Lesson 4.1) EVERYTHING you need to know about Google Adsense!

Posted | 55 comments

In this lesson I teach you everything from start to finish about Google Adsense so you can make the most passive income from your website.

The specifics taught in this video include how to apply for a Google Adsense account, how to set up new Adsense units, the best size and placement for top Adsense CTR (click through rate), and how to add tracking with Google Analytics. I also include advice on how to keep your adsense account safe and from inadvertently becoming banned.

Update: Google Analytics no longer shows all the keywords bringing traffic to your websites, so I now recommend using Clicky. Clicky shows all the information that Google Analytics used to show, is just as easy to install, and I actually find it more user-friendly. I now use both tools.

For tracking keywords, I recommend using SerpBook. ๐Ÿ˜€

Make sure you are logged into Udemy and signed up for the course before clicking the video below or you won’t be directed to the correct video (it’s completely free to register).

how to add google adsense

(Or click here: EVERYTHING you need to know about Google Adsense on Udemy).

Here are the best Adsense unit placements for a WordPress website and code for each:

Top right of post (336 x 280 large rectangle) code:
<div style=”display:block;float:right;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;”>
<Adsense code>
</div>

Bottom of post (336 x 280 large rectangle) code:
<Adsense code>

Sidebar in widget (160 x 600 wide skyscraper) code with widget titled “Ads by Google”:
<Adsense code>

These sizes and placements will give you excellent CTR but keep your Google Adsense account safe because the placement isn’t too spammy.

Please leave comments or questions if you have any and thank you for watching!

Mike Omar

Next lesson: Lesson 4.2) EVERYTHING you need to know about the Amazon Associates Affiliate Program

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55 Responses to “Lesson 4.1) EVERYTHING you need to know about Google Adsense!”

  1. Hi Mike. Im having trouble putting the Adsense Google Code in the top right like you want us to. I have done it like you said I believe

    Is this correct? I’ve been trying to to take care of the problem but I haven’t figured it out, I was hoping you could help me thanks!

    • Hi Kevin,

      Try adding these two lines of code:

      ****YOUR GOOGLE ADSENSE CODE****

      Let me know if that works!

  2. Hi Mike! It’s me again, sorry, so many questions.. I installed the Who sees ads plugin, but it doesnt work for my wordpress. What I think is wrong, is that it was made for older versions of wordpress 2.5, but in the new one 3.5.1 it just doesnt work (it doesnt come up in the text editing option in the post at all)
    Is there another plugin for ads you would recommend?

    • Hi Kristina,

      No worries about asking questions! I actually haven’t used the plugin lately because I eventually learned how to manually insert the Adsense code into the theme files themselves. You have to dive into the code a little bit, but once you get how to do it, it’s a much cleaner solution. Just look up in Google how to do it (or if you don’t feel comfortable going into the code area since it can be a little scary, just look up other plugins with the same functions and try out the top rated / most popular ones). Give it a shot and let me know how it goes!

      Mike

  3. I found a plug-in that I thought I’d share with you. It’s wp-insert. I don’t know if you have heard of it but it allows me to put ads in the exact places you said. Top right, bottom, and sidebar. It also has google analytic tracker, and one of the things I loved was that it already had like the privacy policy, disclaimer, terms and conditions, and copyright setup so all you have to do is make a blank page called that and then put in the page number in the proper place and it does everything else. I have it on all my blogs but the one I listed is brand new but should show you what I was talking about. The pages are in the footer, I don’t do well with code but I tried haha. Anyway. thought I’d share this one with you. I’ll also be contacting you with a question I have.

    • Hi Kim,

      Thank you so much for that tip! That’s a great plug-in you found. I’d actually never heard of it before.

      Mike

  4. I am trying to put the ads on the right in the widget and when I do, and check the page, I get the website could not be displayed error. Any clue why?

    • Hi Jean,

      I’d have to see it to be able to help you out. However, a lot of these problems are pretty common and solutions can be found easily on Google. Also, if you want, you can send me a message, and I can see if I can help you figure it out.

