Google Adsense Guide – We have taken out all the steps and all the possibilities to create this complete guide to Google Adsense . Adsense is without a doubt one of my favorite platforms to make money with a website. It has a multitude of options for which I have taken screenshots and several optimization tricks.
There are other ways to earn money with your blog such as affiliation, banners, info products, etc. All of them are interesting, but today I am talking about one, which is one of the most used by bloggers and which gives you the best results. So let’s get down to business.
Table of Contents
What is Google Adsense?
It is an advertising system that allows companies to place their relevant and personalized ads on web pages, blogs or YouTube videos so that users see those ads, in order to buy those products or services.
For us, bloggers or website owners, Google pays us based on the clicks that people make on the advertisements of our content.
Why should you use Google Adsense and not another advertising platform?
Because it is one of the best ways to generate income with our website 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. One of the characteristics of Adsense in relation to other advertising platforms is that it usually shows ads on topics that users are interested in. This is not always the case, but it is the one that comes closest.
If you want to have a source of passive income and make your work profitable with the blog, this is a very interesting option. You just have to create your website, get visits through the content, then add the ads and that’s it.
Other advantages in relation to other platforms are:
- Simple and easy to use
- Help and tutorials for customization and improvements
- Instant implementation of the ads. Very comprehensive and easy to understand reports
- Opportunity to optimize settings and achieve better results
- Trust in the platform that you are going to be paid, very reliable
- Today, the advertising platform that pays the most for this type of service, etc.
Now that we know a little about Adsense and why we should opt for this advertising system, let’s get to what matters most.
How does Google Adsense work?
As I have said before, its operation is simple, advertisers hire advertising space in Google Adwords and we (blogs, websites) place that advertising on our website using a code provided by Adsense.
When a user clicks on any of the advertisements that we have on our website we charge a small commission that will be added to our “estimated daily income”.
Google Adsense usually pays for CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions), although the most common is CPC since it usually pays more for that system.
How do we register on the platform?
The first thing is to register at the following URL: https://www.google.es/adsense/ with our Gmail account or with a new one. Then we send a request to this address , where:
- We enter with our account
- We put the address of our website (main URL) and the language of the contents
- We add personal information to configure the account and be able to collect payments
The Adsense team will review and email you a response within a week.
How to connect my website to Google AdSense?
To complete the approval process on the platform, once the Adsense team has sent confirmation of your registration, you must connect your website to AdSense. To do this, you must carry out the following procedure:
- Copy the code that appears on the main AdSense page;
- Paste in the HTML code of your website (header), after the <head> tag.
- When you have it in place, check the box and click the Done button .
In a few days, the Adsense team will send you a notification by email confirming that your website is connected to the platform. But don’t forget that in order to charge you must enter your bank account and the PIN that Google Adsense will send you home. I’ll explain below how to complement this part to receive your payments.
Now that we can place ads on our blog or website, I want to tell you that you have two ways, depending on your needs you can use one or the other.
What options do I have for setting up ads on my website?
You can choose between QuickStart ads or ad units:
Quickstart
It is the quickest and easiest way to start running ads on your website. If you don’t have the time or patience to configure your ad units, this option is yours.
Ad blocks
This is the most used option as it allows us to have personalized control of the ad placements on our website. If you want to do tests and check how each type of location responds, this option could be yours.
I will not elaborate on this point because the idea of the post is to show the interface of the tool, but if you want to know more about these two options, click here.
And we start by breaking down the tool inside, so that you get to know its main characteristics better.
Google Adsense main interface
This is the interface of the platform from which I will break down the points that I think are the most prominent, since it is a very broad tool:
As we can see, it is quite simple and easy to understand. On the left side it shows us the main menu with my ads, reports, settings, etc. And on the right side the information that we decide we want to see through graphs and reports.
1) Main Page
It is the first option that the platform shows us, always with the “Estimated income” according to the period we have selected (today, last 7 days, this month, etc.) and the “Current balance” and the last payment.
In the drop-down menu (… points) that appear on all screens we can:
- View Report
- Set up
- Help
- Post comments
Below we find all the other screens with graphics, reports that give us a lot of information about how the ads are working on our website. You can configure these screens according to what you are most interested in seeing (performance, websites, ad units, optimization, countries, platforms, bid types, etc.). To customize your main screen you just have to use the thumbtack and set the screens that most you are interested in seeing first.
