Search Engine Optimization

Do you need an SEO?

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SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:</div>
<ul style="margin: 4px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Review of your site content or structure</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Content development</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Management of online business development campaigns</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Keyword research</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">SEO training</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Expertise in specific markets and geographies.</li>
</ul>
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Keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted as "Ads" or "Sponsored") as well. Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Free resources such as <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Search Console</a>, the official <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Webmaster Central blog</a>, and our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/webmasters?" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">discussion forum</a> can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search.</div>
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Before beginning your search for an SEO, it's a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend starting here:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/answer.py?answer=35769" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Google Webmaster Guidelines</a></li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/answer.py?answer=70897" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.</a></li>
</ul>
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If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.</div>
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Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience in my industry?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience in my country/city?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience developing international sites?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What are your most important SEO techniques?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">How long have you been in business?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?</li>
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While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. Here are some things to consider:</div>
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One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.</div>
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Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.</div>
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If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.</div>
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In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: <a href="http://www.ftc.gov/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.ftc.gov/</a> and click on "File a Complaint Online," call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:</div>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 30px;">
Federal Trade Commission<br />CRC-240<br />Washington, D.C. 20580</blockquote>
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If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, please file it at <a href="http://www.econsumer.gov/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.econsumer.gov/</a>.</div>
<ul style="margin: 4px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:</div>
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<em>"Dear google.com,<br />I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."</em></blockquote>
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Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.</div>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our <a href="http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Add URL</a> page or by submitting a <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Sitemap</a> and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.</div>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.</div>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>You should never have to link to an SEO.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.</div>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Choose wisely.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html</a>. While Google doesn't comment on specific companies, we've encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.</div>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be sure to understand where the money goes.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.</div>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?</strong></li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>What are some other things to look out for?</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:</div>
<ul style="list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">owns shadow domains</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">puts links to their other clients on doorway pages</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">offers to sell keywords in the address bar</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
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Do you need an SEO?

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big ...

Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide
This document first began as an effort to help teams within Google,
but we thought it'd be just as useful to webmasters that are new to
the topic of search engine optimization and wish to improve their
sites' interaction with both users and search engines. Although this
guide won't tell you any secrets that'll automatically rank your site
first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices
outlined below will make it easier for search engines to crawl, index
and understand your content.
Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications
to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes
might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with
other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your
site's user experience and performance in organic search results.
You're likely already familiar with many of the topics in this guide,
because they're essential ingredients for any web page, but you may
not be making the most out of them.
Even though this guide's title contains the words "search engine",
we'd like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first
and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the
main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find
your work. Focusing too hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the
organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results.
Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot
forward when it comes to visibility in search engines, but your
ultimate consumers are your users, not search engines.
Your site may be smaller or larger than our example site and offer
vastly different content, but the optimization topics we discuss below
should apply to sites of all sizes and types. We hope our guide gives
you some fresh ideas on how to improve your website, and we'd love
to hear your questions, feedback, and success stories in the Google
Webmaster Help Forum.
Welcome to Google's
Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide
   
Table of Contents
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6
8
10
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20
21
22
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30
Googlebot
Crawling content
on the Internet for
Google's index
every day, every
night, non stop.
From here on, I'll be
explaining various points
on search engine
optimization (SEO)!
SEO Basics
Create unique, accurate page titles
Make use of the "description" meta tag
Improving Site Structure
Improve the structure of your URLs
Make your site easier to navigate
Optimizing Content
Offer quality content and services
Write better anchor text
Optimize your use of images
Use heading tags appropriately
Dealing with Crawlers
Make effective use of robots.txt
Be aware of rel="nofollow" for links
SEO for Mobile Phones
Notify Google of mobile sites
Guide mobile users accurately
Promotions and Analysis
Promote your website in the right ways
Make use of free webmaster tools
An example may help our explanations, so we've created a fictitious
website to follow throughout the guide. For each topic, we've fleshed
out enough information about the site to illustrate the point being
covered. Here's some background information about the site we'll
use:
Website/business name: "Brandon's Baseball Cards"
Domain name: brandonsbaseballcards.com
Focus: Online-only baseball card sales, price guides, articles,
and news content
Size: Small, ~250 pages
“Paid” Search, AdWords
Organic Search
Search engine optimization affects only organic search results, not
paid or "sponsored" results such as Google AdWords.
   
Create unique, accurate page titles
SEO Basics
Glossary
Indicate page titles by using title tags
Page title contents are displayed in search
results
(1) The title of the homepage for our baseball card site, which lists the business
name and three main focus areas.

(2) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage shows up as a result,
with the title listed on the first line (notice that the query terms the user searched
for appear in bold).
If the user clicks the result and visits the page, the page's title will appear at the top
of the browser.
(3) A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]. A relevant, deeper page (its
title is unique to the content of the page) on our site appears as a result.
A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of
a particular page is. The

(2) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage appears as a result,
with part of its description meta tag used as the snippet.
(3) A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]. One of our deeper pages, with
its unique description meta tag used as the snippet, appears as a result.
A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search
engines a summary of what the page is about (1). Whereas a
page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's description meta
tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Google
Webmaster Tools provides a handy content analysis section that'll tell
you about any description meta tags that are either too short, long, or
duplicated too many times (the same information is also shown for

