Tracking Your AdSense Performance
Google AdSense is a program that offers an easy way for web publishers to display ads relevant to their site on their pages and earn money. It also offers pay per impression, or pay per click advertising, options to businesses who want to get the word out about their product or service to interested customers. Once you start your AdSense account don’t forget about it and wait for money to start rolling in. There is still work to be done.
Since you will only make money from click-throughs on your site,
you’ll need traffic - and the more traffic, the more money
you’ll make. Here are some tips for getting the most from your AdSense dedicated space and for driving up traffic:
- Location, location, location. Position your AdSense ads at the top of your page or near the focal point of your pages
- Offer freebies or unique content. Free stuff is a big draw to visitors and more visitors equal more click throughs, which turns into more money in your wallet
- Rotate content often and let your visitors know it’s always changing. It keeps them coming back for more.
- Keep those email addresses. It’s important to keep the email addresses of your visitors and let them know when your content has changed. Consider offering a free newsletter or ezine to your visitors to stay in contact with them.
- Add Google search to your site. In addition to offering visitors the convenience of searching on your site, you can make more money from Google by adding this feature.
- Keep your graphics small and simple. Because graphics and animations take longer to load than text and links, the simpler your pages, the quicker they load. And the faster they load, the faster your visitors can click their way to your profit.
- Keep the design simple and clear.
Reporting and monitoring is the next important step. Google has
built in reporting features but you may want more detailed
reports as well. The Google reports will show:
- Total number of page impressions
- Number of ad clicks and the click through rate
- The cost per click (CPC) and cost per 1000 impressions (CPM)
- Total earnings
While this is wonderful, valuable information, you may also want
to know:
- Click through rates of every page on every domain you are using AdSense on (the Google tool called “Channels” limits the information you get from each domain or ad type)
- Keyword reports if you have the Google Search feature on your site(s), so you can optimize for those search words
- Reporting in real time, rather than waiting 48 hours for reporting from Google
- Which particular ads are making you money
- Detailed information about each click including IP address, date/time, page the ad was on, particular ad that was clicked on, original referrer to your site
You can get all of this from third party AdSense tracking software, available online from a number of vendors. You may want to email Google to make sure it’s an approved script; otherwise you risk being removed from the AdSense program.
Once you have the data regarding which ads are working and which aren’t, change your preferences to stop running ads that aren’t paying off and increase the ads that are. There are options to change color palettes of the ads to better fit your site, a variety of ad formats to always keep your website looking fresh and don’t be afraid to rearrange content often.