2) My ads
Here we have a section separated by 4 submenus (Content, Search, Ad styles and other products).
2.1) Content
The content is the 1st submenu, in turn it is separated into 5 other subsections.
2.1.1) Ad blocks:
All the ad units that we have created in our Adsense account will be predefined, by name, ID, status and summary. The ad units can be active or inactive, depending on the performance you are seeing from each of them.
What are the most recommended or best paid blocks in Adsense?
Here I think it is good to talk about this topic about the most recommended ad units, as it is one of the questions that I have seen the most in blogs and forums on this subject. Google Adsense gives us some recommendations:
Recommended ad units:
- 300 × 250
- 320 × 100
- 336 × 280
- 728 × 90
They are the ad units for which more advertisers bid and that is why they are the best paid.
Ad units that I like:
- 200 × 90
- Adaptable: if they themselves recommend this to us before anyone else, it will be for a reason.
- InArticle: most recent and very interesting option
- Matched Content to hold the traffic
How you can imagine each project is different from another, so we can look at these recommended options but in the end what really works is for you to do AB tests yourself and get your own conclusions about the best ad units for your project. For me, this is where the key to all of this is.
2.1.2) Page level ads:
They are types of page-level ads that AdSense only shows on your website at times that they consider ideal based on their parameters. And they can be:
Anchor / Overlay Ads – Mobile-only ads that are placed at the bottom of the page (user screen) and can be easily ignored by the user.
Bullet Ads – Full screen mobile-only ads that appear between page loads on your website. They can also be easily hidden.
2.1.3) Ads balance:
A very interesting function that allows us to show only the ads that generate the highest income and thus we can improve the user experience on our website since we will reduce the number of ads on the website or blog.
2 .1.4) Follow-up criteria:
It allows us to create up to 500 custom channels and show them to advertisers as a targeted ad placement.
Here you should be aware that if you change the name of the tracking criteria, all bids directed towards it will be lost.
2.1.5) URL tracking criteria:
Here you can see how the ads are working in specific sections or urls. With the limit of 500 criteria.
2.2) Search
The 2nd submenu, search, is in turn broken down into 2 other sections:
Search engines: a new and interesting option since it allows the use of personalized search engines within our website or on certain pages. As well as customizing the style of the ad to suit the style of our page.
Follow-up criteria: the same as we have said in the previous submenu.
2.3) Ad styles
It is the 3rd submenu and here Adsense gives us the possibility to choose different types of ads, according to colors, styles, backgrounds, fonts, etc. All this so that our advertisement adapts as best as possible to the style of our website.
2.4) Other products
It is the last submenu and here the platform allows us to use Google Adsense in:
- Games: We can make our games profitable with in-stream and overlay ads.
- Video: Make your video content profitable through in-stream and overlay ads.
3) Allow and block ads in Adsense
We continue to break down the main menu, and with the section “Allow and block ads.“
Here you have two submenus: Content and Search. In the case of “Content” the tool allows us to block ads:
- Point to Specific Urls
- By general categories
- Sensitive categories (topics such as sex, gambling, dating, politics, etc.)
- Advertising networks
- Ad posting
- Ads (ad review center)
I recommend you take a good look at this section so that no ads appear on your website that have nothing to do with your theme and that can damage the image of your website a bit for your audience.
In “Search” the tool allows you to block ads that point to specific URLs on our website.
4) Performance reports
Within the “Performance Reports” section we find different types of reports: my reports, common reports, advanced reports, income profile and events.
4.1) My reports
In “My reports” we have 3 options:
- Default report: the tool offers us a default report with highlighted metrics such as (number of clicks, visualizations, overview, etc.). We can add other options.
- New report: when we create a report based on the metrics that matter most to us.
- Manage reports : where all the reports created are located.
These reports can be exported in Excel CSV or Google Drive spreadsheet to better work on all the metrics that Adsense offers us.
4.2) Common Reports
In “Common reports” we have some of the metrics that we have seen previously such as: the entire account per day, my websites, ad units, countries, etc.
