- Opeyemi Ajebamidele
Introduction
Google AdSense needs no introduction. It is a Google advertising program that places ads (generated by Google Adwords program) on your website, blog or YouTube channel and you get paid when visitors click on these ads. AdSense offers a variety of ad types like Text, Images, Videos, Animated Image, Rich Media and AdSense for Search, which are run on your blog or website.
It is free to join the AdSense program but getting approved is the crux of this write-up. To generate more cash using AdSense, you need to also be able to generate traffic to your website by serving content on your blog or website that your users can align with.
One major challenge every publisher has is giving their users a good experience but most times, when they click on an advert it takes them away from your website’s content, thereby increasing your bounce rate. So joining a monetization program must be well considered.
The Myths and Realities
You would by now have heard and read a lot about getting your AdSense application approved. There have been myths, realities, rumours, methods, tricks and several other inventions that have been postulated. Some have even claimed to be the “Master of AdSense.”
The reality is that Google means business when it comes to AdSense application and approval. I feel that the most important way to get your AdSense account approved is to understudy the AdSense Program Policies. It helps you to have first-hand information about how AdSense works and what you need do to continue to be on the programme.
What I have written are just tips that would help you understand the basics of AdSense and I have provided links to several policies you will need to go through to equip yourself with before applying for AdSense.
Eligibility Requirement
The most important eligibility requirement for AdSense account is to own your own unique, original and high-quality content. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people wants to make money, but are not ready for the hustling and the diligence required for that to happen. Plagiarism, lifting other people’s hard-earned works, copying and pasting copyrighted materials have become common-place.
If you haven’t created a niche for yourself so as to churn out your own unique and original content, you need not bother applying for AdSense account.
AdSense Program Policies
The AdSense Program Policies is a must-read for every applicant because Google is strict with their policies and the earlier you get used to that the better.
If you violate any of AdSense policies, it doesn’t take Google anything to disable your ad serving or even invalidate your account, irretrievably, forever. Unfortunately, if your account is disabled, you may be blacklisted from the AdSense program.
Yeah. You want to be earning for a long time from Google? Please also take a “long time” to scrutinise their policies.
I will just give you 10 highlights from the AdSense policies but this must not take away from the actual reading of the AdSense Program Policies. I have also given the links to these policies to allow you go through them:
1. In your own interest, you must keep up to date with the panoramic Terms and Conditions of Google AdSense and be ready to adhere to them.
2. As a publisher, you are not allowed to click your own ads, ask others to view or click them or use any method to inflate impressions. So if you have been thinking along that line to make more money, there is no way there.
3. You cannot offer compensations or incentives to users to view or click your ads. It is simply a “Google crime.” Don’t go along that path.
4. From the Google Publisher Policies you must not place AdSense code on pages that violate the tenet of these policies.
5. Under the Abusive Experiences Policies, you are not allowed to use auto-redirect to mislead or trick your website visitors.
6. Traffic sources to a website must be clean and pages must comply with Google’s Landing Page Quality Guidelines.
7. Experimenting with placement of ads in various formats is allowed just that AdSense code may not be placed in pop-ups, emails or software.
8. I hope you are not getting discouraged already with the ubiquitous policies you have to learn. Take this as one of the policies – Never quit when you are at the edge of your success.
9. Google believes that sites should be easy to navigate and frowns at anything that interferes with this navigation. Things like pop-ups/pop-downs, downloads, inserted malware or unwarranted redirects must be avoided.
10. Google aims at providing a quality user experience, and there are technical specifications for displaying ads that must be adhered to.
Links to Adsense Policies
AdSense Program Policies
https://support.google.com/AdSense/answer/48182
Google Publisher Policies
https://support.google.com/surveys/answer/2483175?hl=en
Abusive Experiences
https://support.google.com/webtools/answer/7539006?hl=en
Google’s Landing Page Quality Guidelines
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2404197?hl=en
Ad Placement Policies
https://support.google.com/AdSense/answer/1346295?hl=en
Display Ads Technical Specifications
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722096?hl=en
Preparing Your Website Pages for AdSense Approval
Before applying for AdSense, make sure you have gone through the AdSense Program Policies above, after which you should consider the following in preparing your site’s pages to get them ready for AdSense:
1. The first thing to bear in mind that there are a lot of websites out there like yours and the question you must answer is that, “Why must visitors visit my website?” The implication of this is that content must be unique, original to you and stands out to create a different experience for your followers. Your content must have quality make it a thumb-rule to move away from scraped or copyrighted content.