(4) This nofollows all of the links on a page.
Make sure you have solid
measures in place to deal
with comment spam!
23
Notify Google of mobile sites
SEO for Mobile Phones
Configure mobile sites so that they can be
indexed accurately
Verify that your mobile site is indexed by
Google
Glossary
(1) Example of a search for [baseball cards] on Google’s
desktop search (above) and mobile search (left). Mobile
search results are built for mobile devices and are
different from "standard" desktop results.
Make sure your mobile site is
properly recognized by Google
so that searchers can find it.
It seems the world is going mobile, with many people using mobile
phones on a daily basis, and a large user base searching on Google’s
mobile search page. However, as a webmaster, running a mobile site
and tapping into the mobile search audience isn't easy. Mobile sites
not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but
the management methods and expertise required are also quite
different. This results in a variety of new challenges. While many
mobile sites were designed with mobile viewing in mind, they weren’t
designed to be search friendly.
Here are troubleshooting tips to help ensure that your site is properly
crawled and indexed:
If your web site doesn't show up in the results of a Google mobile
search even using the site: operator, it may be that your site has one
or both of the following issues:
1. Googlebot may not be able to find your site
Googlebot must crawl your site before it can be included in our search
index. If you just created the site, we may not yet be aware of it. If
that's the case, create a Mobile Sitemap and submit it to Google to
inform us of the site’s existence. A Mobile Sitemap can be submitted
using Google Webmaster Tools, just like a standard Sitemap.
Mobile Sitemap
An XML Sitemap that contains URLs of web pages designed for mobile phones.
Submitting the URLs of mobile phone web content to Google notifies us of the
existence of those pages and allows us to crawl them.
User-agent
Software and hardware utilized by the user when said user is accessing a website.
XHTML Mobile
XHTML, a markup language redefined via adaptation of HTML to XML, and then
expanded for use with mobile phones.
Compact HTML
Markup language resembling HTML; it is used when creating web pages that can be
displayed on mobile phones and with PHS and PDA.
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Improving Site Structure Optimizing Content Dealing with Crawlers Promotions and Analysis SEO Basics SEO for Mobile Phones
Google’s mobile search page
 http://www.google.com/m/
site: operator
 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35256
Mobile Sitemap
 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8493
Submitted using Google Webmaster Tools
 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156184
Use DNS Lookups to verify Googlebot
 http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-verify-googlebot.html
Mobile Webmaster Guidelines
 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=72462
Links
Verify that Google can recognize your
mobile URLs
SetEnvIf User-Agent "Googlebot-Mobile" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "Android" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "BlackBerry" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "iPhone" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "NetFront" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "Symbian OS" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "Windows Phone" allow_ua
Order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from env=allow_ua
(2) An example of a mobile site restricting any access from non-mobile devices.
Please remember to allow access from user agents including “Googlebot-Mobile”.

