Top 12 AdSense Optimization Techniques to Boost Your Earnings

5. Link your Analytics Account to Your AdSense Account

By linking your AdSense and Google Analytics accounts, you can have access to AdSense metrics.  You can track revenue, clicks, and impressions to better understand how your site is monetizing.

Source: Google AdSense

Use this data to adjust the ad load and optimize the position of the ad, and your content. You can also use insights from Google Analytics to refine the ad units.

6. Focus On The User

Don’t forget that the real goal is to deliver value to the user and enrich their experience. UX (User experience) is then key to giving satisfaction to potential customers. Too many ads can have a negative effect on the user.

Mixing ads and content in a balanced way can ensure a smooth user experience and reduced bounce rates. Consider the position of the ads, they should be placed to integrate as seamlessly as possible with the content. Also, both the ads and the page should focus in usability.

7. Enhance The Quality of Your Content

When it comes to improving your AdSense revenue, the quality of your content is a must. If your content doesn’t drive traffic, you don’t get money. To optimize your content, there are some tips coming from the Google algorithm itself. Google rewards content that is interesting to the user, is published on a regular basis, and shows expertise in the topic your visitors are interested in.

Keep in mind, that while visitors may be interested in the ads, they are on your site for the content. Even if the ad is interesting and relevant, if your content is as engaging as it should, visitors will scroll down and may forget the ad. 

You can solve this by adding hovering, sticky, or floating ads, that will “follow” the user as they scroll down with the content.

An example of sticky ads: Image source

8. Create and Nurture Your Audience

Before setting up AdSense, make it sure you built an engaged audience that can bring revenue. Filling your website with ads before your visitors know about it, is a sure recipe for failure. Moreover, in this cookie-less world, is more important than ever to create an audience of subscribers, readers, and regular visitors to your site, before you start monetizing with ads. By doing this, you will also make your site more attractive to advertisers.

9. Customize Ad Styles and Sizes

Optimizing for size is more than using responsive ads. You should create different layouts for different devices to be sure the ads are displayed in the right place. Relaying on responsive technology without customization can result in a banner taking up too much screen space or being placed in the wrong place on the screen.

So, what can you do to prevent these issues? Assess the performance of the ads on mobiles such as tablets and smartphones, and add a layout just for mobile devices. 

Another common issue is when the ad styles don’t match the page’s aesthetics or content. Check that the ads are consistent and blend with the page’s layout and content for a seamless user experience. Using contextual ads delivers ad units that best match the user intent and the page content. 

10. Use AdSense Filters to Your Advantage

While filters don’t directly increase the revenue, they can help you filter out ads that may clash with your site’s content. However, don’t go overboard, filtering too much can have a negative impact on your revenue.

Source: Google AdSense

Test how different ad category filters impact visitors, by turning on filters that can improve the experience for your visitors, then measure how visitors react. Check bounce rates, time on site, and engagement time. Then compare with the data when the filters are turned off. By doing this you will get accurate data about how effective are AdSense filters on your visitors.

11. Create Custom Channels

If you haven’t set up custom channels in your AdSense account, you should start. With custom channels, you can create groups of ads or placements advertisers can target directly. By doing this, the competition for your ad space will increase.

Custom channels let you group individual ad units and get performance data for each group. For instance, tracking how your top-right ad is performing. You can also track ad units by adding custom channel IDs to your ad unit code. For instance, to track how much you earn in a group vs another.

Here’s an example from the Google AdSense Help page

How do you create a custom channel? 

1. Enter your AdSense account / Reports
2. Click on Settings
3. Select Manage custom channels
4. Select Add channel
5. Choose your AdSense product and give your channel a descriptive name.
6. Choose which ad units you want to track with this channel.
7. Click Add. 

You can learn how to manage, remove and activate custom channels on the Google AdSense Help page. 

12. Beware of AdSense errors and issues

Sometimes your AdSense console will flag errors and warnings. Here are some of the most common and how can you fix them: 

• Crawler errors: “Robot denied”. This error message indicates the AdSense Bot cannot reach your site. If this happens, remove these two lines from the robots.txt file and you’ll grant access to the AdSense crawler:User-agent: Mediapartners-GoogleDisallow: /
• Missing ads.txt file:  You can get a warning in your AdSense account if one or more ads.txt files don’t have your AdSense publisher ID. To fix it: go to Sites/Overview on your AdSense account and verify on which sites you need to add the publisher ID.
• Fluid responsive ads must be at least 250px wide: Let’s say the available width is 225px, you will get an error message. This warning appears if Google didn’t have enough space to display the ad, and the ad space will stay empty. To solve this, you can place smaller ads or change your layout.

AdSense Optimization Tips for Video Ads

Video ads require their own optimization. Here are some best practices:

Use a third-party HTML5 Video Player

There are many third-party video players that support video ads delivered by the Google Ad Manager and AdSense for Video. If your site doesn’t already support an HTML5 video player, add a third-party tool. You can find a list of video technology companies partnering with Google.

Use All Ad Formats

The Google IMA SDK supports multiple video ad types, including linear, non-linear, non-skippable, and skippable. For instance, an overlay (non-linear) ad appears over the bottom third of the screen and it is available only for web video players.

To maximize your revenue, mix all types of video ads.

Enhance reporting by assigning channels.

Similarly to custom channels or regular ads, you can assign channels to video ads. Channels enable you to check reports on the performance of each page or ad unit. For instance, you can track the performance of your video ads on different pages.

Advanced Google AdSense Optimization Tips

1. Detect and fix invalid traffic

What is invalid traffic? According to Google: “Invalid click activity consists of any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser’s costs or a publisher’s earnings, and for which we decide not to charge the advertiser. This includes, but is not limited to, clicks or impressions generated by a publisher clicking on his own ads, a publisher encouraging clicks on his ads, automated clicking tools or traffic sources, robots, or other deceptive software.”

If you get invalid traffic often, you risk your account suspension, regardless of where this traffic is coming from.

What can you do? Some of the tips recommended by Google include avoiding low-quality traffic sources, beware of social media paid traffic, and having a healthy balance of ads and content.

2. Block or Unblock Categories

By default, AdSense marks the safe categories as “enabled” and disables the risky categories. Most publishers go with the default settings. However, there is a common pitfall here.

Many publishers think that it is better to allow all available categories to increase advertiser competition. But in reality, some categories will have a higher CPC and others a high CTR. You should choose the categories with a high CTR and low CPC. How do you do that?

Look at the performance reports and check which categories are underperforming, for instance,  categories that have a lot of impressions but low revenue. These are the ones to block.

3. Use AdSense smart pricing feature to get higher CPCs

The smart pricing algorithm will track the conversions of the ad for the advertisers, so websites with higher conversions get higher CPC bids.

How can you make Smart Pricing work for you? First, block underperforming categories. Then review the layout so you don’t bring non-converting traffic. To achieve that, assess your customer journey, providing relevant content designed for each part of that journey.

4. Use advanced GeoTargeting

Almost anyone around the world can see your site, but a too wide approach can impact your revenue. Some countries have higher CPC than others, such as developed countries (UK US, Canada, and Australia). If your site is not in English, add an English section to get higher CPC views.

If your site is in English, focus to build an audience in those better-paid locations. Check the Countries section in your AdSense performance report.  Then focus on bringing more traffic from the areas with the highest CPC.