile business. Until next time.

Posted by:

Denis Rodrigues,
AdSense Account Strategist

Source: Inside AdSense

Why are my earnings down right now?

Four things to explore if your AdSense earnings take a dip

Today we'd like to share some insights about why AdSense earnings sometimes go down -- and look at how to troubleshoot what's going on when that happens. Google has a variety of tools and reports that will help you see what might be causing a decline and how you can respond to optimize your earnings.

One of the first things to consider is: have your overall page views gone down, or are other issues causing the drop? There are many factors that affect revenue, but the key ones to look at include:

Clickthrough rate (CTR)
Cost per click (CPC)
Page revenue per thousand impressions (page RPM)
Page views

You can view all these metrics on the Performance reports tab in your AdSense account. Here are a few tips on how to address issues you may discover.

1. My page views have decreased

When troubleshooting changes in page views, it's a good idea to extend the date range of your reports out to 30 days or more to help identify trends or specific issues. A drop in page views could simply be seasonal; retailers, for instance, tend to see a traffic drop after the holiday season. But a decrease can also be due to a change in your content.

If your traffic has dropped, here are some ways you might increase it:

Promote your site with other major sites that cover the same topics.
Promote your site through social media, and create a group of interested people who regularly visit your site.
Use Google Search Console to make sure your site is being correctly crawled and indexed.
Update your site regularly to encourage repeat visitors. You might also want to send out an email or a newsletter about your updates.

2. My cost per click has decreased

CPC is market-driven and depends on factors like advertiser bids on keywords and the CPC values they're willing to pay. For example, CPC can fall at the beginning of each quarter when marketers are shifting budget. When looking at changes in CPC, it's a good practice to extend the date range of your reports out to a year. Then:

See if you're using the best-performing ad sizes. Generally, our most successful sizes for CPC and CTR are 720x90, 336x280, 160x600, and the 320x100 mobile banner. Learn more about the most successful ad sizes.
Make sure you're not blocking ads you don't need to. Blocks on too many advertisers, ad networks, general or sensitive categories will often decrease CPC because there are fewer advertisers in the auction bidding on your inventory. The more inventory your site has access to, the greater the chance that auction pressure will drive up your CPC.
Look at how seasonality can affect your advertisers' bids. For instance, swimsuit advertisers often increase their bids in the early weeks of summer. But if your site caters only to students, you should expect traffic to fall in the summer. Learn more about how the ad auction works for a clearer understanding of how these kinds of changes can impact your earnings.

3. My search rank has dropped

Deeper investigation may show you that your page is not ranked as highly in search results as it once was. The Webmaster Troubleshooter is designed to help you resolve common issues with your site in Google Search and the Google Search Console.

4. My CTR or page RPM has decreased

A drop in CTR or page RPM can be caused by confusing site design or poor targeting. Visitors who see your ads might not click on them because they find them irrelevant, or perhaps they don't see your ads at all. And that leads to lower earnings.

Here are some best practices to help drive up your CTR and page RPM:

Blend, complement, and contrast: use these techniques to design ad styles that will be successful for your site.
Maximize ad space with multiple ad units: be sure to see if three ad units is right for your site; it's also our policy limit.
Use the best-performing ad sizes: As noted in the CPC section above, our most successful ad sizes are 720x90, 336x280, 160x600, and the 320x100 mobile banner.

We hope these tips will help you understand exactly what's happening on your site ― and send your earnings back in the right direction.

Posted by Rachel Barrett

Google AdSense Team

Source: Inside AdSense

Viewability Spotlight for Sellers: 3 speedy ways to improve viewability

Our latest infographic puts a spotlight on viewability by sharing a dozen technical best practices for improving viewability based on insights from Active View, Google's MRC-accredited viewable impression measurement technology.

Recently on the blog, we focused on 2 tips for enabling viewability measurement. In this post you'll learn tips for improving ad viewability by optimizing your apps and sites for speed and responsiveness.

Here is today's recommendation:

We hope these recommendations are improving your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 4 ways to improve ad layouts for better viewability rates.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran,
Product Marketing Manager

Source: Inside AdSense

Viewability Spotlight for Sellers: 2 tips to enable viewability measurement

There's a lot that publishers and app developers can do to increase the likelihood that their ads will be measured as viewable. Our latest infographic puts a spotlight on viewability by sharing a dozen technical best practices for improving viewability across four categories based on insights from Active View, Google's MRC-accredited viewable impression measurement technology. These insights and recommendations come from our services teams that have spent thousands of hours working with publishers and developers to improve advertising outcomes.

In this post, we focus on tips you can use to improve ad viewability by optimizing your apps and sites for speed and responsiveness.

Here is today's recommendation:

We hope these recommendations will improve your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 3 speedy ways to improve viewability.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran,
Product Marketing Manager

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Tag Archives: Tips to earn more