(3) An example of DTD for mobile devices.
2. Googlebot may not be able to access your site
Some mobile sites refuse access to anything but mobile phones,
making it impossible for Googlebot to access the site, and therefore
making the site unsearchable. Our crawler for mobile sites is
"Googlebot-Mobile". If you'd like your site crawled, please allow
any User-agent including "Googlebot-Mobile" to access your
site (2). You should also be aware that Google may change its Useragent
information at any time without notice, so we don't recommend
checking whether the User-agent exactly matches "GooglebotMobile"
(the current User-agent). Instead, check whether the Useragent
header contains the string "Googlebot-Mobile". You can also
use DNS Lookups to verify Googlebot.
Once Googlebot-Mobile crawls your URLs, we then check for whether
each URL is viewable on a mobile device. Pages we determine
aren't viewable on a mobile phone won't be included in our
mobile site index (although they may be included in the regular web
index). This determination is based on a variety of factors, one of
which is the "DTD (Doc Type Definition)" declaration. Check that your
mobile-friendly URLs' DTD declaration is in an appropriate mobile
format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML (3). If it's in a
compatible format, the page is eligible for the mobile search index.
For more information, see the Mobile Webmaster Guidelines.
25
Guide mobile users accurately
SEO for Mobile Phones
Running desktop and mobile versions of
your site
Redirect mobile users to the correct
version
Homepage
Product page
Mobile version
Homepage
Redirect
Redirect
Mobile user
(1) An example of redirecting a user to the
mobile version of the URL when it's accessed
from a mobile device. In this case, the content
on both URLs needs to be as similar as possible.
Desktop version
Product page
Glossary
One of the most common problems for webmasters who run
both mobile and desktop versions of a site is that the mobile
version of the site appears for users on a desktop computer, or
that the desktop version of the site appears when someone
accesses it on a mobile device. In dealing with this scenario, here
are two viable options:
When a mobile user or crawler (like Googlebot-Mobile) accesses the
desktop version of a URL, you can redirect them to the corresponding
mobile version of the same page. Google notices the relationship
between the two versions of the URL and displays the standard
version for searches from desktops and the mobile version for
mobile searches.
If you redirect users, please make sure that the content on the
corresponding mobile/desktop URL matches as closely as possible
(1). For example, if you run a shopping site and there's an access from
a mobile phone to a desktop-version URL, make sure that the user
is redirected to the mobile version of the page for the same
product, and not to the homepage of the mobile version of the
site. We occasionally find sites using this kind of redirect in an
attempt to boost their search rankings, but this practice only results
in a negative user experience, and so should be avoided at all costs.
On the other hand, when there's an access to a mobile-version URL
from a desktop browser or by our web crawler, Googlebot, it's not
necessary to redirect them to the desktop-version. For instance,
Google doesn't automatically redirect desktop users from their mobile
site to their desktop site; instead they include a link on the mobileversion
page to the desktop version. These links are especially helpful
when a mobile site doesn't provide the full functionality of the desktop
version—users can easily navigate to the desktop-version if they
prefer.
Redirect
Being automatically transported from one specified web page to another specified
web page when browsing a website.
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SEO Basics Improving Site Structure Optimizing Content Dealing with Crawlers SEO for Mobile Phones Promotions and Analysis
Be sure to guide the user
to the right site for their
device!
(2) Example of changing the format of a page based on the User-agent. In this case,
the desktop user is supposed to see what Googlebot sees and the mobile user is
supposed to see what Googlebot-mobile sees.
Website
Desktop user
Googlebot
Googlebot-Mobile
Mobile user
Must be same
Must be same
Desktop contents
Mobile contents
Can be
different
Some sites have the same URL for both desktop and mobile content,
but change their format according to User-agent. In other words, both
mobile users and desktop users access the same URL (i.e. no
redirects), but the content/format changes slightly according to the
User-agent. In this case, the same URL will appear for both mobile
search and desktop search, and desktop users can see a
desktop version of the content while mobile users can see a
mobile version of the content (2).
However, note that if you fail to configure your site correctly, your site
could be considered to be cloaking, which can lead to your site
disappearing from our search results. Cloaking refers to an attempt to
boost search result rankings by serving different content to
Googlebot than to regular users. This causes problems such as less
relevant results (pages appear in search results even though their
content is actually unrelated to what users see/want), so we take
cloaking very seriously.
So what does "the page that the user sees" mean if you provide both
versions with a URL? As I mentioned in the previous post, Google
uses "Googlebot" for web search and "Googlebot-Mobile" for
mobile search. To remain within our guidelines, you should
serve the same content to Googlebot as a typical desktop user
would see, and the same content to Googlebot-Mobile as you
would to the browser on a typical mobile device. It's fine if the
contents for Googlebot are different from those for Googlebot-Mobile.
One example of how you could be unintentionally detected as
cloaking is if your site returns a message like "Please access from
mobile phones" to desktop browsers, but then returns a full mobile
version to both crawlers (so Googlebot receives the mobile version).
In this case, the page which web search users see (e.g. "Please
access from mobile phones") is different from the page which
Googlebot crawls (e.g. "Welcome to my site"). Again, we detect
cloaking because we want to serve users the same relevant content
that Googlebot or Googlebot-Mobile crawled.
Switch content based on User-agent
Google mobile
 http://www.google.com/m/
Cloaking
 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
Links
Can be
different
27
Promote your website in the right ways
Promotions and Analysis
About increasing backlinks with an
intention to increase the value of the site
Master making announcements via blogs
and being recognized online
My blog
Website
Product page
Glossary
(2) By having your business registered for Google Places, you can promote your
site through Google Maps and Web searches.
News: “I have a new card!”