2. Never used images from Google search or the ones you lifted from other websites. There are plenty of free and premium stock images out there you can use. I have found these two websites – www.unsplash.com and www.pngwing.com very useful. Avoid copyrighted images.
3. If you need to design the graphics for your blog post, you don’t need to be a professional designer, as there are online tools that can help you achieve this. We recommend www.canva.com.
4. The layout of the elements (videos, images, texts, links, etc.) must be clear and easily navigable such that visitors should not have difficulty finding their way round your website. Take great pain to see to the alignment and readability of your website pages. The Yoast SEO WordPress plugin is very good in helping you achieve this. You will find this post very helpful, “Refining your website’s user experience in 3 steps” > www.blog.google/products/AdSense/refining-your-websites-user-experience-in-3-steps/
5. Providing a comment section for your blog posts is important to be able to get feedbacks from users. We greatly recommend Disqus as it safeguard against spam and inappropriate comments, and allow for the easy management and archiving of the comments on your blog articles.
6. Make sure you define the Privacy Policy as well as the Terms and Conditions for the users of your website. If you do not want to engage a lawyer for this, you can use these free generators > www.privacypolicygenerator.info and www.termsandconditionsgenerator.com.
Creating AdSense Account
When you believe you are ready for AdSense, then start by creating a Gmail account and then proceed to the Google AdSense Account page by visiting www.google.com/AdSense/ and following the instructions therein. Most times it may take up to 2 weeks or more for an AdSense account to be approved.
Inserting Codes on your site
We have found out that the best way to insert an AdSense ad code in your website or blog after creating an AdSense account is to use the Google WordPress plugin called Site Kit > sitekit.withgoogle.com.
Site Kit features Google products like Google Search Console to help you measure your site’s traffic and performance; Google Analytics for a screenshot of how users engage your website; Google PageSpeed Insights to suggests ways to make your website faster and Google AdSense to help you insert ads code and monitor your site money earning performance. Sitekit comes with others services like Optimize and Tag Manager.
10 Things Every AdSense Publisher Should Know
How We Apply and Got Our Site Approved In First Application
Let me acquaint you with the details of how we apply and got approved for AdSense:
1. The FreeWeb4SDGs website went live on May 1st 2020.
2. We went through the AdSense Program Policies to understudy the requirements for applying.
3. We fine-tune the website and made sure that the texts were original to us, create our own images using canva.com and got free stock images and photos from both unsplash.com and pngwing.com.
4. Where we needed the logo of some organisations we are partnering with, instead of lifting it from Google search results, we got them from the media resources sections of the organisations.
5. We have affiliate program links for some of our partners and just as a precautionary measure we remove them from the frontpage where we have them.
6. We had a total of 11 pages and 5 blog posts as of the time of applying. Few days later we added 2 more pages to increase the total blog posts to 7.
7. Our application for AdSense approval was submitted on Monday, 22nd June 2020 and that means we applied when the website was just 52 days old.
8. After applying, we installed the Google SiteKit plugin on the website and it helped us to place Google ads on the webpages, without our messing with anything.
9. We kept our fingers crossed, still checking through our website in case of any violation and we have added a little bit of prayers. Prayer works!
10. Incredibly, on Monday, 29th June 2010, that was 8 days after our application, we got an email that FreeWeb4SDGs.com was now ready to serve Google ads.
Last Words
Our scenario may look different from your experiences or from what you might have heard or read but there were some myths that were debunked by how our approval process went.
I wish you the best as you consider applying for Google AdSense account.
If you have any contribution or question, please drop them in the comment section below.
