1.
Ads can work well in-between other stuff. On a games site of mine, some of the games
don't contain ads next to the game area; the AdSense ad will only be shown in-between
game rounds. This is the time the visitor is not concentrating on performing a task
but might take a small break, and be open to the option of visiting new sites.
2.
Put too much emphasis on AdSense and your site may be linked to less. The more
available space you dedicate to AdSense on your site, and the less you differentiate
between ads and content in your design, the more money you earn with the program,
right? Not quite. While pushing the AdSense may result in short-term gains, it might
also convince some visitors that the site is too crowded to be worth visiting again.
And some of those visitors may also be bloggers or other people who might otherwise
help to promote your site with links to it. And the less your site gets linked to, the
less traffic it gets, meaning AdSense revenues may go down in the long term.
3.
Even if you get huge traffic, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on
the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site
content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than
others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games
site than on a technology blog. I also heard people say that AdSense does quite good
on product oriented blogs; say, one post solely about the SPAM; another post solely
about Gadget XYZ, and so on.
4.
Image ads can be relevant and work for you, but they might also apall some visitors.
Google's AdSense program gives you the option to choose between a couple of different
ad formats. Two main groups are text ads vs text & image ads. When you choose the
latter, Google will deliver what they deem works best for your content (or so one
would hope, and it would be in Google's best self-interest to serve you the best
possible ad, it seems).
However, Google doesn't really know your layout preferences, and they don't really
understand when your audience thinks ads are "too much"; and considering image ads
include Flash animations (which you can't disable, once you go for image ads), Flash
animations may well push some people away. One thing you can do is to only show image
ads in areas where they don't disturb the content, e.g. at the end of posts. Also, you
might want to listen to visitor feedback on the ads being served; I received emails
before that the blinking ad on this or that site made a person want to leave the site,
at which point I blocked the specific advertiser via the AdSense Setup -> Competitive
Ad Filter option.
5.
When it comes to context sensitive targeting, you can increase or lower the importance
of certain parts of your page. To help Google find a matching ad for your content, you
can use the HTML comment syntax by encapsulating more important parts with
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
... your important site content here ...
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->.
Or, to lower the importance of a section, use:
<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
... your not so important site content here ...
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
(Google notes that it may take up to 2 weeks for this change to your site will be
taken into account by the AdSense.)
What if your site doesn't have any good matchable content to begin with, though? Say,
the page just includes an image. Well, for the reasons of search engine optimization
but also ad optimization you might want to consider using at least a descriptive
title, an explanatory footer containing the important keywords or keyphrases (the kind
of footer that actually helps the human visitor by explaining what the page is about).
In the case of image content, reasonable alt and title attribute texts should be used
as well.*
*Whatever you do, don't resort to "keyword-stuffing" as it doesn't help your visitors
and may get your page ranked lower in search engines.
6.
Be aware of risks when you change ad layouts too much. I once had a system on the
server to randomly differ between various AdSense layouts on the same page. Doing so I
was hoping to add some good variety to keep the ads at least somewhat interesting and
notable. Shortly after I stopped doing so and simply included a rather big static area
for the AdSense to "do what it wants," the AdSense revenues for that site increased.
Now, I don't know if this was a coincidence of some sorts, as revenues often go down
or up even when you don't do anything, but it might well have been that there was a
connection between adding too much homemade randomization, and lowered revenues.
At another time, during the redesign of this blog, I switched from one ad format to
another for the end-of-posts AdSense ad space. This, combined with perhaps other
layout changes, suddenly cut the ad revenues in half for the blog. It took me some
time to realize that I had some ad channels* set up for the specific old layout size,
and by changing this I must have kicked out all those advertisers who were pushing
their ads through the channel.
*This setting can be found at AdSense Setup -> Channels.
7.
Use competing ad systems when AdSense doesn't seem to work for a site. At
CoverBrowser.com, which shows galleries of comic and book covers and so on, I tried
including AdSense ads in "non-annoying" places in the layout (including trying to use
AdSense affiliate links via AdSense Setup -> Referrals), but this didn't seem to work
at all. However I then tried "affiliating" the "buy" link below individual covers,
utilizing the eBay affiliate commission system offered by AuctionAds.com*.
(Disclosure: Patrick Gavin, co-owner of AuctionAds, paid me for consulting before on
other projects, like Sketchcast.com.) This worked a lot better, and as it was simply
connected to an existing site feature, it also didn't add clutter.
A good start to find other ad programs is to search for adsense alternatives on
Google... you will see a lot of lists which are dedicated to competitors. (Note that
some of these competitors may be US-only.) You may also want to join an ad or blog
network like The Deck, Federated Media (disclosure: I was part of Federated Media
before), or 9 Rules. Before joining such a network – which might require you to show
them your traffic stats and so on – check if their typical ads and campaigns fit with
your site layout and your general ad type preferences.
*CommissionJunction also offers an eBay affiliate system but CommissionJunction has
really low usability, in my opinion; setting it up is confusing.
8.
Sometimes you may get a sudden increase in traffic, hence ad clicks, but you can't
locate the source of the traffic. I'm using Google Analytics to track my sites, though
AdSense is also a good first indicator of traffic explosions... because it will show
the combined page views of all your sites (provided you include AdSense on all of
them), as opposed to Google Analytics, where you need to check site by site
individually.
However, sometimes even with Google Analytics, you won't be able to locate the source
of your traffic because there's no specific new popular referrer being shown (a
referrer is the site linking to your site, provided people click on that link). In
these cases, it may well be that your site has been discussed in a TV show or similar,
as the show won't "link" to you (but audiences will be entering your domain manually
into the browser when they like what the saw on TV). When you feel that there has been
a traffic explosion sometimes you may get additional email feedback in regards to your
site, and it makes sense for you to ask your visitor: where did you first find out
about the site? Maybe the can let you know about the name of the TV show, or magazine,
or other "offline" source responsible for the peak. (I sometimes sent pointers to the
BBC Click show for instance, with partly enormous effect.)
9.
Consider using AdSense even when the page doesn't get any traffic yet. Who knows, some
day the traffic suddenly explodes, and you might not realize fast enough and thus miss
out on the action (as sometimes, traffic goes as fast as it comes).
On the other hand, reversely I would suggest to never do a site just to make ad money
with it. That kind of motivation may lead to spammy sites that don't help anyone
really. (If a project is great, it's great even if it doesn't make any money.)
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