User’s blogs Social media service Newsletter, DM,
Posters, etc.
Online Offline
(1) Promoting your site and having quality links could lead to increasing your site’s
reputation.
While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people
discover your content through search or other ways and link to it,
Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the hard
work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new
content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested
in the same subject (1). As with most points covered in this
document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could
actually harm the reputation of your site.
A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base know that you
added something new is a great way to get the word out about new
content or services. Other webmasters who follow your site or
RSS feed could pick the story up as well.
Putting effort into the offline promotion of your company or site can
also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure
its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You
could also send out recurring newsletters to clients through the mail
letting them know about new content on the company's website.
If you run a local business, adding its information to Google Places
will help you reach customers on Google Maps and web search.
The Webmaster Help Center has more tips on promoting your local
business.
RSS feed
Data including full or summarized text describing an update to a site/blog. RSS is an
abbreviation for RDF Site Summary; a service using a similar data format is Atom.
28
Improving Site Structure Optimizing Content Dealing with Crawlers Promotions and Analysis SEO for Mobile Phones SEO Basics
Google Places
 http://www.google.com/local/add/
Promoting your local business
 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=92319
Links
Best Practices
Know about social media sites
Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of
people up with relevant content.
Reach out to those in your site's related
community
Chances are, there are a number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up
communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could
spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource.
 spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area
 purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of traffic
Avoid:
 attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big, interesting items
 involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services
Avoid:
Is your site doing OK?
29
Make use of free webmaster tools
Promotions and Analysis
Major search engines, including Google, provide free tools for
webmasters. Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters better
control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful
information from Google about their site. Using Webmaster Tools
won't help your site get preferential treatment; however, it can help
you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform
better in search results. With the service, webmasters can:
Make Googlebot crawling smoother by using Webmaster Tools
 see which parts of a site Googlebot had problems crawling
 notify us of an XML Sitemap file
 analyze and generate robots.txt files
 remove URLs already crawled by Googlebot
 specify your preferred domain
 identify issues with title and description meta tags
 understand the top searches used to reach a site
 get a glimpse at how Googlebot sees pages
 remove unwanted sitelinks that Google may use in results
receive notification of quality guideline violations and request a site
reconsideration
If you've improved the crawling and indexing of your site using Google
Webmasters Tools or other services, you're probably curious about
the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like Google
Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this. You can use these
to:
High-level analysis is possible via Google Analytics and Website Optimizer
 get insight into how users reach and behave on your site
 discover the most popular content on your site
 measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site
 - e.g. did changing those title and description meta tags improve traffic from search engines?
Yahoo! (Yahoo! Site Explorer) and Microsoft (Bing Webmaster Tools)
also offer free tools for webmasters.
For advanced users, the information an analytics package provides,
combined with data from your server log files, can provide even more
comprehensive information about how visitors are interacting with
your documents (such as additional keywords that searchers might
use to find your site).
Lastly, Google offers another tool called Google Website Optimizer
that allows you to run experiments to find what on-page changes will
produce the best conversion rates with visitors. This, in combination
with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools (see our video on
using the "Google Trifecta"), is a powerful way to begin improving your
site.
30
Improving Site Structure Optimizing Content Dealing with Crawlers SEO for Mobile Phones SEO Basics Promotions and Analysis
Google Trifecta
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yKjrdcC8wA
Links
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/webmasters/
Have questions or feedback on our guide? Let us know.
Google Webmaster Help Forum
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
Frequent posts by Googlers on how to improve your website.
Google Webmaster Central Blog
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/
Filled with in-depth documentation on webmaster-related issues.
Google Webmaster Help Center
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Optimize how Google interacts with your website.
Google Webmaster Tools
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
Design, content, technical, and quality guidelines from Google.
Google Webmaster Guidelines
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Find the source of your visitors, what they're viewing, and benchmark
changes.
Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer/
Run experiments on your pages to see what will work and what won't.
Google Website Optimizer
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.
py?answer=35291
If you don't want to go at it alone, these tips should help you choose
an SEO company.
Tips on Hiring an SEO
Make the most of useful tools
and information!
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
This booklet is also available in PDF format. You can download the PDF version at ...
http://www.google.co.jp/intl/en/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
31
©Copyright 2010 Google is a trademark of Google Inc.
All other company and product names may be trademarks of
the respective companies with which they are associated.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
Check out Google's SEO
resources and tools.
Google Webmaster Central Search
32

Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide This document first began as an effort to help teams within Google, but we thought it'd be just...

Amazing Google Adsense Tips and Tricks

<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Working with Google Adsense to generate a profit can be somewhat daunting, especially when you even think about all of the advanced algorithms that Google uses to weed out sites. But I have assembled 10 amazing Google Adsense tips and tricks that will help you improve your knowledge and your earnings with Google’s ad program.<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></strong></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div>
<script type="text/javascript">
    google_ad_client = "ca-pub-2624477775764147";
    google_ad_slot = "8917285716";
    google_ad_width = 728;
    google_ad_height = 15;
</script>

<script src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
</div>
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1) If you want to maximize your profits, make sure to create more than one website</strong>.<br />
However, you don’t want to start off by creating 100 websites. Maintenance for that many sites, at first, would be hectic. While having only one website would be the easiest to maintain, it also increases your chances of being cut out altogether by the latest algorithm update. So, you want to have a few websites up and running. Then if the latest algorithm forces one website out, you still have a few others to generate income from while you work on the affected one.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div>
<script type="text/javascript">
    google_ad_client = "ca-pub-2624477775764147";
    google_ad_slot = "8917285716";
    google_ad_width = 728;
    google_ad_height = 15;
</script>

<script src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
</div>
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2) Pick a niche to write about per site.</strong><br />
Creating a site that discusses any topic under the moon may be easier to find the desire to update, but it will make it difficult to create constant traffic, make it hard for the Google search engine to rank your site, and cause trouble generating ads that are on topic.<br />
Also, if you only pick one subject to focus on, you can go more in-depth and gain expertise in that field. This makes your website more profitable for users and yourself.<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></strong><br />
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3) Create a site about something you are already interested in!</strong>This Google Adsense tip only makes sense! Making your site about something that you like makes it more fun in the long-run for you to continue managing your site. If something is less like work, then you are more likely to do it. Constant updates on your site is good for traffic and search engines, which generates clicks on your ads.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
However, don’t create a site about something that is not in demand. Just because you like to study rare deep-sea anglerfish doesn’t mean that everyone else does. If you want to maximize your profits, you will need to give information about something that the general public will be researching.<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></strong></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">4)Do not put Google Adsense on a brand new site!</strong>When building a new site, wait until you have completed the site, you have built inbound links, and you are getting traffic. A brand new site can leave your ads being off topic and difficult to follow.<br />
Also, if you try to apply to Google Adsense too early when your website is brand new, you will most likely be turned away. Google wants to know that your site has enough traffic so that putting their ads on your page will be profitable to them and you. They don’t waste time on beginner or spammy sites.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">5) Do not put images next to your ads!</strong>While many people did this for years and it worked successfully, it now against Google’s policies to do so. This is considered to be ‘encouraging clicks’ which is prohibited. If you do so, you may get more clicks for a bit, but you will quickly be caught and banned from having Adsense on your page. And once you are banned, you cannot get your account back into good standing.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here is a free additional Google Adsense tip: If you haven’t read Google’s Adsense policies, I seriously suggest doing so.</strong></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6) Place images in optimal places on your site.</strong>Ads that are higher on the site get clicked more often, which generates more income.<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></strong></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">7) If you want to maintain optimal profit, do not put your ads on affiliate sites.</strong>While well-known affiliate sites may get you more clicks than your own brand new site, you cannot depend on these sites to earn a maximum profit. It can be considered as a violation of the rules and regulations of Adsense. Moreover, each of the affiliate sites charges a percentage of your earnings to be able to post on their site. So, work on your own site, promote it to generate traffic, and be patient. Having ads on your own site will be better for you in the long-run.<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></strong></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">8) Make sure to update your site on a regular basis.</strong>If you create a site and leave it for a few months, you may find that your traffic has dropped significantly. Therefore, your amount of clicks and pay has dropped as well.<br />
No one wants to visit a site that has grown stagnant and has old information, so get busy generating new information for your readers!</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">9) Create ads that best complement your site.</strong><br />
The optimal sizes for ads have been researched. They are the 336×280 large rectangle, the 300×250 medium rectangle, and the 160×600 wide skyscraper.<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></strong>However, don’t simply use these sizes without integrating them into your site well. You want the overall flow of your site to be pleasing to your loyal visitors, so be sure to fit the ads in a way that is visually appealing.<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></strong></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">10) Do not stress over the latest google algorithms, or trying to beat the system!</strong>Google constantly updates their algorithms to cut out spammers, and this unfortunately messes up the generated income for some sites. However, there is no way to currently beat this system, so do not stress if your site sees a dramatic drop suddenly. Simply continue to work hard at improving your site and keeping up with the latest Google Adsense Tips. Hopefully, you will see improvement again in your traffic.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 25px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
These are some tips that should help you a great deal when trying to maximize the profits from your ads. Overall, continue working to improve your websites and don’t stress! Everyone knows that Google owns the world in their own mysterious way, and trying to fight it will only end in multiple visits to a psychiatrist. So, be happy and enjoy Google’s business offering to the world!</div>

