AdSense 101: Building your brand

AdSense 101: Building your brand

AdSense101 PageSpeed Passion into profit

Mei 03, 2017 Add Comment

8 minutes to read
Now that you’ve got your account setup, and you’re writing winning content, it’s time to build a quality brand and create a sustainable revenue stream with AdSense.

What separates a website from a brand? Credibility, consistency, and community.

Think of the websites you visit most - chances are they’re updated regularly with content that’s familiar and trustworthy. You can also navigate these sites intuitively, without putting any thought into how you’re consuming the content you love or where the links you’re looking for are positioned.

In this blog, we’ll cover how to effectively measure how well your site is performing, how to use experiments to uncover new insights, and how to lay out your site in a way that engages your readers.

Measure your performance with reports 

Only by digging deep into how visitors engage with your site can you identify the roadblocks that may keep them from returning. 

To make sure you’re up-to-date with everything you need to know, check the ‘common reports’ tab in your AdSense account dashboard. Focus on the following key areas to analyze your overall account performance.

• The reporting dashboard gives you a quick summary of three main reporting metrics: estimated earnings, page views, and revenue per thousand impressions (RPM). It’s a great way to quickly check the overall health of your account. 
• The entire account by day report helps you analyze daily performance, and gives you a better understanding of why your earnings change over time. If you’ve made recent changes to ad units or placements, then it’s a great way to measure how the adjustments affected click-through rates. 

To find this report, visit the Performance reports tab, then Common reports on the left-hand panel, select Ad units and then add Platforms from the top as a secondary dimension. 

• Use Ad units + Performance to measure your campaign success by device. CTR and Active View Viewable (AVV) are the key metrics to monitor here, with AVV showing you how many of your total measurable impressions were truly viewable. If an ad’s active view percentage is below 50%, then consider placing it in a more prominent area to improve engagement. To learn more about viewability, check out DoubleClick's 5 Factors of Display Viewability.
• The Platforms report identifies how ads are performing on different devices. For example, you may find that your ad units are performing better on mobile devices than on desktop (or vice versa). If that’s the case, then measure your web traffic and make sure that your ads are optimized for the devices you receive most traffic from. 
• If you manage multiple domains within a single account, then use the Sites report to compare performance. The report is especially helpful if you have different mobile and desktop versions of the same site, allowing you to find new ways to optimize UI for consistent experience across devices. 

Every website is different, so if there are specific metrics you want to target, then learn how to create your own reports to measure what matters to you. 

Use experiments to discover new opportunities

AdSense Experiments split your site traffic into two different ad settings, so you can compare performance and make more informed decisions. 

There are three different ways to run experiments on your content:

1. Design it yourself by choosing the ad setting and variation you’d like to test.
2. Choose an experiment from an opportunity on your Optimization page. 
3. Use automatic experiments, which allows AdSense to run experiments on a small portion of your web traffic that are tailored to your website. 

Experiments can help you to measure the impact of both ad content and ad style on your earnings. Discover whether ‘text only’ or ‘text and display ads’ capture the attention of your audience, and whether or not changing the colors of your ads helps them to blend in.  

We recommend allowing automatic experiments on your site, as a time-efficient and easy way to inform your decision-making. 

Improve the usability of your site

Great content can get lost when it’s hosted on a website with poor usability. Pages that are slow, needlessly complex, or difficult to navigate are more likely to disrupt your visitors focus and drive them away.

For a better UX, we recommend focusing on the 4 S’s: Speed, scroll, style, and simple. 

Speed: A recent study by Google found a strong correlation between page speed and key performance indicators like revenue, bounce rate, session duration, and viewability. Web users are impatient when it comes to loading times, and are likely to get frustrated and abandon slow pages. 

To measure the speed of your website, use PageSpeed Insights or the Web Developer Kit. And if you’re looking for some quick fixes to improve loading times, consider asynchronous loading, lazy loading, or AMP.

Finally, use the mobile web speed toolkit for in-depth and tactical recommendations to get your website up to speed. 

Scroll: Infinite scroll continues to add new content at the bottom of your page, taking away the need to load new pages. 

It’s ideal for publishers that post lengthy articles, tutorials, or slideshows, and works particularly well for websites focused on mobile consumption. 

Style: Your website needs to look attractive and consistent across all pages to build immediate trust with new visitors. Focus on two areas: content style and ad style. 

For content style, choose a theme, layout, and color scheme, then stick to it. Consistency is key to developing a brand that your readers will grow comfortable and familiar with. 

Responsive web design improves UX by maintaining the same look and feel to your site regardless of the device it’s being viewed on. 

With ad style, the first thing to consider is how they will affect the flow of content on your site. Placing ads at natural breaks in your narrative, or in areas where the user’s attention may have waned, can improve UX and may encourage a higher CTR (click-through rate). 

When placing ads, take some time to consider your options. Responsive ads automatically adapt to your user’s screen size, while native ads and matched content may help you unlock new ad revenue. 

Simple: The best digital content is scannable, snappy, and intuitive. By focusing on simplicity, you’re removing the roadblocks that potentially stop users from enjoying your content. 

Here’s some tips to make sure your site is as easy as possible to engage with:

• Make it touch-friendly for mobile users
• Format your content the right way
• Use minimalist design where possible.