It is a faster, more visual and personalized way of observing each of the metrics (clicks, impressions, page views, RPM, etc.) that will help us to know where we can apply strategies to improve our earnings with Adsense.
4.3) Advanced Reports
Here the platform offers us a series of reports according to:
- Whole account per week
- Entire account per month
- Custom channels
- URL tracking criteria
- Verified websites
- Ad types
- Ad behavior
- Ad sizes
- Creativity sizes
- Types of segmentation
- Bid types
- Advertising networks
- Experiments
- Announcement sessions
4.4) Income Profile
This is a recent report and it shows us the average RPM in various segments of the most profitable ad requests. We can use this report to find out the RPM of the 5% of the best performing ad requests over a given period.
4.5) Events
Finally, events where the tool offers us a graph with a timeline that marks the evolution of the metrics in our Adsense ads and thus quickly observe their results in a given period.
5) Optimization
This is another relatively new function that the platform offers and that gives us guidelines to optimize our ads through opportunities that it has detected that we are not performing in our actions.
You have 3 subsections:
5.1) Opportunities:
Adsense according to our actions notifies us with recommendations that we can make to improve our income.
5.2) Experiments:
Possibility of conducting experiments (test types AB) to see what type of ads works best and get more income. Then when the experiment is over, you can choose one or the other.
5.3) Labs:
Here it offers us the possibility of testing new ad formats that will be in a “beta” before they go live.
6) Account
Point 6 of the menu is the “Settings” of your Adsense account and how you can imagine it is personal data that you have to fill in without further ado.
- Account: to put personal information and data about the account (ID, account status)
- My sites: your added websites and domains that work well with related content appear.
- Access and authorization: manage users, tracker access, third-party access, integration with Google Analytics and AdMob account.
- Status: Policy violation (account and website violations), tracker errors, and messages sent to us by Adsense.
- Payments: where is the information about the payments with our income, transactions, configuration and the bank account to receive the payments.
7) Help
As the name says, it is a section where we have help for some questions that we may have with the platform. Some of the questions you may find are:
- Frequently asked questions about payments
- How to connect your website with Adsense
- Configure the payment method, etc.
8) Send feedback
This section allows us to send messages where we describe the problem we have or share ideas about the tool. We can include a screenshot in the message so that our request or error that we have is better understood.
Well, we have already briefly seen the Google Adsense interface and I think we already have an idea of how each section works. Now I would like to explain how we create our ads and put it on our website to start generating income.
Steps to create my ad units in Adsense
To create your ad unit in Adsense follow these steps:
1) Go to “my ads” and then “ad units”
2) Click on “New ad unit”
3) Select the “Ad Unit” you want to create.
You have 3 options:
- Text and display ads
- Related content
- InArticle Ads
4) We put the name of the ad unit (recommended to put a name that you can later identify it later, so as not to mess with other blocks that you are going to create in the future).
5) We select the “Ad size”, I advise you at the beginning to choose the adaptive one recommended by Adsense, it is the easiest and simplest to start.
6) Choose the “Type of ad“, recommended text and display ads (higher potential income)
7) Select the “text ad style” (with various ad styles with fonts, colors, backgrounds, etc.) that best suits your website. Or leave the default if you don’t want to waste time with this step. On the left you have a preview of how the ad would look depending on what you select.
8) The other two points “personalized monitoring criteria” and “reservation announcements” are not mandatory and if you do not master it I advise you to continue to the next point.
9) We click on “Save and get code” and the platform will generate the ad code that we must place on our website.
A code similar to this will be generated, the type of Asynchronous code recommended by Adsense, and we must copy all the code and paste in our website in the HTML source code of the pages where we want to insert that ad unit.
When you have saved those pages, the ads will start to appear in minutes.
How do I embed ad block codes on my website?
If you do not know how to insert the code that you have generated in the HTML source code of your website, here are two ways to do it:
1) Manual You
copy the code that you have generated when creating your ad unit and you go to your website to posts or pages and paste the code in the HTML as in the image.
You can give “preview of the changes” in your WordPress and you will see how the ad would look, according to your created ad unit. In my case, I would get something like this.
