Google AdSense is a monetization program of Google that allows you to show ads on your blog. It is not only one of the easiest ways but also the best way to start making money online.
AdSense offers a more decent amount of payout to publishers than many advertising networks across the Internet marketing world.
Even starters can easily make $100 per month or more with the right strategy and consistent traffic on-site.
One of the first things you need to do is install the AdSense code on your WordPress blog. It allows you to display ads on different parts of your blog such as posts, pages, and sidebar widgets.
You can create multiple ad zones on your site, including sidebars, headers, and footers.
In order to get Google AdSense approval, you will have to go through the initial signup process, which includes creating an account and adding your website(s).
After that, Google AdSense will analyze your site and suggest the ads most relevant to your audience. You can then customize the ad unit, choosing colors that fit with your website’s color palette and different sizes.
Once that’s done all you need to do is add the necessary code snippet to your WordPress blog.
Don’t worry, this definitive guide will go through every step necessary for you to successfully set up your Google Ads running on your site today!
Just before that, isn’t worth understanding what the topic itself first? Hope you agree, but if not, just jump over to what you think is relevant for you.
What is Google Adsense?
Google AdSense is a free program that enables website owners to earn money by displaying targeted Google ads on their websites.
For example, if you own a website that discusses golf, Google will display ads for golf-related products such as golf clubs and golf balls.
The amount of money that you earn can vary depending on the amount of traffic your site receives as well as the type of ads that are displayed or clicked.
That’s why it’s important to get a lot of traffic to your blog site and make sure you have high-quality content.
How Does Google AdSense Work?
Google AdSense is one of the most popular ways for bloggers who want to make money online by showing ads on their sites.
To participate in AdSense, you must have a Google account and have at least one active website registered with Google Analytics. Once you’ve signed up, they’ll review your site and determine if it’s a good fit for their program.
If it is, they’ll provide you with an application code that can be placed on your site’s pages so that they can track the traffic those pages receive.
The process is actually quite simple—it just takes a little time to set up. First, you’ll need a website or blog with at least 10 pages of original content.
Then, you’ll need to apply for an account with AdSense. Once your application is approved, Google will place advertising on your site based on your content and traffic.
AdSense works by matching ads to your site based on what visitors are looking for when they visit your site.
The better the match between an ad and what someone searches for online, the more likely a person is to click on it and buy something from the advertiser who paid for that ad.
This is why it’s important for publishers like yourself to use keywords that people are searching for when writing about topics related to your niche (such as “how-to” guides).
Most people prefer Google AdSense over other ad networks because it is easy to use and managed by the largest search engine in the world (Google). You’ll learn the necessary steps to set up your accounts in a while.
When should you start using Google AdSense?
You’ve been blogging for a while, and you’re getting lots of traffic. You’ve got a great product or service, and your blog is getting more and more exposure. But you’re not making any money yet.
Then, you’re still asking yourself “Am I ready to start making money?”
In fact, you can apply for Google AdSense as soon as you have established your website.
If you have a good amount of traffic, then it’s time to start using Google AdSense provided you’ve complied with Google AdSense policies and guidelines.
However, there are some things you should keep in mind when using it so that it doesn’t affect the readers’ experience or distract them from growing your blog.
First of all, don’t put too many ads on your site. This will make your readers feel like they’re being bombarded with ads all over the place and might cause them to leave sooner rather than later.
When you’re publishing content on your site, you should be focusing on providing value to your readers—not trying to squeeze out every last dollar from your esteemed readers as fast as possible by bombarding them with ads.
That’s not how you build trust with your readers, and it’s certainly not how you build loyalty or retain readers (which are both things that lead directly to revenue).
Instead of focusing on Ads on day 1, the other viable option is to monetize your site with affiliate marketing. This method won’t annoy your site visitors as the affiliate links are naturally integrated into the content itself.
If you want more tips on how to make money off of your blog using AdSense then check out our post about High CPC Keywords for AdSense.
How do I get AdSense approval for my WordPress blog?
You might have heard that there are several bloggers struggling to get approval for Google AdSense.
It’s not hard to get approval if your website complies with AdSense program policies and terms and conditions:
- The website needs to be a minimum of 6 months old. Your site should be up and running. You cannot apply for Google AdSense if your site is under construction.
- You, the owner must be an adult (i.e. 18 years of age and above)
- The blog’s content must be original and informative.
Apart from the above requirements, Google still has the right to decline your application.
That’s why there are many AdSense applications that get rejected due to the non-fulfilling of certain criteria.
Some of the invaluable tips to get your AdSense account approved are listed below:
- Provide valuable resources that people want to read. Ensure that you never publish prohibited content categories.
- Don’t forget to read Google AdSense policies so your blog complies with all of their policies.
- Your blog must provide a good user experience. How? It’s simple, you can choose a quality WordPress theme such as Kadence WP that doesn’t annoy your site visitors.
