AdSense Do’s and Don’ts
Quite a number of people have already adopted Google AdSense into their website/blogs in order to monetize them (and perhaps earn some pocket money on the way). However, in the extreme excitement of seeing your profit piling up as the day goes, alot, and I really mean alot of publishers (namely you, who owns a website or blog with adsense) made the most obvious mistakes in using the Adsense (If you have no idea what am I talking about, take a look at my previous post - Fund your website (or blog) with Google AdSense (Part 1)).
Most of these mistakes is a direct violation of Google's Terms & Conditions for running their AdSense program, as well as the AdSense Policies. This means if they found out about your misbehaviours (it is really easy to detect), you might get your AdSense account banned. Forever. Yes, along with all the hard-earned cash in it!
Let's see what are the top mistakes people always made in publishing AdSense on their site,
1. DO NOT (EVER!) Click on your own AdSense ads (or get it clicked for whatever reason)
If you dont realize this already, this is the neat way to get your AdSense account closed (banned) by Google the fastest way. Often on sites, the publishers will say something like "Help me run this site by clicking on the ads, blabla..". It might sounds noble or honest, but it is in direct violation of Google's Terms! Some sites offers some form of benefits by clicking on certain ads on their site. You shouldn't do this at all with AdSense. If you want to run such program, then run your own advertising system.
Not only this, you better watch your colleagues, family, kids, friends, whoever that might try to be smart by attempting to increase your income by clicking on your ads every single time. Google is pretty smart in detecting fraudulent clicks. Basically, to be safe, just let the ads run on its own, and if you published the ads properly (and stratergically), you should be getting certain amount of clicks automatically.
2. NEVER meddle with the AdSense's codes.
Some of us have certain amount of technical knowledge, enough to know what each line of Google Adsense's code does. Many of us are naturally tempted to fiddle with these codes, usually in order to make the Ads looked like a part of their website.
I strongly suggest you change the colors and appearance of your ads directly inside Google AdSense's website. Maybe you just want to change the color a little bit - but better be safe than sorry. Sometime we are not aware of the extra changes we tend to made on the way. So in order to be as safe as it gets, edit your AdSense setup with Google's tool, and never, ever fiddle with it on your own.
3. DO NOT Disclose Confidental Information about your AdSense account
The only information you can freely tell the public about is your total income from AdSense - that's about it. Anything else (like CTR, CPM, etc) are not allowed to be shared. Basically these information are only for you and Google. In my opinion, these infos are more important to you as a publisher, because they tells you how effective each of your ads are.
To put it plainly, if you wish to show off your income with AdSense (for whatever reason), just take a screenshot, and cover up/blur those information the visitors/public shouldn't know. Simple as that.
4. Make sure your language is supported by Google
Even though a large amount of websites are mainly in English, some of us do run localized websites. Being in Malaysia, for example, some might even run websites in Malay in order to reach specific communities. Before you place any ads on your non-english website, I would suggest you to verify if Google supports such language for their AdSense program.
5. Place Ads ONLY on content pages
AdSense needs one thing for sure to ensure it provides sensible and relevant ads - CONTENTS. Thus it only makes sense for you to put the ads on the content pages. A lot of publishers tend to put the ads on Login, redirect, error pages as well - supposedly to increase the click through rate. Well, it does increase your clicks in a bit, because sometimes people will click on the ads on these pages, but it also ensure another thing - that you will get your account closed by Google in no time!
6. Take charge of your Ads and Contents
As above, we know that we shouldn't place Adsense ads on a non-content pages of the websites. However, there are also a few types of content pages you should not put your AdSense code in, example would be a Gallery (Photos, Mp3s, Videos), illegal contents (pornography, explicit contents) or a page with hate-related contents, violence and any other means of information that is dubbed illegal.
7. You only need ONE AdSense account, forever
Yes, it doesn't matter if you only have one website to run or you perhaps have a few hundreds, you only need to have one AdSense account, ever. Sometimes people create a lot of accounts for AdSense because it is easier for them to "track" how effective each sites are. These people have one problem - they do not read and utilize adsense's features properly. AdSense provides a feature called "channels" where you can group and filter ads for different sites in order to gauge their performance (more info of this in my instalments of Adsense guides, soon).
On the plus side, running all your sites in one AdSense account will make your revenue hit the payment threshold faster. Google only mails your cheques once your income is over USD 100.00 anyways, so why not get that cash sooner?
8. Label the headings of ads as "Sponsored Links" or "Advertisement" only
I've seen sites that put a whole length of ads on the sidebar, and label it "Menu" or "Contents". This might be the best effective trick to fool the visitors, but this is also a direct violation of Adsense Terms. Don't be greedy. If you don't want to label them, then don't put anything else.
9. DO NOT place your Ads in Emails
Some of us run newsletter or any form of subscription on their websites, which allows them to update the visitors on what's happening once a while. It is very tempting to simply include the adsense codes into the E-mail to somehow get a few extra clicks. Let me tell you one thing - this is not worth it. Why? First, because it is, once again, a direct violation of Adsense Terms, and second, they are monitoring any illegal activities involving adsense every second. So don't try to act smart and be funny. You won't get the last laugh this way.
10. DO NOT make the Ads open a new browser page when clicked
Google generally don't like poping up new windows for their Ads, and so does many users. So if you code your own website, please do not make the AdSense links open in a new window, ever.
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These are some of the most common mistakes that I have been noticing (made some of them last time, too - and learned the hard way) when people are dealing with their Adsense. Do your best in promoting your site, and getting genuine interest in each of the clicks registered through your Ads. This way, you'll enjoy longer-term benefits from AdSense, as compared to a few month's slightly-better-income and misery after that, because you're banned by Google.
Happy AdSensing!
[...] In my last post about AdSense, I’ve highlighted about the most common mistakes made by AdSense publishers (also known as the website owner). As for today, let’s take a look at some of the best tricks in dealing with AdSense, to boost your AdSense income. Of course, there’s more tricks than listed here, however, I’m going to elaborate some of them that is most effective. [...]