2) Automated
Another interesting option is to use plugins that will help you in the task of implementing the ads on your website without having to go page by page pasting the code.
Some of the most used are:
- Quick Adsense
- Ads inserter
- Now! plugin for Adsense
In this case, you just have to paste the code that you have generated in your ad unit in the options offered by each plugin. With Quick Adsense for example you can:
- Define where on your pages each of the ads goes (above, after reading more, footer, middle of the post, etc).
- Add code using shortcodes;
- How many ads do you want per page;
- Ads or not on Sidebar, etc.
Where do AdSense ads generate the most revenue?
Well this is the question that everyone asks. I already told you that I do not think there is a different formula, because some projects work better with one type of ads and placed in different places in your content, and in others, ads in completely different places.
But as always there are some that tend to work better, here are several options according to my experience:
- Ads on Sidebar
You can put a 300 × 600 responsive in your sidebar, most blogs use it. - Top of the web
Add link ad in the header of the template (although this option is not possible for everyone, it depends on the template of our website). - Middle text
Another 300 × 250 ad unit in the middle of the text. - At the end of the article
Another adaptable 200 × 90 or links at the end of the content.
Other options to consider:
- InArticle ad unit
Halfway through the post, these are very large ads that can easily generate income. - Related content ad
Another of the recent options in ads that Adsense offers us and that allows us to add a block with 3 ads and 5 related content from our website.
With this, we intend to generate more clicks and at the same time offer content on our site that is interesting to users and to us, it will allow us to improve their stay on our site.
Well now that we have the ad units and the ads on the web, comes the part of collecting the generated returns. I will quickly tell you the steps to follow.
How can we get payment in Google AdSense?
It depends on the country where we are, some ways to collect are:
- By Bank transfer
- Via check
- Using Wire transfer
When we register our account, Adsense allows us to choose the payment method by which we will collect our income. If you want to change the payment method you must go to “Settings” and then “Payments” .
5 Steps to receive an Adsense payment
1. We must fill in our tax information
2. Confirm the beneficiary’s name and contact address
This step is important because here they will send us the personal identification code (PIN), which we will need in point 4.
3. Select the payment method .
The forms of payment vary according to each country, as I have said before. The one most often used is by bank transfer.
4. Verify the address
When your account income reaches the address verification limit, Adsense will send you a personal identification number (PIN) to the recipient’s address on your AdSense account.
To receive payments, you must enter the PIN in the AdSense account.
5. Reach the payment threshold
Keep in mind that there is a minimum limit to collect your income, 100$ if you do not reach that minimum before the end of the month, it will accumulate for the following month until you reach the limit. Then you can change the limit to higher values if you want. Payment is usually made from the 21st of the following month.
For example, suppose your account payment limit is $ 100. If your current balance reaches $ 100 during this month and you have completed the previous steps, Adsense will issue a payment from June 21.
To finish this guide, I leave you a list of the topics that are best paid by Google Adsense and that may be useful to create your niche blogs.
The best topics to create niche blogs with Adsense
According to the content, news and blogs about Adsense there are some topics that are better paid, but of course they also have greater competition. Some of them are:
- Insurance
- Hosting
- Trips
- We pay
- Job
- Mortgages
- Hotels, etc.
Now you will say to yourself, now I understand why there are so many websites about travel or work, right?
Google Adsense prohibitions and limitations
I could not finish this guide without mentioning some prohibitions that you must take into account if you do not want your account to be penalized or banned by Google Adsense. Be careful that if you are penalized and your account is closed it is difficult to have it active again …
- You cannot use Adsense on websites with illegal content;
- You cannot use Adsense on websites with links to pirated content.
- You cannot use Adsense on websites or blogs with porn content.
- Clicking on your own ads is prohibited.
- Forbidden to ask your audience for clicks.
- Forbidden incentivized traffic from sites like Facebook (through campaigns).
You know, better to go little by little than to want to earn a lot and in the end they block your account and no longer be able to use it.
Well without further ado I hope you liked this complete Google Adsense guide , and it helps you take that step of starting to monetize your website that is always a help to continue with our dream.
Happy learning !! Feel free to comment if you have any question in mind while reading this wonderful article.
Also Read : How to start a free blog in 5 minutes – Quick Guide
