For the small to medium sized Internet webmaster, Google AdSense may be your best friend. In fact, it may even be the best friend of many big-time sites. The reason is simple — when it comes down to it, Google AdSense is the quickest, easiest way to bring advertising to your website.

Whether you are looking to make a living off of your website or just hoping to get a few bucks back to cover your fees, there are plenty of reasons to put a few ads on your site. In order to get AdSense up and running on your site, all you need is a working website and be willing to have advertisements on your site.

How Does AdSense Work?

The way AdSense works is as sort of a middleman to bring outside advertisers to website owners without the two parties having to get together. As a webmaster, all you have to do is paste the code that Google gives you where you would like the ads to appear, and Google does the rest of the work. You design the color scheme and pick the size of the ad, and AdSense will fill the spot with relevant ads.

In order to get relevant ads, AdSense scans the text on each page for keywords. After figuring out what your page is about, it places relevant ads on your pages. It may take some time for Google to accurately analyze your site, but eventually, your site should have only ads that are relevant to your site’s content. To analyze your site and find relevant ads to match it, Google uses “a sophisticated algorithm that includes such factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web, we know what a page is about, and can precisely match Google ads to each page.” If you make your site content rich, you’ll get ads that match the content.

Behind the scenes, Google finds advertisers and websites looking for advertisers and does the dirty work of getting them together. So company X wants to advertise on an iPod related website. Website Y is all about iPods. So when website Y posts pages about iPods, Google may run advertisements from company X on those pages. Company X pays Google their advertising fee. For every click, or for a certain number of page impressions, website Y will get paid.

The overall goal of the website is to get more clicks, meaning that they are providing quality content, meaning the advertising company is getting their ad viewed by their target demographic. Company X gets it’s ad seen by who it wants, website Y makes money off of ads, and Google takes a cut for making it all happen. This is Google AdSense in a nutshell.

The exact formula of how the money is split is not something that is available to anyone outside of Google. You get a certain amount of money per click, but there is no set rate. But from all accounts, it seems to be a fair deal, and using AdSense is an “everybody wins” scenario.

Can You Make Real Money

One of the most often asked questions by people looking to get involved in the AdSense program. The answer is yes. There are some websites making multiple thousands of dollars per day. Because of AdSense (and some other quality online advertising services) there are many, many full-time bloggers.

So what’s the secret to making money off of AdSense? Well, that’s the million dollar question. Each site that makes money uses a different formula to do so. But their are two things that your site needs to make significant money: traffic and content.

It is unlikely (though possible) to get a website up and running and be making significant money right away. You need people to be visiting the site regularly, viewing and clicking on ads. That is traffic. There are many ways to get traffic to your site, but no secret formula of success. The best way to maximize your traffic is content. If you have a lot of quality content, people will keep showing up, and they’ll come back. In my opinion, those are the two essential ingredients to a successful AdSense campaign.

Making money for most websites is not going to be an overnight accomplishments. Since Google doesn’t send a check until you have over $100 in your AdSense revenue, many people wait many months before they get their first check. But if you’re serious about profiting off of your website, there are steps you can take to maximize traffic you get and therefore, the money you’ll make.

How to Make the Most Out of AdSense

As I said before, the most important combination your site needs to make money is traffic and content. Content is simple — make a lot of it. If you have a blog, maximize the content on it. You can post more often, or make longer posts, but either way, you need a supply of content that people will find. Many people find their information on the web through searches, so having things that can be searched for is one way to maximize your content. There is a lot of debate as to whether quality or quantity is the most important aspect of blogging. Some people feel as if you need four or five posts every day, whereas others feel they can post just a few times a week, but they are longer, more in-depth posts. If you are looking to profit off of a blog, this is an issue you’ll have to deal with yourself. Experiment with both, and pay attention to what is your most successful formula. Then go from there.

As I said, most people find websites through searches. That means you will want your site to be found when people search for topics on your site. You may have seen SEO somewhere and wondered what it was, well it stands for Search Engine Optimization. That means making each page of your website friendly to search engines. This means a proper title, keywords, and a description. While this meta information isn’t as important now as it was in the past, it should not be ignored. Nowadays, search engines will send spiders and bots to crawl your site for keywords. Search engines know what your site is about, but it doesn’t hurt to help them out a little and tell them exactly what your pages include.

How to Use AdSense

First of all, remember that Google is your friend when using AdSense. They have great technical support, and if you have questions about AdSense, they’ll answer them quickly. Rule one of using AdSense is follow the Terms of Service. Google has some strict rules, and if you break them, they’ll cut you off. Just follow their rules and everyone will be happy.

Once you sign up for your AdSense account (wait until you have some content), you can begin putting ads on your site. When it comes to AdSense, location and colors can mean the world.

When it comes to colors, there are multiple ideas: one that you want the ads to blend in, as if they aren’t ads at all; and another, that you want the ads to stand out to draw the eyes of the user. Studies have shown that if anything on a web page looks like an ad, users’ eyes will naturally not even look at the area. Even if it is legitimate content, if it looks like a banner or an ad, users may ignore it. I personally feel that blending in is a better option. The best way to figure it out is to just play around with the AdSense options until you have something that looks good and serves it’s purpose. If you’re not getting a decent click rate, you may want to change the layout. Here is Google’s opinion.

But color is just part of the equation. As in real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. Again, feel free to experiment and see what works for your site, but the placement of the ad is as important as any other factor in getting people to see it and click on it. Google has a “heat map” that they use to show where the most successful locations are for ad placement.

Like I said earlier, Google is your friend. They want you to make money. The more money you make, the more money they make. Feel free to play around with your locations and colors, just remember to never edit the code that Google gives you. That is a TOS violation and could get you shut down.

Advanced AdSense

Once you have your Google AdSense account up and running, here are a few tips and tricks that may help you customize it. You should make yourself familiar with AdSense channels, as well as have a few options as to where you are placing AdSense on your page.

If you’re using WordPress, there are ways to put your AdSense anywhere you want. Only want AdSense after the first post? In the first post? In the sidebar? It can all be done. Learn the power of AdSense and you can make more money.

Google AdSense Resources

• Google AdSense Home
• Google AdSense Heat Map
• Google AdSense Blog