- Your website must have a privacy policy. The privacy policy helps you and your users stay safe from any unauthorized usage of the information on your blog and website by third parties. Check out my privacy policy page.
- Your website should have a significant amount of content on it. There are no minimum words required, but your content needs to be attractive for readers and high-quality to get approved.
Fulfilling all the above tips will certainly ensure acceptance of your application. Your blog traffic will not be the deciding factor for the rejection of your application.
It is beneficial only for you and the advertiser as you know, without traffic, who will click and take action?
So, most importantly, make sure that your blog adheres to all the AdSense policies.
The approval process can take up to a week or two which is beyond the scope of Wills Blogger’s antenna as it entirely depends on Goggle’s discretion.
Sign up for Google AdSense
The first and foremost thing necessary for you to do is to create a Google account and then sign up for Google AdSense. Use your existing account if you already have it.
To get started, go to the website of Google AdSense and simply click the Sign Up Now button.
You’ll be asked to enter your email address and the URL of your website.
For example, www.willsblogger.com
After you entered them click Save And Continue.
Next, select your home country and proceed to check the Terms and Conditions box.
You’ll be directed toward the “Create Account” button.
Simply click the button and your account is created which also means you’ve signed up now and are almost ready.
Account Activation
The final stage is to activate your account but to do so, you need two steps:
- Fill up your payment details and
- Connect your blog to AdSense simply by adding a code snippet to your blog or using a custom HTML widget block.
You’ll learn how to activate or display your ads using different methods in the following sections. Just before that, let’s first understand the two different options of Google AdSense.
Types of Google AdSense
Adding AdSense to your WordPress blog is very easy and can be done in a variety of different ways.
You can add it to the header or footer of your site, to the sidebar using a widget, or you can even add it directly into the content section of your posts.
You need to get back to your AdSense account in order to create a Google AdSense ad.
If you click Ads on the left taskbar, you’ll see different options such as Ad units and Auto ads. What are they?
Choosing between Manual ads and Auto ads
After you’ve signed up for AdSense and logged into your account, you can add Google ads to your WordPress blog in two ways:
- Manual ads: Manual ads are placed by you—the publisher—in specific locations on your page. You can create as many different types of manual ad units as you want; after creating them, simply copy their code into your WordPress post or page using the “Text” editor (rather than the “Visual” editor). This is an easy option for those who want to decide how and where an ad will appear on their site.
- Auto ads: This is all about automatic ad placement by adding just one piece of code to your website. The auto ads code will display ads automatically on your site, though the exact locations are up to Google’s algorithm. Many users like this option because it’s hands-off. However, you may want more control over how and where the ads appear on your site, in which case manual ads are a better choice.
The following sections will tell you how and where to use both manual and auto ads effectively on your WordPress blog.
If you’re just beginning with Google AdSense, you don’t want to get lost in all of this before you’ve even had a chance to start earning revenue from your ads. Let’s turn to some practical tips for implementation and begin making use of Google AdSense today.
1. How to Manually Place Google AdSense Ad Code
To get started, visit the Ads menu in the left column and then switch to the ‘By ad unit’ tab. From here, you have to click on ‘Create New Ad Unit’ as shown in the screenshot image below
There will be four different options namely Display ads, In-feed ads, In-article ads, and Multiplex ads.
Select the Display ads which is also the recommended option by Google.
Next, select the ad size and type after providing a name for this ad unit.
You can give the name of the ad anything you like as it’s used for internal purposes only.
For example, “SiteName Sidebar”
Choosing Ad Size: There is a wide variety of ad sizes available and those are the recommended sizes by Google because they are the most popular ones among advertisers.
You also have the freedom to choose whether you want a responsive ad or a fixed one. WillsBlogger recommends you choose responsive ads as they work well on all devices and screen sizes.
Next, to continue, you need to click on the ‘Create button’.
As soon as you click the button, Google AdSense will generate the ad code. An example is shown in the screenshot image below
The code contains both your publisher ID and unique ad unit ID.
You simply have to copy the code and paste it into a plain text editor like TextEdit, Notepad, or any other editor you have.
Remember, you’ll need this code wherever you want to display your ads.
How would you add Google AdSense?
Widgets are used to add elements to your blog sidebar. They’re like plugins and they can be used for various purposes including adding social media icons, recent posts, or even a calendar.
Now, you already have the code ready to place on your site.
If you want to display your ad on the sidebar which is also commonly used by most bloggers, you can do so by using WordPress widgets.
Inside your WordPress admin dashboard, go to the Appearance » Widgets page. Next, if you click the plus (+) button and type “HTML”, the Custom HTML widget block will appear as shown in the image below.
Then, select and place the Google AdSense code in the space.
One final thing to do is click the ‘Update’ button in the top right corner. That’s it! You’re done!
