How To Quickly Find The Best Google Adsense Ads

This is a guest post by Case Stevens Who Shares His Internet Marketing Strategies, Techniques, Tips and Tricks Every Website Owner,  New or Experienced Should Know, to Become Successful Too!

Case is a great Internet Marketer and over the last year or so we have become great Internet Blogging buddies.

Here’s the post…

Google Adsense is one of the first options that comes in mind when thinking about monetizing your blog. That’s because it’s so easy.

You just sign up for an Adsense account, select the ad types you want to display and copy and paste the code into your blog theme or use some plugins to achieve that.

But then the most important question arises: What kind of ads should you display and where? And how should the lay-out look like?

Or, put in other words:
Which ads perform best on my site and generate me the most money?

If you’re not familiar with Adsense or want to refresh your memory, then watch this video from the Google Adsense Optimization Team in Australia first, because below I will build on what’s discussed in there:

As shown in the video above, visitors to various blogs, or niches, react different on various kind of ads. Some even don’t react at all and just click away.

Therefore there’s only one way to find out if your Adsense works well and if you get the most out of it: TEST! (Ah, you’ve heard that before, haven’t you?)

So, how do you quickly test the effectiveness of the ads to improve your Adsense income?

Well, first off, the best place to start publishing your ads is above the fold. That is the part of your website that is visible without scrolling, in general the top part. That’s where your enticing headline is and you’ll start your post with the main keywords of your content.

Second, as an example, I’ll explain to you what I did on my blog to test the various ad types to find the one that performs best.

The ads that I tested were limited due to the sizes of my blog. I choose the 300×250 Medium Rectangle, the 336×280 Large Rectangle and the 468×60 Banner. They all fitted well into my blog, but you may select other formats. The testing principles stay the same.

Here’s how you set up your Adsense ads.

1. Create Ad Channels

Before or while creating your ads, you can specify an Ad Channel. Create one for every ad you’re going to use and name them appropriately after the ad you’re creating and the place you publish it on your site.

We’re going to use them in the reports later on, where we can decide which ad channel makes most money.

Example: I created 3 Ad Channels named aim-top-300×250, aim-top-336×280 and aim-top-468×60.

2 Set Up The Ads

How to best set up your Adsense ads is out of the scope of this article, but if you Google the subject you’ll find lots of info out there. You can also watch the video again for some basic information.

Example: I created the 3 ads mentioned above and included the appropriate channel in each of them.

3. Create Text Files And Upload

After setting up the ads, you place the code in text files and appropriately named them after the ad type. Then uploaded them to your server.

Example: I ended up with 3 text files, containing the code for the ads that I’ve created in step 2, appropriately named aimtop300x250.txt, aimtop336x280.txt and aimtop468x60.txt

Now you’re ready to test your ads.

All you have to do is …

4. Publish Your Ads

To do that, you just go inside your theme file called single.php (for individual posts) and find the line that starts with

<?php the_content

(If you also want ads to show up at the home page and pages (as opposite to posts), you should also do the same for index.php and page.php.)

If you’re theme doesn’t have a single.php file, just search for that line in your theme directory. Should be somewhere in there.

Now, just above that line, add this one:

<?php include ‘http://www.yourdomain.com/path-to-ads/adfile.txt’;?>

Example: I included <?php include ‘http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com/ads/aimtop336x280.txt’;?>

But…

that displays only 1 ad, and we have more ads to test and we want to show them all evenly.

Right!

So we’re going to toss a dice to decide which ad to display. We therefore use PHP.

Don’t worry, nothing complicated. Just replace the ‘include’ line you’ve just added by the lines below using copy and paste:

<?
$dice = rand(0,2);
if ($dice == 0) {
include ‘http://www.yourdomain.com/path-to-ads/adfile1.txt’;
}
elseif ($dice == 1) {
include ‘http://www.http://www.yourdomain.com/path-to-ads/adfile2.txt’;
}
else {
include ‘http://www.yourdomain.com/path-to-ads/adfile3.txt’;
}
?>

Basically we toss a dice… choose a number between 0 and 2 and store it into the variable $dice.

If the $dice was a 0, show AdSense ad 1. If the $dice was a 1, show Adsense ad2, otherwise, show the third ad.

Example: this was the code I added just above the <?php the_content line:
<?
$dice = rand(0,2);
if ($dice == 0) {
include ‘http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com/ads/aimtop336x280.txt’;
}
elseif ($dice == 1) {
include ‘http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com/ads/aimtop300x250.txt’;
}
else {
include ‘http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com/ads/aimtop468x60.txt’;
}
?>

5. Watch your Adsense Reports

Now, all you have to do is let them run for some time.

Closely watch the results in your Adsense account. Display your reports per channel, so you can see which ad earns you most. You need a significant number of clicks first before you decide which ad performs best, so be patient.

After you’ve found the best ad, you can rinse and repeat the whole process using different lay-out variables for that ad or/and test other Adsense ads on other places.

There you have it: a quick way to find the best Google Adsense ads.

Let me know what you think. Share you thoughts in the comments below.

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