So if any of you are like me Adsense is a mystery and sometimes a mess! I have been doing a lot of research on what goes into it and what brings in the most money from it. I thought I would share some of what I learned here.

There are a few tools to help you gauge how your adsense ads are doing. First are the clicks on your site. This will tell you how many clicks you have had overall on your site. Next is your click through rate or ctr which is the percentage of people who click on ads that visited your site. So if 10 out of 100 people that visited your site clicked on ads then you would have a %10 click through rate. Then you have your eCPM which in laymans terms means how much you will make on avererage for every thousand impressions. This will go up and down every day depending on what people are willing to pay for ads.

So with these tools you can see that your ctr should be as high as you can get it along with you eCPM. The problem is you have no way of controlling either one.

What I do that has been working well is to put my ads in the middle of stories or articles so people will see them as they are reading. I also use lots of keywords in my articles that will produce good ads. I can't really tell you what the keywords are because they change all the time but if you go to google labs you can see some of the more popular searches of the day.

After that I really just cross my fingers that the eCPM will be up for the day and that my click through rate will go up depending on how well I have placed my ads.

People will argue that picuture ads and text ads are different but they really aren't. As long as you have lots of good content your ads will conform to what you talk about on your site and people will be more likely to click on them because they are interested.

Anyway I hope this will help anyone that is looking for some info on asense. Just don't give up!

Hi Jenny,

You can also suggest to google what keywords or paragraphs within your text that you would like them to target by using this code:

<!--google_ad_section_start -->
your keyword or text goes here!
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

Once you implement the code it takes a couple of weeks for the ads to adjust.

If you put your ads within your text it will get more clicks but remember to put them "above the fold" because they pay better.

To find high paying keywords, I like to use the adwords keyword tool. To use it, just put in the keyword, get the results. Then, where it says "Choose columns to display::, choose "Show estimated Average CPC". Next, where it says, "Calculate estimates using a different maximum CPC bid:" put in the amount $100 and hit recalculate. Then click on the column header titiled "Estimated Average CPC". Next click on the little black up arrow next to Estimated Avg. CPC. This will you give you a general idea as to what advertisers are paying for ads for those words. Of course this will not tell you what you will make per click but it will give you ideas as to specific keywords to choose.

Hope that helps,
Kathy

Thank you! This helps a lot to target more specific keywords that relate to individual sites, as well as better paying keywords.

One thing I did forget to mention that I just learned is that if you see ads on your site that you don't want there you can go into your adsense account and under the filter area enter their URL so their ads won't show on your site. This will block competitors, spammers, etc from showing ads on your site.

Thanks for the help Kathy!

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