The Four Cornerstones of a Profitable AdSense Website

guest post by Pedro Cardoso

Would you like to receive a big fat check from Google each and every month? Does the thought of earning a steady stream of revenue from your website traffic sound appealing? If so, there is much you can do to ensure your AdSense earnings grow steadily month after month.

Not all of the following advice is quite intuitive and obvious, but it is the result of an extensive trial and error process. After years of experimentation and optimization, most webmasters will agree there are four main pillars in the strategy of any profitable AdSense website; here they are:

1) Split/Testing and optimizing ad placement

This is possibly the most obvious strategy that all serious webmasters should be using. And not many do, which is too bad since this lack of commitment usually translates in substantial wasted revenue.

When it comes to ad placement, making a small change can lead to tremendous performance improvements. And while there are best practices that should be considered as general guidelines, each website will have a different "sweet spot" that can only be found through persistent experimentation and split testing of alternatives.

As far as the best practices go, most of the ad clicking action in any website is known to take place above the fold (that's the top area of your website, which is visible without scrolling down). This means that simply by moving your AdSense units as close as possible to the top of the page, you will translate in an increase of click through and revenue.  Could it be any simpler? No, it couldn't… and it's a first big step to ensuring your ads will get a decent performance.

2) Improving page-views/visitor ratio

While the average of page-views per visitor may sound inconsequential towards your AdSense performance, it is quite significant in various ways. A website that gets multiple page-views /visitor with a low bounce rate will send all kinds of right signals to Google, and positive repercussions should follow.

A website with good visitor retention seems more authoritative and trustworthy than another website where visitors never hang around much time or bother exploring. As such, authoritative websites will tend to get significantly higher CPC (cost per click) over time. By improving the usability and encouraging your visitors to stick around and explore, you will be simultaneously taking action to improve the worth of your ad inventory.

In simple terms, it means that by reducing your website's bounce rate, you will make advertisers feel more comfortable about paying more for a placement in your website. Also, you should keep in mind that each added page-view for the same visitor is a renewed chance for a click in those AdSense ads you’re hosting.

3) Increasing organic traffic

There more visitors you have going through your website and generating page-views, the higher your earnings potential. But not all traffic sources are equal, as far as AdSense performance goes. There is generally a significant difference in the revenue generated by social traffic or search engine traffic.

If you're looking to increase your AdSense earnings specifically, then you should focus on getting more organic visitors (i.e. coming from search engines). The reason why is because people coming in from search engines are usually looking for something in particular, which will usually be matched by the contextual ads they will see, making them likelier to click those ads. Does that make sense?

This consistency between the visitor's search intent and your content strategy can be instrumental to ensure that your ads will get clicked and your earnings will grow. People who use search engines are usually looking for something specific, while visitors coming in from social media websites tend to be just looking around at random, meaning they will be much less likely to click contextual ads.

4) Reducing website loading speed

This is quite possibly the most important, most over-looked technique relevant to AdSense optimization. As far as novice webmasters are concerned, the connection between website loading speed and ads performance is non-existent. But savvy AdSense publishers know better, and even Google has pointed out how website loading speed is increasingly an important ranking factor.

Why is it so important to make sure your pages load briskly? Simple: because the vast majority of Internet users are impatient. They will usually take no longer than 8 seconds to decide if your website suites them. And if your website takes that much time to load and actually show the ads, do you know what happens? That's right, you will miss out on lots of potential visitors that could clicks that might click your ads, broadcast your content and even become a regular visitor.

You want to do all it takes to ensure your website loads in three seconds or less. Ideally, it should load in less than a second. This optimization alone has the potential to double your CTR (click-through rate), especially if your website is currently taking more than 8 seconds to fully load.

Concluding thoughts:

Try working on these four angles and you'll see your AdSense earnings grow quite substantially in the short future. Make sure you optimize your ad placement, improve visitor retention, improve your organic traffic and reduce website loading speed. Working on these core strategies could make all the difference between owning a profitable AdSense website, or owning a website that doesn't even get monthly payments from Google.

About the author

Pedro Cardoso collaborates with the slow computer website, which specializes in providing advice on how to fix a slow computer and speed up windows. Come visit us if your sluggish computer is getting in the way of your productivity! That too, can become a limiting factor to the natural growth of your AdSense earnings.