If you think AdSense is a fit for your website, then sign up and get started.

Posted by Jay Castro, @jayciro

AdSense 101: Create and share winning content

AdSense 101: Create and share winning content

AdSense101 Best Practice Google Analytics Passion into profit

April 26, 2017 Add Comment

6 minute read




Content is everything we consume online. Users arrive on a site to be educated, entertained, inspired, or complete a task.

Content is how you win new site visitors, and how you entice them to return. So it’s important to remember that, though ads are driving revenue, content should be the focal point of every page.

With that in mind, part three of our series for new publishers focuses on how to plan, write, and promote great content. If you missed part one (AdSense 101) or part two (AdSense best practices), then check them out and get caught up.

The keys to engaging, shareable content

Be targeted, consistent, and frequent: Take the time to figure out who is reading your content and which topics they engage with most (we’ll get into the mechanics of this later on). Update your site as often as possible with fresh content, tailored to your audience.

Use video where possible: People crave video, users from around the world are now watching a billion hours of YouTube’s incredible content every single day! Video personalizes your brand and can boost the amount of time user’s spend on your site.

Be readable: Successful online content is scannable and snappy; follow these best practices to make sure your articles look enticing to viewers:

• Don’t use more than 7 sentences per paragraph 
• Keep your column width between 700 and 800 pixels 
• Organize your content with headers and subheaders.

Stay on top of trends: Use online tools like Google Trends to identify subjects your audience is interested in, and discuss them while they’re still fresh. Trends is also really useful for location targeting - identifying popular topics and keywords in your target areas. 

Incorporate evergreen content: Evergreen content is information that stays useful and relevant no matter when it’s consumed. While trending topics should be used to generate buzz, evergreen content will bring a consistent source of referral traffic that may boost your position on organic search pages.

Figure out what works, and do more of it

If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to link Google Analytics and AdSense. Otherwise, the following recommendations will not be applicable for you.

Content groups allow you to bundle your content into different lists, to analyze the themes that drive most engagement with your audience. For example, if you run a digital marketing blog, you could create content groups around SEO, social media, PPC campaigns etc. 

After setting your groups, use the AdSense page report to view and compare metrics. You may discover that your audience is interested in one particular theme - if so, try to focus on that topic more at the expense of groups with less engagement. For example, if your foodie blog has more views on food truck review articles than any other group, then adapt your content strategy to include more of that content.

The Landing Page report in Google Analytics helps you understand where users landed on your site, and where they left from. This will give you insights into the type of content that draws visitors from external sites, and may highlight content that should be re-worked due to poor metrics.

To get the most value from the Landing Page report, track the following:

• Look for pages with high bounce rates. If you find that one or two areas of your site drive your users towards the exit, then ask yourself what you could do to improve them.
• If you’ve got quality content that’s not attracting new visitors, then play with the headline or experiment with different primary images to promote it. 
• Analyze page speed. 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. If some of your pages are slower than others, then it’s likely they contain bloated elements. Consider compressing images or getting rid of animated files. Check out the tactical recommendations to increase page speed in part two of this series.

Plan ahead with your audience in mind

Use the Demographics and Interests tab in your Google Analytics account to understand who’s reading your content, and what their interests are (you’ll need to enable this feature before getting started).

The Demographics report will give you insights into the age and gender of your audience, and allows you to segment these groups to see how different people react to your content.

Use the Interest report to shape your content to your audience’s interests, and identify upcoming events they may be interested in. For example, if fans of your digital marketing blog are also interested in new technology and gadgets, you could mention these learnings across your social channels to increase your following.

At this point, you’ll have accumulated data from content grouping, as well as the Landing Page, Demographics, and Insights reports. Use it all to paint a picture of your average user, what they enjoy, what they dislike - then use those insights to build a content calendar.

A content calendar will allow you to plan a content strategy that’s focused on the topics you know your audience enjoys. Be sure to research seasonal events related to your industry or product, so you can discuss them while they’re still relevant.

Build an audience on social

Growing an audience on social media can provide publishers with a consistent source of referral traffic to their sites. As with content, the best way to compel users to follow your social accounts is to provide them with consistent value.

Here’s some tips to help you set up and maintain a strong social presence:

• Don’t be too self-promotional. You’ll want to link back to your content, but if that’s all you focus on, potential followers will lose interest. 
• Use your content calendar to prepare posts around upcoming events in advance. Users care less about an Oscars tweet a week after the ceremony. 
• Create relationships with influencers. Retweet them, mention them in a favorable way, and link to their content. These relationships can lead to guest-blogging opportunities or retweets from an account with a large audience. This tactic can help you break through your current organic reach to access new users. 
• Build relationships with your users. Answer their questions promptly, engage with them in conversations. If your audience feels valued, they’ll be much more likely to help you promote your content. 
• Use Google Trends to discover trending topics on a daily basis, and tie in posts with popular conversations. 

For a list of helpful tools to help you manage your social accounts and build your audience, read our ‘Amplify your content with social’ blog post.

And make sure to check in next week, when our series for new publishers continues with a post on improving performance to potentially maximize profits.

If you think AdSense is a fit for your site, then sign up now and get started.

‘Til next time.

Posted by: Jay Castro, @jayciro