Amazing Google Adsense Tips and Tricks

Working with Google Adsense to generate a profit can be somewhat daunting, especially when you even think about all of the advanced algorit...

Adsense Income Where Do You Start!

Adsense Income Where Do You Start!

The very first thing you must do to have an AdSense web site would be to select a market -- or even subject -- for the web site. In ...

ADSENSE TIPS TO MAXIMISE REVENUE

<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
I’ve been running AdSense on the Web Dev Door blog for a while now and have ran numerous tests and variations of advert settings over a long periods in order to try and maximise AdSense income.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
This post investigates a number of tips that could help you increase AdSense earnings.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
One important point regarding revenue generation is that visitors generally have ‘banner blindness’ and a number of the below tips involve making adverts more seamless with your content so they are more likely to be seen.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
It is important though when trying different advert setups that you strike a good balance between advert visibility and aesthetics, whilst minimising the potential for users to feel frustrated with them. Adverts that obscure content for example are more likely to drive visitors away and discourage people sharing your content.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Enough rumination! Onto my top AdSense tips to maximise revenue.</div>
<h2 style="background-color: #e8e8e8; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: oswaldbook, sans-serif; font-size: 28px; font-weight: normal; margin: 6px 0px 3px; padding: 8px 12px; text-transform: uppercase;">
ADSENSE TIPS</h2>
<h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: oswaldbook, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
1. USE TEXT AND DISPLAY ADS TOGETHER.</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Increasing the variety of ads available will increase competition between ads vying for the same spot and therefore bumps up the average Cost Per Click (CPC). Even though performance reports might suggest one advert type is doing better than the other, disabling the lower performing type will rarely lead to higher earnings.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Using both of Text and Display adverts together accounts for 3/5 of the performance score indicator as shown on the main AdSense dashboard. AdSense should also adjust to display a greater proportion of the higher performing advert display type as time passes.</div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: oswaldbook, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
2. USE RECOMMENDED SIZES</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
The <a href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/17955?hl=en-GB" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="Top performing advert sizes">top performing advert sizes</a> according to Google are the Large Rectangle (336×280), Medium Rectangle (300×250), the Leaderboard (728×90) and the 160×600 Wide Skyscraper as shown below.</div>
<div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_2281" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); box-sizing: content-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; margin: auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 7px 1px 1px; text-align: center; width: 757px;">
<img alt="Recommended AdSense banner sizes" class="wp-image-2281 size-full" height="727" src="http://www.webdevdoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/adsense-top-performing-banner-sizes1.jpg" style="border: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto !important; margin: 12px 0px 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px !important;" width="747" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin-top: 2px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Top performing AdSense banner sizes</div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
These are also standard sizes commonly used by advertisers, which means using these ads on your site will mean more competition for advert spots and therefore a higher CPC. I’ve found a Leaderboard running the width of a main column of content to be a good choice in a typical blog layout, along with a Large Rectangle in the sidebar area.</div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: oswaldbook, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
3. DISABLE/ENABLE SPECIFIC CATEGORIES</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
It might seem like an obvious income generation tip to disable every category that is not related to your site, as this could increase clicks for more relevant ads but by doing also means you’re decreasing competition between Adverts and, in many cases, the CPC. AdSense algorithms will, over a period of time, display adverts from the better performing (and relevant) subject categories anyway.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Having said that, I have had some success with changing the subject categories but I would recommend waiting until you have 30 days of data before determining which categories to disable. AdSense will display the percentage of impressions along with percentage of earnings and you’ll want to start by eliminating the categories that have lower earnings compared to impressions.</div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: oswaldbook, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
4. KEEP EXPERIMENTING</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
One of my top tips for AdSense is just to keep trying different settings to see which works best for you. Your site and niche might benefit from changes that won’t be so effective on other sites. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Experiment with different styles, sizes, positioning of ads in different combinations and record how each change impacts revenue. You’ll soon build up a picture of the best performing factors.</div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: oswaldbook, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
5. LEAVE IT ALONE</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 25px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Conversely, Google does a pretty good job of delivering the best matching ads to your content to help maximise AdSense earnings. One tip would be to just leave settings alone in many cases. I’ve found too much micro management can often have a negative effect and leaving ad serving largely down to Google can often yield the best results.</div>
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It’s in Google’s best interest as well to get the most earnings out of AdSense. To maximise revenue, AdSense will change factors such as the balance of Ad types, Ad subjects and contextual vs interest ads based depending on the performance of these factors.</div>
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6. MATCH ADVERT FONTS AND LINK STYLES</h3>
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One of the best ways to maximise AdSense revenue is to try and combat ‘banner blindness’ by making the styles of the text ads flow more seamlessly with the main website content the adverts sit against.</div>
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<img alt="AdSense advert custom styles" class="size-full wp-image-2277" height="228" src="http://www.webdevdoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/custom-advert-styling.jpg" style="border: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto !important; margin: 12px 0px 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px !important;" width="760" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin-top: 2px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Adding custom styles to AdSense ads</div>
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Matching the font style and link colour of your ads is one of the easiest ways to avoid banner blindness, assuming the (limited) font style available from the AdSense settings is similar to your website’s font. This will also improve the aesthetics as banners or more consistent with website styles.</div>
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7. REMOVE ADVERT BORDER</h3>
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Removing the advert border by colouring it to match the background colour is another great way to overcome banner blindness.</div>
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8. LIKE FOR LIKE</h3>
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Adverts positioned next to content of the same type tend to perform better; text ads next to text and image/rich media based ads next to images. If you are displaying ads of a specific type (it’s usually best to run text and image ads in the same spot), try matching like for like.</div>
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9. ALIGN TEXT WITH ADS</h3>
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Indented or centred adverts can stick out like a sore thumb and make them easily identifiable as ads. Aligining the text of your content with the ads will look more seamless and pleasing to the eye.</div>
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9. DON’T OVERDO IT.</h3>
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Google will penalise low content to advert ratio along with too many adverts above the fold. Visitors are also less likely to share your content if it is hard to read or adverts clutter the site. I would be wary of having more than 3 advert spots in total on any page and certainly wouldn’t want to put more than two ads in the top ~600 pixels.</div>
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Try starting with one above the fold advert and optimise that advert for maximum income potential before adding more.</div>
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10. READ THE TERMS</h3>
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It’s certainly worth familiarizing yourself with the <a href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182?hl=en" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="AdSense Terms">AdSense terms</a> and <a href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1346295" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0b0a10; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="AdSense placement policy">placement policy</a> to ensure your not doing anything which could get you banned from AdSense. This includes not obscuring adverts, altering the AdSense code and clicking your own ads.</div>
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11. DISABLE ENHANCED TEXT ADS</h3>
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You may have noticed the little 16×16 favicon image and large arrow on text ads as shown below. These are Enhanced text ads and are enabled by default.</div>
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<img alt="AdSense enhanced Text Ads" class="size-full wp-image-2262" height="90" src="http://www.webdevdoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/adsense-enchaned-advert-example.jpg" style="border: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto !important; margin: 12px 0px 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px !important;" width="728" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin-top: 2px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Example of AdSense ‘Enhanced Text Ads’ features</div>
