Google Adsense Tutorial

I am putting together this free Google Adsense Tutorial to help recipients of my bi-weekly Web Ovations / SEO Zombies newsletter to quickly learn how to set up Adsense for their blogs and other sites. If you have further questions or would like something clarified, just post a comment in the comments section. I will try to respond ASAP and if needed, edit this page to include the new info.

1. The first thing you will need to get started using Google Adsense is a website.  I will assume you have a blog ready to go.  If this is a self-hosted Wordpress blog, even better, but you can place ads on all types of platforms; I just prefer WP for its flexibility, SEF urls, and cool plugins. Since you have your site ready to go, move on to the next step.

2. Now go  to google.com/adsense and enter in your gmail or google account login and password. If you don’t have one of these, just register one, you will be using it to check your earnings from now on and set up your adsense units.

3. At the top you will see 4 tabs: Reporting, Adsense Setup, My Account, and Resources. First go to My Account, and enter in your contact info, address, and payment info (or else you won’t be able to start receiving your checks. When asked for a tax ID number, you may enter in your social. You can only have one Adsense account per person, so enter in all the info and then go to the Adsense Setup tab.

4. Now we get into the good stuff: for your first ad unit, click on the first option: Adsense for Content. Choose and Ad Unit with text and images (default) and hit continue. The next screen gives you the Wizard or Single Page option. I usually choose Single Page.

5. Now you have 12 choices for the size of your ad. If you are going to put this in the sidebar of your site, and you want a vertical column of ads, a good choice is the 160×600 Wide Skyscraper. Different sizes convert well depending on where you place them, but this one is a pretty standard choice for a side column.  Feel free to try whatever combinations you like.

6. The colors you choose are going to affect your CTR (click through rate) so you should decide how you want your ad to look.  The most common advice I hear the ‘experts’ giving people is to choose a color scheme that matches your site. Use the same link color as the rest of the links on your site, as well as the same background color and regular text color. You could use a preset palette but it is just as easy to select the colors you want.

(The opposite strategy that some people recommend for choosing your color scheme is to make the ads shockingly different from the rest of your page, making them stand out and be noticed. If you want to try this method, it’s up to you. In my personal browsing habits though, I find myself hesitant to click on ads that look gaudy. Use your best judgment here.)

7. Next you will choose your fonts sizes, and corner styles. I usually go with Arial, and Very Rounded corners. This is an aesthetic choice though, and you can choose whatever you think looks the best for your site. If you use a serifed font on your site, choose Times. If you have a blog for senior citizens, use a large font.  Other than that, it’s all up to your personal taste. Experimenting with different styles over time will give you an idea of what works the best.

8. The last setting, what to show if no relevant ads are available: go ahead and show public service ads. You won’t get money for these clicks, but hopefully if your blog / site is about a specific topic, you won’t have to worry about this; Google WILL find ads that are topically relevant.  Now hit CONTINUE.

9. On this next screen you will assign the ad unit you are creating to its own ‘channel’.  This is just a nickname you assign to the unit so that once you have several sites with ads on them, you can track which ads are performing the best. I usually create a channel name like “[Site] – [Position]“.  So for Pound Dog Rescue, I have a channel called PDR – Right, which represents the ad unit in the right hand sidebar column on that site.  So not only will you track which SITES are preforming well, but which POSITIONS on that site attract the most number of clicks.

10.  Hit continue and give this unit a name so if you need to edit the setting later, you will be able to easily tell which unit is which. Use the same naming scheme as for your channels if you want.  This step is optional, I usually just leave it at the default name and hit Continue.

11.  Last, you hit “Submit and Get Code.” Google will display a code box where you can now copy and paste the necessary code to make your ads display on your site. If you are editing the HTML directly, you can just copy and paste this into your source file. If you are editing your Wordpress blog, you could either paste this into sidebar.php or create a text/HTML widget and paste it there. Some themes have trouble doing this directly, but most of them allow either method. It will take probably between 5 and 10 minutes for your ads to show up on the front end of your site after you hit save. You might see an empty block in the place where the ads should go; don’t worry about this, just come back to it later and make sure that it’s working, but give Google enough time to start displaying the ads (they have to see what your site is about first).

Now, since you have placed this code within the template of your site, it should appear on EVERY page that uses the template. So you only had to paste it in one location. Now that you have gotten your feet wet, maybe you want to go back and set up another ad unit to display in another location? Or maybe you want to try the Link Units? Just experiment, and track your results.  After a few days, log in to your Adsense account where you set these ads up, and click on the reporting tab to see how much you have earned.  The more traffic your site gets, the more people will click your ads. And the more specific the content of your site, the better targeted those ads will be.  Stay tuned for further tips and tricks!  I hope you have found this Google Adsense Tutorial useful.

Got comments? Questions?