Google Adsense is one of the most popular (and “free”) ways of generating revenue from your online content. Simply put, you get paid for displaying targeted Google ads on your websites and blogs. To get started, you MUST get your website/blog approved by Google, which is tricky and somewhat difficult. Apart from pre-stated procedures that you are required to follow, Google also uses its special algorithms to judge the authenticity and usability of your online content. Here are some website tips that will help you scan through the Google Adsense lens:
- Genuine, Relevant &
Quality Content
You probably must have heard this umpteen times but we have to say it again, “Content is King”. It takes a lot of time and effort to pen down great content, but Google appreciates this. You will not only find your website climbing up the search engine rankings but your website will also stand a better chance of getting approved for Adsense. First, up your blog posts should ideally be more than 500 words at a minimum. We know that’s a lot but please avoid fillers or plagiarised content to make it big. Research can help you a lot with content generation and we can say this from personal experience. Make your article relevant not only to the topic of the post but also to the whole idea of the blog/website. The formula is quite simple, great content is going to get you more traffic and more traffic is going to get Google interested in you.
- Navigation
Google loves user-friendly websites, hence it becomes super crucial to ensure that the navigation on your website is good. At any given point a visitor should know which page he is on or how to get to a particular page with minimum clicks. This is one thing that will keep your visitors happy and a check on your Adsense application. You can use breadcrumbs [A “breadcrumb” is a type of secondary navigation scheme that reveals the user’s location in a website or Web application] on your posts to enable better navigation.
- Design
No matter how good your content is, a bad website/blog design is going to drive traffic away. Your website needs to be attractive and well structured for your visitors to enjoy the content. Fonts play an important role too. You can use Google fonts to help you make your content look more beautiful and easy for reading. The whole point is that your content should be legible. The guys at Google Adsense will be looking closely at your website to check if this criterion has been addressed or not.
- Speed
Just like design, speed is a very important criterion for a website to be deemed good. A slow-loading website is going to discourage any visitors to visit your website, which is a strict no-no especially when you are applying for Google Adsense. You should totally try these steps to help you speed up your website.
The main goal should always be to
make your website/blog as user-friendly as possible.
- About us, Privacy Policy
& Contact us pages
These pages just cannot be avoided at any cost when you build your website. An “About Us” page gives your website visitors and the Google Adsense team information about your website and its goals.” Privacy Policy” page will contain any important terms of use like the use of cookies or data collation that need to be made available for everyone to see. There are many sites online that can generate a Privacy Policy for you in no time. A “Contact Us” page gives your visitors a way to connect with you. Avoid any of these pages and Google Adsense will avoid your website.
- Avoid Prohibited &
Copyrighted Content
Google Adsense in its terms very strongly emphasizes that the use of any prohibited content (hacking, cracking, pornography or any other illegal material) on the website, will lead to application rejection. Copying and using any copyrighted images, videos or content will also lead to rejection of the Google Adsense application. There are loads of royalty-free images and videos available online that you can use on your website.
- Remove all non-Google
Adsense ads
We all love to make money with our website or blogs and at times resort to other channels of revenue like Bidvertiser or Infolinks. But if you are planning to generate revenue using Google Adsense then you will need to clean out all the ads from your website before you submit the application. Google Adsense will not approve any application that is already using another advertising medium.
- Provide Accurate Information
While applying for Google Adsense, you need to ensure that all information that needs to be furnished in the application is accurate. Incomplete applications are a straightforward reject.
Important tip: Ensure
that the contact details of your domain and hosting (WHO.IS) is matching the
contact details of your Adsense application. We have found a lot of examples
where just by correcting this and reapplying, the applications have gone
through.
- Domain Age
Google has made it very clear in their terms and conditions that any website from India or China needs to be live at least for 6 months before the application can be considered. However, we have seen applications from India go through even after 2 months. This leads us to believe that if your website has got everything right, then you should be able to overcome this condition.
- Number of posts
Honestly, there is no set limit for the number of posts that are needed, but one should at least have 30 top-quality posts before applying for Adsense. If you have various categories on your website then it is a best practice to have a sufficient number of blog posts under each one of them. For example, if you have 6 categories then you can write 5 articles for each of the categories, thus making a total of 30 good quality articles.
- Outbound links
You should avoid any bad outbound links to websites that are serving copyrighted or illegal material. Google will penalize you for this by rejecting your Adsense application. If you do have any bad outbound links on your website then remove it immediately, it will help you do better in Search Engine rankings as well.
- Google Webmaster Tools
To help improve your blog/website, Google has come up with this awesome tool to help you identify errors that might be causing issues on your website. You can also submit your sitemap through Google Webmasters which will help search engines to better index your website. We recommended that you eliminate all issues that are highlighted by this tool before applying for Google Adsense.
These are some of the tips that have proved successful for many Adsense Account holders. We cannot guarantee that these may be successful for your website as well, but it will get you closer to your goal. If your application is rejected, don’t be heartbroken and definitely don’t reapply immediately. You should try to recheck your website for all the points above and add some more quality content before you reapply. Remember, persistence is the key.