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Although Google say enhanced text ads help provide clear call to actions and encourage clicks, I think they are more likely to be identified as banners and I’ve had better results when enhanced text ads are disabled. This option is under ‘Allow & block ads’ and ‘Ad Serving’ tab</div>
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12. DISABLE SOCIAL ADS</h3>
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Social ads will occasionally show the +1 button which is supposed to encourage social sharing. Social ads will also make adverts more easily identified so it’s worth turning this option off, even if most ads don’t have the social feature.</div>
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<img alt="Social Ads AdSense" class="size-full wp-image-2310" height="49" src="http://www.webdevdoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/adsense-tips-disable-social-ads.jpg" style="border: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto !important; margin: 12px 0px 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px !important;" width="525" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin-top: 2px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Disabling Social Adverts in AdSense</div>
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13. PLACE AD BELOW HEADLINE</h3>
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Adverts below the main article headline but above the text content I’ve found to perform better than adverts placed at the top of the page above the headline and everything else.</div>
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14. PLACE ADVERTS WITHIN CONTENT</h3>
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I regularly see advert placement in the between paragraphs within the main page content. Although I prefer not to break up content myself, I would expect this to work fairly well.</div>
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15. WAIT FOR TRAFFIC</h3>
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It may be tempting, but try not to fill your site with ads until you have plenty of traffic. Otherwise this will only lead to disappointment.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></div>
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With new sites, it can take a long time before they have built up a decent amount of authority in search engines. Crowding your site with ads in the first place will put visitors off and mean your content is less likely to attract shares, links and therefore authority.</div>
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Introduce adverts gradually, once you start getting good traffic and visitors numbers. I only started AdSense when my site reached 30k monthly visitors, which was a good 2 years since starting the blog.</div>
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16. TRY SIMPLE A/B TESTING</h3>
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I’ve found the easiest way to test the effectiveness of a specific advert setting is to take an initial measurement after a period of time (such as 1 week), make a change and wait another week before measuring the impact of that change. This is basic A/B testing.</div>
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It’s good to test your changes in isolation though, as multiple changes will obscure the efficacy of individual factors.</div>
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17. USE THE SCORECARD.</h3>
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This may sound like an obvious tip, but make sure to use the scorecard’s revenue optimisation and site health indicator and follow the pointers given here.</div>
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<img alt="AdSense revenue optimisation scorecard" class="size-full wp-image-2320" height="145" src="http://www.webdevdoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/adsense-scorecard-revenue-optimisation.jpg" style="border: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto !important; margin: 12px 0px 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px !important;" width="486" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin-top: 2px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
AdSense Scorecard for revenue optimisation and site health</div>
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The score is based on the average of the last 7 days, so any changes you make will take this long to be fully reflected. In most cases, you will get better earnings from a full score in both revenue optimisation and site health.</div>
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18. BE PATIENT</h3>
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When trying to test new ad settings or variations, allow a reasonable amount of time and a good sample size of visitors before assessing the effectiveness of the change. Daily fluctuations in clicks and CPC are common and with many of changes I make, I usually wait a couple of weeks.</div>
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Also when updating advert settings, it might take a number of minutes before the changes are reflected in the adverts on your site. Unless you create a new advert, you shouldn’t need to update the source code.</div>
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19. LINK ADSENSE TO ANALYTICS</h3>
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Google Analytics is a fantastically powerful tool and can give you all sorts of insights into advert performance that’s not revealed in AdSense. By linking your Analytics to AdSense, you can see the highest earning pages for example, which might help influence what kind of content to focus on more in the future</div>
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<img alt="AdSense revenue increase graph" class="size-full wp-image-2323" height="209" src="http://www.webdevdoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/adsense-analytics-revenue-graph.jpg" style="border: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto !important; margin: 12px 0px 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px !important;" width="729" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin-top: 2px; padding: 5px 0px 13px;">
Analytics graph showing increase in AdSense revenue</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Bonus tip:</span> AdSense default view will display highest revenue pages, which will often coincide with the highest page views. if you go into the ‘AdSense Pages’ option in Analytics, you can order by eCPM which shows cost per 1,000 page impressions – this gives a more balanced view that is independent of page views.</div>
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20. DON’T ANNOY USERS</h3>
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I often see AdSense advertising as a balancing act; especially when adverts are a major source of income. You want to maximise your own revenue whilst presenting your content in a readable and accessible way that will help encourage shares. All too often I see poor advert implementation that would put me (and many vistors) off from both reading and sharing the content which in turn will negatively affect the SEO and therefore traffic to the offending site.</div>
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Examples of really bad advert implementation include centered overlays, adverts that re-position themselves on touch and adverts that persistently overlay content preventing reading</div>
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NON ADSENSE TIPS</h2>
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So far we have looked at specific things we can do in AdSense to increase earnings, but there are plenty of non-AdSense related factors which will lead to higher revenue.</div>
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21. CHOOSE YOUR NICHE</h3>
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If you are in the position to start a new website or blog with AdSense in mind, then picking a subject area in a higher performing niche may be worth considering. Highly competitive niches that are likely to attract visitors with lower technical awareness will usually fare better. Generally, the more technical the user then the higher the chance they will identify and be immune to banner advertising.</div>
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Healthcare, medical and insurance subjects are supposed to be some of the top performing niches, whereas technical sites (like this one) usually lower.</div>
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22. INCREASE INTERACTIONS</h3>
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By encouraging people to engage more with a website can increase page views therefore giving more opportunities for banners to be displayed therefore increasing AdSense revenue.</div>
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On a blog for example, this could include a search box or list of related posts. Many sites will also break large articles into multiple pages for increased page views. This method however is less user-friendly as people generally prefer scrolling over more clicks.</div>
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23. IMPROVE WEBSITE SPEED</h3>
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How fast a website loads is a big usability metric. Fast sites are also good for SEO and therefore AdSense due to increased traffic from higher rankings. A faster site will  mean visitors are more likely to stay on your site rather than leave due to slow page loads.</div>
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Page speed is also a metric shown in the AdSense optimisation indicator, so clearly an important factor and a top income tip.</div>
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24. IMPROVE YOUR SEO</h3>
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Improving how your site ranks in search engines will drive more traffic, page views and increase earnings. It might seem obvious but there are literally hundreds of actionable things you can do to help your site’s SEO. Some of the more important factors include creating a solid site structure, good headlines and titles and friendly URLs.</div>
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It can be tricky to implement some SEO changes on an established site but if you’re starting a new site, you have every chance to build a good SEO foundation from the outset.</div>
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25. CREATE GREAT CONTENT</h3>
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It’s easy to say ‘create great content’ but in reality this is usually the hardest thing to achieve and in many ways the most important factor when it comes to generating decent AdSense earnings. There are so many things make content good, but the bottom line is that if no one likes, shares or links to your content naturally, then you are likely to have low traffic and earnings.</div>
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If you have little interest in your chosen subject and have started a website with the primary goal of making money then you are likely to fail in getting any more than a few pennies from AdSense. Content is, has always been, and will always be king for both SEO and therefore advertising income. Good content should really be my #1 AdSense tip.</div>
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I hope you these pointers come in handy, please share any AdSense tips that have helped you increase earnings.</div>