Additionally, it is recommended that you check out the AdSanity which is a WordPress plugin, for your better placement control and tracking.
2. How to Add Auto-Ads AdSense Code in WordPress
There are lots of beginners who have been struggling to find the best location for their ads to display. Also whether you’re a beginner or expert, adding individual ads to a different area of your site consumes lots of time.
Google understands this, and therefore, introduces auto ads so that you don’t have to struggle to work on each individual post or page.
Now, if you add a single code snippet to your site, Google AdSense will automatically figure out the best location, and ad size, and type and place the ads for you.
However, this shortcut method has a disadvantage because you have no control over the ad placement on your site.
It solely depends on whether you trust the Google algorithm to display the ads in your desired location.
If you’re a beginner, you can use this for some time and switch over to the auto ads later.
Let’s see how you’ll add Google AdSense to your website below:
Log into your AdSense account and click the Ads tab (as shown in the image below)
Next, under “By site” you’ll see the “Get Code” button (image above). Simply click it to generate the auto-ads code.
Now, a code snippet that includes your publisher ID will be generated and displayed for you to copy.
Then, copy the code and paste it into the text editor. Let’s further see how you can add this code to your WordPress site.
Adding AdSense Auto-Ads Code
If you want your ads to show up on all your WordPress pages, you can add the auto-ads code to your theme’s header.php file.
The auto-ads code uses a single code snippet to generate ads everywhere on your site.
However, the disadvantage of using the WordPress theme’s header.php file is that if you update or change your theme, your ad code will disappear.
So, the best alternative to adding any site-wide code is to use a WordPress plugin like “Insert Headers and Footers”.
By the way, this method is also considered the easiest way to add a code snippet to a WordPress site.
First, download the plugin and install it on your WordPress site.
Assuming you’ve installed the plugin – Now if you go to the settings section of your WordPress admin dashboard, you’ll see “Insert Headers and Footers” as shown below.
Copy the code snippet and paste it into the header section. Don’t forget to click the ‘save’ button.
The plugin will take action by pasting the code into all the pages of your website.
Now, Google will take the responsibility to show up the most suitable/relevant ads based on the keywords of your articles.
It may take some time to process and display on your blog. Hopefully, everything goes smoothly and your ads get displayed.
Can you Track Your AdSense Ads?
Google Analytics is a great way to see where your ads are being displayed and which sites are displaying them?
If you want to know where your ads are appearing, Google Analytics will provide that information for you.
It also has other reports that show other important information about your AdSense account.
To get comprehensive insights into how your visitors engage with your ads, you need to track the performance of your AdSense ads.
But, you can’t get enough information without the help of a third-party plugin. The best free plugin available now is MonsterInsights ads tracking.
With this awesome plugin, you can perform the following actions:
- Track your ads’ CTR (click-through rates)
- Low-performing ads can be removed to boost revenue and CTR.
- You can find out the best location for your ad to display based on the performance report.
Using MonsterInsights which is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress is the easiest way to track the performance of your ad
You can start tracking your ads performance as soon as you enable its Google AdSense tracking feature.
The best part, you neither need to touch a single line of code nor have to configure your Google Analytics account.
Conclusion
Google AdSense is one of the Web’s most popular advertising platforms, and WordPress is the fastest-growing blogging platform, so it makes sense that you would want to combine them both.
It takes some time to set up, and it won’t be right for every blog or every website owner. But the benefits are undeniable when you craft the right combination of content, ads, and targeting.
The hardest part is getting started. Once you’ve signed up for AdSense and added a few ads, you’ll start to earn money based on how many times your ads are clicked on.
AdSense also allows you to choose what type of ads you want to be displayed. You can advertise your own products, or even use geared ads like those in the sidebar.
It’s a simple solution that provides you with a full suite of customizable tools to control how your ads are displayed and how much revenue you earn from them.
If you have a blog on WordPress, there’s no time like the present to test-drive AdSense and monetize your content.
What do you think of the article? Hearing constructive feedback from esteemed readers like you is much appreciated.
You may also want to check our beginners’ guide on how to run Quora ads and Blog SEO.
AdSense Best Practices and FAQ
What are the Ad Sizes in Adsense?
Google AdSense isn’t only the most popular, but also the easiest way to monetize your blog.
It allows you to display ads on your website without having to pay a monthly fee. If you’ve never used this program before, it may feel a little complicated.
It gives you more control over how your ads display and function.
You can choose which ad sizes best fit each category (mobile versus desktop) for each individual article of content on your site.
As per our findings, the sizes that tend to fit on most screen sizes are found to be 300×250 and 336×280 which also happened to be the best pay rates.
Tell me the Best Placement for AdSense?
The placement of ads on your page is crucial to maximizing your earnings. The middle of the page is usually the most lucrative place, especially in between text paragraphs, as it’s the most commonplace that people naturally look at when they are reading.
