And the latter could be right. I even would dare to say that the domain is not important. Against all odds you would say…But be honest with me.

You could have a .com domain and a targeted keyword rich domain name. If you don’t put effort in updating the website, Google will stop giving your website priority because of only the domain name. No, the website that keeps offering new and fresh content to the visitor will win. Because, Google totally depends upon what webmasters put in their websites. Example: If nobody would talk about ‘Capricot widgets’ on their sites, then Google would not be able to offer ‘Capricot widget’ info to the visitors that search for it, right!

On the other hand if your site would be one of the thousands talking about ‘Dog Training’, even if your domain would be a unique .com name, it would be very hard for Google to choose which one should rank better. Quality content always wins. But still it’s better to keep away from themes that are already taken by thousands of other webmasters.

However,  there is another factor very important and that is the popularity of your website. An algorithm such as Google’s is not capable of predicting if your site will be liked by the people. On the other hand they can measure popularity by checking how many people talk about your website. And ‘talk’ means, link back to your website. So, if for instance an already good ranking and popular site would be linking back to your site to show people what your site has to offer, Google would see that as a popularity indication.  And Google rewards sites that are very popular with the Page-rank factor.

The page-rank of a site can increase fast if many sites with a high Page-rank link back to your site. Or, if the number of back-links is incredibly high. But, even better would be if the link back is set up correctly. That means that sites link back with the anchor text that is one of the main keywords of your site. The latter also makes that your site ranks better in the Google search results.

Another something that proves that domain names are not always the most important factor to rank well is that so many big names, I mean big sites, such as Yahoo, Google, Bing, linkedln, Paypal, Flickr, etc… they don’t have a real meaning in their domain name. They’re just popular because they offer a service that is very important to the majority of the people that visit the Internet. Youtube for instance is not a word you’ll find in the dictionary, but it is popular because people like the videos they broadcast.

The Sandbox Effect is a topic of hot debate among people interested in search engines and search engine optimization. There are many different opinions about it, including the view that the Sandbox Effect doesn’t actually exist and that the search ranking behaviour can be explained as a result of a mathematical algorithm, rather than a decided policy.

Although certain details of the Sandbox Effect are disputed by webmasters, there is general agreement that the Sandbox only applies to search results from Google, and that results from other search engines such as Yahoo or MSN are not affected.

It happens that they use only 1 ad-block and that is good to test placement and colors of ad-text and links. Now, using the maximum amount of ads on your pages doesn’t look attractive. As you probably know by now: keep the visitor in mind. What does the visitor expect on your pages? Useful content. So, just give it to them and blend in an adblock or maybe 2. Don’t make them run away from your website or blog.

To be sure what works best, you’ll have to track and use channels and test placement, different colors, different formats of adblocks and test different number of ad-blocks.

To your success!

How do I get more traffic to my AdSense website?

In order to let people know that your website exists, you’ll have to take some actions. But before you do that you will always have to keep
in mind that you have to stay within the same theme. And preferably keep the choice of your keywords very ‘narrow’ or ‘targeted’ so to speak.

So, how can you get traffic from articles?

Article Directories:

There are a numerous amount of article directories to where you can submit articles. Choose the high PR article directories. This way you’ll get high PR backlinks to your site. Write articles and submit them to the appropriate
category in the article directories.  Choose the keywords for your articles that do not have much competition and search volume. These keyword phrases are often called longtail keywords.

You can find them by using the free Wordtracker tool. This tool displays the amount of searches per day. You will find the FREE Wordtracker tool easily by searching in Google. Choose keywords with search volume of less than 100. I often do less than 20. Go to Google and look for competing websites, by typing in the keyword phrase between quotes.
You choose keyword phrases with low amount of competing websites.

So, actually you choose those that are at the bottom of what the tool brings up. You then write your articles, targeting and using the keywords you found in the tool. Next you submit to the article directories.

Important: The link to your website in your bio-box should be a text link with the keyword you used in the article.

And your website should be indexed quite fast, because of the low competition.

To your success!

One of the tips often given to boost your Adsense CTR is to place images near the AdSense ads. DO NOT DO THAT ANYMORE!!

Google AdSense is very clear about this:

You are NOT allowed to place images near the ads, not vertically not horizontally. Not even with a border between them.