      Mike

  5. I have a question how much content do you need for google to accept you into their program?

    I thought I would sign up before my first post so I could place the ad at the same time but google rejected me! lol it gave a list of possible reasons and I see one of them was no content. I guess that was why.

    • Hi G,

      I’d probably get at least a five post website up before applying. It should take you less than a couple of hours to get that set up and I’m pretty sure you’d get approved after that.

      Mike

  6. Hi Mike,

    I recall you talked about being wary of having friends check out out sites because google might not like it if they are going there directly and clicking on ads. Would you recommend sharing our secondary sites/articles with friends/contacts?

    Thanks!

    • Hi Mae,

      You definitely DO NOT want you or anyone else to be clicking on Google Adsense ads on your websites…that’s the kind of behavior that can get you kicked out of the Adsense program. That’s why I don’t usually share my Adsense websites with friends / family / etc. However, if the website doesn’t have Adsense on it (and never will), I don’t really see any risk in sharing it (except for people going after your keywords…).

      Mike

  7. Hello mike, im having trouble getting my adsense account approved. I tried about 4 times already but always get rejected after the second check.. placed the code. Any thoughts on this or what could i be doing wrong?

    • Hi Daniel,

      I don’t have much experience with this simply because I got approved the first time I applied (my very first website was about nail polish, of all things haha!). My understanding is that they tell you why they reject you though. What reason did they tell you?

      Mike

      • That my website does not adhere to Google’s policies… i wish they could be more specific.

        • Hi Daniel,

          I looked at your website and it seems completely fine to me (it even includes the Adsense disclaimer). Try asking your question on the Google forums; you can always get good answers there (and sometimes from Google employees who are directly responsible for those types of decisions). Give it a shot and let me know what happens.

          Mike

          • Hi mike, i did what you said and posted on the forum about two times… still no answer after waiting for two weeks. Just wondering though, did u apply right away for adsense after completing yiur website or did you wait until youare able to drive significant traffic to it? I browsed around for the subject and many mentioned dat its hard ti get an adsense account for users in asia and dat your website needs to be at least 6 months old and generating good traffic before applying for adsense. Perhaps dats what i need to do… anyone having d same trouble as i am?

          • Hi Daniel,

            I’m very sorry to hear this is happening to you. When I applied, I applied with a brand new site that was getting zero traffic to it and I got approved (this was several years ago though). Perhaps it is harder to get approved for an Adsense account these days. Even so, if I were you, I would focus on building up your websites and building traffic. Once they are getting traffic, there are countless ways to monetize a website, and if traffic is the issue with the application, then Google will approve your account anyway.

            Let me know if there are any updates.

            Mike

  8. Hi Mike,

    I have my ad units placed as instructed, however, due to AdSense’s rule that no more than 3 ads can be placed on a page, no ads are displaying in the sidebar. Instead, there is one at the top right and bottom of the first post and one at the top right of the second post. The rest of the areas have a blob of whitespace where the ad should be. If you click on the link to go directly to a post, however, things work as expected, because there are only 3 ad units on the page then. I have the reading setting set to display only 1 post on the home page to help mitigate this, but the page is still showing more than one post. Any tips?

  9. Ack! I figured it out. If I have any sticky posts, it displays an another blog post in addition to the sticky post even though I have the settings set to only display 1 on the home page. Now it will show the latest post with is not the one with the highest potential monthly CPC. Oh well, I guess, in theory, people will get to my site by landing on the exact post they’re searching for. Let me know, though, if you have any ideas on how to handle this. Thanks!!

    • Hi Claudia,

      Actually the strategy I’ve been using lately (for my bigger websites, 20+ posts) is to have the homepage display my top 20 post EXCERPTS. This is kinda cool because it means all those posts are getting all the link juice from my homepage to strengthen each of those posts (the homepage obviously being the most powerful page of the website). The ad only displays on the sidebar of my homepage, which I think gives it a cleaner and less spammy look. I may lose a little bit of money because of lower CTR on my homepage, but it’s not a tremendous amount and I think the added boost to the individual posts makes up for it.