However, you should also make sure that you don’t have too many ads above the fold (the part of your website that someone sees before scrolling down).
This can actually hurt your earnings because it gives a bad user experience and Google will actually penalize you for this.
As a general rule, try not to have more than three ad units above the fold and make sure that there isn’t anything else competing with them for attention.
We recommend having two or fewer above the fold, but this varies depending on how much traffic your site gets. The more traffic you get, the more ads you can safely add.
Can I click on my own Google AdSense Ads?
Don’t do it! When working with Google AdSense, it’s extremely important to understand that clicking on your own ads is a major violation of the AdSense program policies.
It’s clearly stated in the program policies that you’re not permitted to click on any of the ads in your account. It’s also prohibited to ask others to click on these ads for you.
If this happens repeatedly due to accidental clicks, you’ll likely see an email notification from Google stating that they’ve registered a significant number of accidental clicks coming from your IP address or computer.
You can then appeal if you believe this was done by mistake and would like to continue using the AdSense program.
Keep in mind that there are some situations where you may be held accountable for any accidental clicks made by these visitors, even if they’re not directly related to your business or website.
For instance, if it’s discovered that an employee had clicked on these ads repeatedly when visiting your website at work, you could be held liable even though this employee didn’t do this intentionally or with malicious intent.
If Google determines that there’ve been several suspicious clicks coming from your account, they might consider disabling it right away without sending a warning email first.
This means all earnings associated with this account will be permanently lost and placed under review while they investigate further.
What is Click Through Rate (CTR) in Google AdSense?
The number of ad clicks per page view is a very important metric. Many bloggers believe it’s the only way to measure the success of their blog.
They look at it as a metric of their success, but you should use this number in conjunction with other metrics to know if indeed your blog is successful and making good money from AdSense.
In fact, AdSense metrics are much more important than CTR. The quality, relevance, and effectiveness of ads are what are really important for your blog’s success.
For example, an ad that converts very well can lead to a lot more business than a CTR-rich ad that draws few clicks because people aren’t clicking on the ads, or if they did click on them they aren’t clicking through leads to purchase pages or opt-in forms.
I want to know how publishers are paid in Google AdSense?
Google AdSense pays its publishers via Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT). Publishers can also choose to get paid via Check or Western Union.
The money is converted to the local currency of the country the publisher resides. Google AdSense only pays when the payment threshold has been reached.
This amount varies from country to country and changes with time, so I suggest you refer to your account dashboard for more details on this.
Once a month, Google will send an email summarizing the previous month’s earnings and payment details.
Can Google AdSense reject my application?
Yes, of course, one of the most common causes of AdSense rejections is a flaw in your website.
For example, if your website doesn’t have enough content, has limited functionality, or violates AdSense policies, it’s not going to be accepted into the program.
If you think your website meets Google’s requirements but still got rejected, try checking again for their policies and guidelines and fixing them before you submit another application.
What are the basic requirements for my application to get approved?
Google AdSense is a free monetization tool that allows content creators to generate revenue from their websites.
In order to begin using the service, you must first complete the Google AdSense application. This can take a few days, so it’s best to get started as soon as possible!
To be eligible for an account, you must meet some basic requirements. They are:
- A valid email address
- A valid website
- A valid phone number
- Be at least 18 years of age with the ability to enter into a legally binding agreement with Google (your parent or legal guardian will have to do this on your behalf if you’re not 18 yet)
- Accept Google AdSense terms and conditions
What’s the main difference between Google AdWords and Google AdSense?
The idea is simple. AdSense is for web publishers who want to make money by displaying ads on their websites or blogs.
On the other hand, AdWords is for advertisers (you) who want to make money by placing their ads on websites.
So basically, Adsense is for publishers and Adwords is for advertisers.
What is Blog RPM or Page RPM in Google AdSense?
Blog RPM is the advertising platform equivalent to horsepower. It’s the metric used by advertising platforms to convey the paid rate per thousand ad impressions.
You can calculate your blog RPM by multiplying the total number of clicks and cost per click on your blog, then dividing that by the total number of page views.
If you’re a blogger and want to monetize your blog through Google AdSense, you should be aware of how RPM works so that you can choose which ads better fit your blog’s audience and content.
How to Display Ads on Your Blog Posts or Pages
In order to make sure that your ads are displayed in the best possible way on your blog, it is important to choose a good place for them.
This can dramatically change your earnings and make sure that your users will notice them.
It is always recommended to keep your ads above the fold line, i.e., in such a position that they will be visible without scrolling down the page.
In addition, you should try not to mix ad units with other content, but leave enough space between them so they are easily distinguishable.
If you want additional information about this topic, we suggest reading our guide on how to get high CPC keywords to increase AdSense earnings from your WordPress blog.