What you can do to draw the attention of the visitors to the ads is place them just below a title. People tend to read the titles and then continue to scan the page. If you place the ads just below the title chances are that some of them get clicked.

Another thing that I notice very often is that ‘AdSense product’-owners advise you  to track the clicks on your ads. Which is good advice.

However, they often link to a merchant that sells a tracking script that used to track the clicks and URL’s of the ads. Since the last changes to the Google algorithm most of the scripts became useless.

But they still sell them and sometimes at a lower price.

Be warned…

Can I use images next to the Adsense ads to increase the CTR?

It is not allowed to use images near the ads to attract the attention
of the visitor to your page to the ads. This can have a misleading
and confusing effect on the visitor.

Can I use images next to the Adsense ads if I put a line or a
space between the ads and the images?

This will not make any difference. As stated in the previous answer
this too is against Google’s Adsense TOS.

Can I use Adsense ads on websites with images?

Of course you can. As long as you do not have the intention to make
the visitor click on the ads by putting the images too close to the
Adsense ads.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)

Effective CPM (eCPM) is cost per 1000 impressions. From a publisher’s perspective, CPM is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programs. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands.

Impressions is the number of times an ad is displayed on Google or on sites or products in Google’s ad network. A page impression is counted each time an ad unit is displayed on a publisher’s site. Page impressions are used when calculating reports for Adsense publishers, rather than ad impressions.

Earnings is total money that would be given by Google Adsense for publishers who participate in their affiliate programs.

Earnings Per Click (EPC) actually is average cost per click that would be given to publishers depends on the sum of the click, page impressions and advertiser’s bid.

CTR = (Clicks / Impressions) * 100

EPC = Earnings Per Click

eCPM = (Earnings / Impressions) * 1000

eCPM = CTR * EPC * 10

Earnings = eCPM * Impressions / 1000

Earnings = CTR * EPC * Impressions / 100

What is better to use Adsense on, a blog or a website?

But, let’s first talk about more fundamental things, such as:

What is a good website in general?

•    How do we choose a theme?
•    Will the theme of my website attract many visitors(traffic)?
•    How do I give value to the visitor?
•    Am I passionate about the topic of my website?
•    Will Google accept or decline my website?
•    Do I put Adsense ads on it from the first day?

Maybe these questions are not written in the good order, but we have to take them in consideration before we go ahead and put some crappy website on the net, with nothing useful on it. We even ask ourselves, why we are not succeeding to make revenue from Adsense ads.

So, first of all we have to determine what theme we will choose for our website or blog. The next question pops up and says:
How do we choose a theme?

To make things easier for us we will choose a theme that we are interested in or even passionate about. That way we will not easily fall in a state of procrastination.

Will the theme of my website attract many visitors?

To be able to know that, we will do a search in the search-engines typing our theme within quotes. The number of competing websites will tell us that it will either be easy or difficult to rank for the main’keywords’ of our website. However choosing long-tail keywords(or multiple keyword phrases) will bring up less competing websites and make it easier to rank for those 2 or 3 word phrases.

How do we offer value to the visitor?

If we are passionate about a topic we will put more effort in the creation of our website and be able to offer much more value to the visitor. We will have more basic knowledge about the topic. This will make it easier for us to create content to publish on our website. Very often when your theme has something to do with your hobby or your job you will be able to write enough unique content with the knowledge you already have about the subject.

Will Google accept or decline my website ?

To know that we will have to find out what Google expects from an Adsense publisher. Google wants you to deliver a complete website that offers information that is  relevant to what the searcher asks for in the search-box on the page of the search-engine.
Google gives more value to a website that offers unique and fresh content. Content that is not written by a software application, but that reads like a human has written it.
In addition the website will be well structured and display a menu with text-links to other pages in the website with related content and information about the webmaster, including contact information. Doing the above will help you to be accepted for the Google Adsense program easily.

Do I put Adsense ads on my website from the first day?

Actually it is not a good idea to start displaying Adsense ads right away. The most successful websites are those with a history of offering good solid information to the visitors. Having incoming links from high PR directories and important websites related to the theme of the websites. Having the ads on your website could form a barrier for webmasters of authority sites or directories to create links to your website, because they could have the impression that your only goal is to earn revenue from the ads instead of offering quality content to the visitor.

