1. Responsiveness of audience to the ads = A travel website that provides information on travel to Spain will attract visitors looking for ways to arrange their travel and spend money on their vacation to Spain. Your site provides the info, but the ads will provide hotels, travel agencies, tourist destinations, car rentals -- ads that are likely to get the attention of the users of your site. This is a site that will most likely do well with Adsense. However, if you are a gaming website where the main purpose of the user is to play games on your site, then Adsense will not perform as well.
2. Ad format = some types of ads do better than others depending on your content and layout. In our case, large rectangles in the middle of the content is the best, while leaderboards do not generate as much as income. Skys are the worst for us. Experiment and measure the results via channels and see which formats work best for you.
3. Ad placement - check Google's heat map as they have tested where the best placements
4. Ad colors - sometimes ads blended into the content works wonders, but sometimes ads that contrast your site colors work best
5. Number of ad units on a page = we are allowed maximum of 3 ads + 1 ad links + 1 search box on a page. Maximize the allowed number based on the resulting look of your page (you don't want an overkill of ads). Users going to your page and reading your content may ignore the banner or rectangle at the top of the page, but may click on the ad at the bottom of the article
6. Smartpricing - the big unknown in Adsense. No one knows how this actually works. But it can affect the pricing of the ads on your site. If the advertiser paid for $0.50/click - but your site is smartpriced - then the cost may be discounted lower (e.g. $0.25). So you may try to develop a site based on high paying keywords but if smartpricing gets to you, then you may not get as much per click as what you are expecting from your keywords.
Here is Google's explanation of smart pricing
Google's smart pricing feature automatically adjusts the cost of a keyword-targeted content click based on its effectiveness compared to a search click. So if our data shows that a click from a content page is less likely to turn into actionable business results -- such as online sales, registrations, phone calls, or newsletter signups -- we reduce the price you pay for that click.
Experiment with the factors above (except smartpricing, which you can't control), and see which combination works best. Remember though that not all sites do well with Adsense - even if you get gazillions of traffic but your visitors are not interested in looking for ways to spend their money, they won't be interested in your ads and won't click.
Tips for Avoiding Your AdSense Account Getting Banned by Google
I have seen quite a lot of AdSense publishers posted in different forums stating that their AdSense accounts were banned by Google due to fraudulent clicks. Most of these people claim that they are innocent and have never clicked on their on AdSense ads. So they have no idea why click fraud can occur on their AdSense accounts. The truth is click fraud can happen in several ways and not necessarily caused by the AdSense publisher himself/herself who accidentally clicked on his/her own AdSense.
Below are some of the tips to protect your AdSense account:
1) Do not use autosurf programs to promote your websites that contain AdSense. Autosurf programs can substantially increase your website traffic or hits, AdSense page view and ecpm but people who surf your site only to earn advertising credit or other type of incentives. So the traffic generated from autosurf programs aren't counted as real and thus against AdSense policies.
search engine marketing
2) If possible, do not involve in any traffic exchange networks and programs. If you have join one or more programs or networks that can make you a steady AdSense commission, you should start worry about your AdSense account as this could mean that members of the program(s) were clicking each other AdSense ads all the while whether intentionally or unintentionally. As soon as Google detected a group of people were clicking each other AdSense, many of the members AdSense account in the program will be suspended. Also traffic exchange can be another mean to artificially generate tons of unreal website traffic or hits and boost up AdSense page view & ecpm and it is strictly prohibited by Google .
3) Do not join AdSense exchange networks. They are similar to traffic exchange programs except members are participate just for clicking each other AdSense. This should be a guaranteed way to be banned by Google.
4) Read all the Google AdSense policies at http://www.google.com/adsense to see whether you have against any policies and make the necessary modification.
Wish you all the best ... share your success with me by mailing me at davidmethew[at]gmail.com
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