      Mike

  10. That makes sense. How do you get the top right ad to not show up on the excerpts? When I switched to summary view under Settings > Reading, the top right ad still showed for the first 3 posts with nothing showing up in the rest of the posts or the sidebar.

    • Hi Claudia,

      I guess it depends how you inserted your Google Adsense. How did you insert your code into the website?

      Mike

      • Using the wp-insert plugin.

        • Hi Claudia,

          This method requires you to go into the code, but it should work. Insert the code manually into the PHP in the Single Post section (it should be titled single.php or something similar). Place the code directly before and after the part of the code that inserts the post content on that page. To be honest, I’m not very good at going into code, but whenever I do these things I essentially do a “guess and check” method, so be sure to save the entire page of code before you start messing around with it, that way if you mess it up, you can always re-paste the original code in and start over.

          This part is also hard to explain because each theme is set up differently (so the code is slightly different), but give it a shot. AND SAVE THE ENTIRE PAGE OF CODE BEFORE YOU START MESSING AROUND WITH IT! Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

          Best,

          Mike

          • No joy with that, however, in looking at the documentation for the wp-insert plugin, I realized that all I had to do was set a rule that prevents the top right and bottom ads from displaying on the homepage. Then I set the settings > reading settings to show the summaries of 20 posts on the homepage (getting the posts, but not the summaries – read: bug). Now only the ad tower shows up in the sidebar on both the homepage and the individual post pages and the top right and bottom ads show up only on the individual post pages. Excellent!! Thanks, heaps, for your responsiveness and help!!

          • Great Claudia! I’m glad you found a solution! You’ll find in this business that one of the main skills you’ll develop is problem solving. There are always weird issues you’ll run into and several ways to solve them, and the people who don’t let themselves get stopped by those roadblocks are the ones who end up becoming successful. ๐Ÿ˜€

            Mike

          • Hi Claudia

            There is a Rule in Wp-Insert for all types ofpages which lists more than one post called Instances. Using this rule you can set which all posts you want the ads to show up.

            Eg: You can set ads to show up on the first three alternate posts in the home page or just in the first post..
            Hope you got how instances rule work..

          • Oh nice. Thank you for the tip Namith!

    • Thank U for sharing the tip on WP-insert. That help me to solve the same problem on displaying ads. While I work on WP-insert I noticed this plugins offers free back links in WP-insert directory. Is it safe to use this service for back links?

      • Hi Mimi,

        They might give your websites just a tiny bit of benefit, but not much. It’s up to you. ๐Ÿ™‚

        Best,

        Mike

  11. Hi Mike,

    I still failed to register Google Adsense. Google reply: “Copyrighted material: We’ve found that your website contains copyrighted material.”

    I wonder if the problem comes from I copied google’s “Privacy Policy & Terms and Conditions” and modified contents to my website.

    Thanks,

    Michael

    • Hi Michael,

      That’s extremely odd. Google doesn’t penalize for any of those standard things that are on all websites (Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, etc.). You can try posting your situation on the Google Help Forums and a Google employee can help you figure out what’s going on.

      The only other thing I can think of is if you outsourced some of your content and the person who did it for you plagiarized that content. Either way, I’d go to the Google Help Forums to try and figure out what’s happening.

      Mike

      • Thank you, Mike.

        I’ll try on google help. I also re-edit my all contents. It’s really challenging start, hopfully I have a good result.

        By the way, can I use adv code in mutiple websites once I am sucessful on Adsense?

        Michael

        • Hi Michael,

          Yeah, once you’re approved for Adsense you can use that same code across all your websites (assuming they can all have the same color scheme, size, etc., and still look right on each website). If you need some blocks to have different colors, etc., you’ll have to get new code (but from the same Adsense account).

          Mike

          • Hi Mike,

            Finally I got approved from Google adsense after re-edit all contents in my website.