ADSENSE TIPS TO MAXIMISE REVENUE

I’ve been running AdSense on the Web Dev Door blog for a while now and have ran numerous tests and variations of advert settings over a lon...

Google AdSense Don'ts Dirty Tricks and Bad Tips That Will Get Your Site Banned

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Want to make money with Google AdSense for content? Here's a list of what <i>not</i> to do, unless you want to get banned. Google doesn't play around when it comes to click fraud. Click fraud loses Google money, and it loses AdWords customers money.<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
If you don't play by the rules, you may get a warning, you may get suspended, or you may just get banned.</div>
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1. Commit Google Don'ts</h3>
The first thing to avoid is any of the Google Don'ts. Cloaking, keyword stuffing, and title stacking are all ways to get banned from Google searches. They're also ways to get banned from AdSense.<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
When you place AdSense ads on your site, your site is far more visible to Google and it's much more likely that your rule breaking will be caught.</div>
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2. Click on Your Own Ads</h3>
No matter how tempting, never ever click on your own ads. This is probably the easiest way to get your site suspended or banned. It's a form of click fraud, and Google is very good at catching this, even if you think you're hiding your tracks.<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
Don't let anyone who uses any computer in your home click on your ads, either. Make sure your significant others and children are aware of the rules, or you could jeopardize your standing with Google.</div>
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3. Hide Your Ads</h3>
It might be tempting to hide your ads by making them the same color as your background or camouflaging them on areas with busy background images. You do still get paid for pageviews, so invisible ads would still pay, right? Don't even try it. This violates Google's Terms of Service, and it's easy to get caught.<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
Don't stuff your ads far below the rest of the content, either. Clicks pay better than pageviews, so it's to your advantage to have your ads prominent. Try to make the ads look like they belong on your page.</div>
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4. Beg for Clicks</h3>
Don't hold ad-click contests, beg, or even give big hints that people should click on your ads. They can ban you if they catch you begging for clicks anywhere on the Web, including pages that are totally unrelated to your AdSense pages.<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
Google also forbids labeling your ads with language stronger than "sponsored links." This is really for everyone's benefit. Pages that beg for clicks are usually not great reads, and pity clicks don't help the advertisers.</div>
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<b>Note</b>: It's fine to have contests on your Web site that aren't related to ad clicking or other rule breaking, such as "best photo" contests.</div>
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5. Alter the Code</h3>
AdSense generates javascript code that you can copy-and-paste directly into the HTML of your Web page. If you need to change the color or size of your ads, <b>generate new code from AdSense</b>. Don't make changes to the code from your Web page editing program or tweak it by hand.<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
If you put AdSense in Blogger, Google will generate the code for you from within Blogger.</div>
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6. Use Robots to Click on Your Site</h3>
Never use any sort of automated tool to inflate your page views or click on your ads. This is click fraud of the highest order, and Google is very sophisticated at catching this. This is a trick that can easily get you banned.<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
Likewise, don't use human-powered schemes to pay for clicks, either. No trading clicks with other AdSense users, and no pay-for-clicking schemes. If advertisers wanted to pay people for clicking, they would have signed up for it themselves.</div>
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7. Tell People How Much You Earn Per Click</h3>
Google is very picky about how much you disclose about how AdSense works. They don't let you tell people how much you were paid per keyword, because this could jeopardize revenue from AdWords advertisers. Beware of anyone who offers to sell you this information.</div>
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8. Make Pages Specifically to Display Ads</h3>
Google says you can't make pages simply to hang ads, "whether or not the page content is relevant." Many Web sites, including About.com, make money from ads. Google itself makes most of its money from advertising. What makes the difference between ad sponsored content and content for the sake of ads?<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
When you develop your site, your first thought should be about creating content, not ads. Avoid writing empty sentences for the sake of generating keywords, and avoid lengthy copy-and-pastes just to make more pages. Every page you publish should have a content-driven purpose.</div>
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9. Make Content About Taboo Topics</h3>
Google has a strict list of content standards, and they don't accept AdSense on pages that are violating them. These include, among other things, sites that <b>promote or sell</b>:<ul style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: inherit; z-index: 0;">
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; text-indent: 0px;">alcohol</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; text-indent: 0px;">certain weapons</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; text-indent: 0px;">firearms</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; text-indent: 0px;">tobacco</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; text-indent: 0px;">drugs</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; text-indent: 0px;">designer knock-offs</li>
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This is a silly rule to violate, because AdSense is keyword generated, so it's amazingly easy for you to get caught. If you do have content that violates these rules, such as a beer-making supply store, they may be legitimate sites, but AdSense is not for you.</div>
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10. Cheat in Any Other Way</h3>
This isn't by any means a comprehensive list.<div style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;">
I'm sure there are many ways to game the system that Google hasn't found out about... <i>yet</i>. There always are. AdSense is constantly changing to find new ways to detect click fraud, and eventually you will be caught.</div>
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The best way to generate income through AdSense is to create good content that is well optimized for search engines and to promote your site through legitimate channels.</div>
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That sounds like a lot of work, because it <i>is</i> a lot of work. However, it's a strategy that won't get you banned.</div>
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Google AdSense Don'ts Dirty Tricks and Bad Tips That Will Get Your Site Banned

Want to make money with Google AdSense for content? Here's a list of what not to do, unless you want to get banned. Google does...