A good idea would be to start building your website as described above. Continue offering good information and building links with high PR and authority sites until your site has been indexed by Google and displays it on the first page for most of your keyword phrases. After that you can start to monetize your website with the Google Adsense ads. At that time you will have the right visitors to your website that are interested in the theme of your website and also in the titles that the ads display. In addition you will have  enough traffic to make a decent amount of money from the Adsense ads.

In conclusion it is important to maintain the hard work that is necessary to keep growing your website with unique content related to the theme of your website. The traffic will grow slowly but sure and as a result your Adsense revenue will grow too.

Nothing is further from the truth. Although there is no general truth for every website or blog available on the Internet, there still are some killer tips I can give you to increase the revenue you get from having Google AdSense ads on your website.

Google AdSense tip #1:

Colors! One of the most important tips I can give you to increase your Click Through Rate (CTR), which means that visitors to your websites click more on the ads, is to adapt the colors of borders and links of the ads. So, if you want to keep the visitor in mind, you will have to ask yourself : ‘wether the visitor likes ads or not, I always want them to click on the ads’. The best way to attain that, is by making the ads look like the content of your website.

First of all you want to make the color of the border the same as the color of the background, so that it disappears. Second, to make the ad links look like the links of your website, you have to choose the same link color. The above described can be translated as ‘blending’ your ads.

Google AdSense tip #2:

Tracking! The only way to know how small changes to your websites and ads help to increase your CTR is by tracking. You do that by using Google AdSense channels. The best option you can use, in my humble opinion, is the URL channel option. It will enable you to create channels for each and every individual page of your websites. If you have only 1 block of ads on your pages you can easily determine if a
color or and ad placement improves you AdSense revenue.

On the other hand, to know if a certain ad placement, a color , or a format increases your CTR, using multiple ad blocks on a page, you still have to use the ‘Custom Channels’.

Use ‘Custom channels’ smart by giving them an obvious name. Example: if you have a hairdryer website then you could call the ad at the top: ‘hairdryertop’ or for an ad in the sidebar on the left side : ‘hairdryersidel’

So, in a nutshell: use channels to track which ads, formats, colors and placements perform the best.

Google AdSense tip #3:

It should be obvious, but the use of unique quality content on your Google AdSense websites is a ‘must’. This could be one of the reasons why publishers complain about low ‘AdSense’ revenue. They have OR duplicate content OR low quality content , generated by software, OR the content is too general. Being too general or having a too broad topic content on your website will confuse the ‘bots’ and the visitors. After all, people always search for information on a specific topic.

They are always looking for a way to solve their problems. So, give them just that. If it is not possible to write the content yourself, you can always let a professional copywriter do that for you. If you do a search for freelance copywriters you will find literally thousands of professionals to do the content writing for you.

If you apply these tips, then increasing your Google AdSense ads revenue will seem a breeze.

No matter what the Internet surfer searches for, Google will always try to find the website with the most relevant
information to what the surfer typed in the search bar. The website at the top of the search results will be the best
search engine optimized website with the most relevant information.

This means that Google has indexed that website for that specific search term or keyword phrase.

What does this mean for you as a Adsense publisher?

1. You will have to optimize your website for a specific topic, and use specific keywords that are relevant to that
topic in the articles you publish on your website.

2. If you want to keep the visitor on your website you will have to provide good quality content, preferably original
self written articles. Google will find that content and provide relevant ads.

3. If you optimize your website for Adsense ads well enough, then visitors that still do not find what they search for,
will hopefully leave your website by clicking on one of the Adsense ads.

Optimizing your website for the search engines and the visitor, will be easier if you always keep the searcher in
mind and if you ask yourself the following questions:

• If I want to optimize my website for a specific topic,
what does Google want me to provide for the visitor?

• If I want to optimize my website for a specific topic,
what information does the visitor want to find?

• In case the visitor does not find the information. Can I
use this to my advantage by optimizing the layout of my
website?

The above described can only be achieved by doing thorough research prior to the creation of the website. Google will
reward you for delivering quality information and will give your website a high rank in the search results.

Always remember that if you keep the visitor in mind, creating quality Adsense websites will be so much easier.