            I have more works to copy ad code to my website. Do I need to add more articles frequently to be benfit getting more traffic?

            Thanks,

            Michael

          • Hi Michael,

            I’m very happy to hear that! And it’s good to know that a re-edit of content on a website will get you approved if you didn’t make it the first time.

            As a general rule, more content will always mean more traffic (assuming it’s good content).

            Best,

            Mike

  12. Hi Mike,

    I followed your video to put Adsense Ads to my websit. There are two ads on each post and one in sidebar as well, but the problem is that only 3 ads showup in home(other ads are yellow empty). To solving this, I have to set “1” in Reading settings(Blog page show at most)not by default 10. I don’t think Adsense only allow three ads show on a page. but why?

    Michael

    Michael

    • Hi Michael,

      I believe Google does this to prevent people from making their websites too spammy and having a bunch of ad blocks all over any single page.

      Another solution to your issue is to have the homepage only display excerpts instead of full posts and so only the sidebar ad block would show up on your homepage. Your CTR might go down a little bit (so you’d make a little less money), but it would give your homepage a more polished look. It’s up to you though.

      Best,

      Mike

  13. Hi Mike,
    I noticed there are many more Affiliate Programs offered by different companies. I wanted to get your opinion whether if it’s a good idea to add more Ads on my site when I already have Google Adsense. Will this affect the Google ranking?

    • Hi Fumi,

      I’ve heard that ad networks similar to Google Adsense (like Chikita, etc.), don’t like to be mixed together on the same website (it’s kind of a gray area on the TOS of those networks). I wouldn’t risk it.

      Mixing those ad networks with Amazon Associates and affiliate programs like that is totally fine.

      Best,

      Mike

  14. Hi,

    I applied for a Google AdSense account about 2 weeks ago and it is still under review.

    I coped & pasted the AdSense code into my Text widget and there is nothing below the widget title “Ads by Google” on my home page. I was under the impression that some blank ads should have been inserted there.

    I tried the Text widget with the “Automatically add paragraphs” box checked and unchecked and it makes no difference.

    This is the code I inserted (I put asterisks where my real publisher number is, just so it’s not visible to everyone on this site.)

    Am I doing something wrong? Thanks very much!

    • Hi Sara,

      If you still haven’t been approved for your Adsense account, I’m not sure anything would show up. Once you’re approved, it’s as simple as pasting the code directly into the text widget (doesn’t matter if you check or uncheck the “automatically add paragraphs” box).

      Mike

  15. The HTML code didn’t appear in my previous comment. Here it is:

    • It didn’t show up here either. But no worries, all of them look pretty similar! As long as it’s the exact one they gave you, that’s the correct one.

      • Thanks for your replies to my comments. As it turns out, I did copy & paste the AdSense code correctly. I thought that some sort of ad template or dummy/blank ad would appear, but apparently nothing is supposed to appear except a small amount of white space. I know that I did this correctly because my AdSense application was unfortunately denied yesterday. Back to the drawing board to create more, higher-quality original content…thanks again!

        • I’m sorry you didn’t get approved Sara. But you have the right attitude…give it another shot again and again until you get the results that you want!

          Mike

  16. Just a tip for any Google Chrome users who are have difficulty viewing Google ads on their website: If Google AdBlock is enabled, you will not be able to see the ads. Make sure that Google AdBlock is disabled if you want to see the ads. (I wasn’t aware that I had it enabled until I couldn’t figure out why Google ads weren’t showing up on my site.)

  17. Hi, Mike. I AdSense rejected my website with issues of Unsupported Language.
    I am not sure what I need to change.
    I know, I just posted one recent post with not a lot of content. Could this been a issue?

  18. Hi, Mike.
    I installed “who sees ads” but I did not see the button
    “who sees ads” in HTML section.
    so, I installed “wp-insert” and inserted the code I received, but it only shows plain yellow block without ads. Does google take time to put ads in? or Is it something I did not do it right?
    Thanks in advance.

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