Hey, dear bloggers! I am pleased that you have made your way to this stage of blogging! I must say “Welcome to the Monetization stage” of blogging in our blogging mentorship series.
As a blogger, earning money from your blog is a common desire. And, the first thing that comes to mind of a blogger when it’s time to monetize the blog is “Google AdSense”.
Google AdSense is one of the most trusted and reliable Cost-per-click (CPC) models of advertising networks owned and managed by Google. Around 2 million people are making a fortune from Google AdSense. So, you can too!
But, you must be doubting!
Can AdSense really make money for you?
And, if yes! How much?
Let me show you a glimpse of potential annual earnings for a health niche website with monthly traffic of 50K. This potential revenue is calculated from the Google AdSense platform itself, and it can vary based on your traffic and clicks.
$9,462 estimated annually for 50,000 monthly page views! Not a bad revenue!
This amount can be more or less based on page views, niche, and location. Still, it’s a good enough revenue for a blogger!
But, there is a challenge to making money from Google AdSense!
You need approval from Google AdSense to join the network and start publishing ads to make revenue. This approval is not easy all the time. Google follows strict rules and regulations to have a good quality ad network. There is a policy guideline to follow in order to get AdSense approval.
Let’s list out all the things that you need to take care of in order to apply to Google AdSense, to avoid any rejection.
1. You must be 18+
According to Google AdSense terms & requirements, you must be at least 18 years old to participate in this program.
If you are not 18 yet, you may use a parent or guardian signup for AdSense using their own account. However, if it is approved all the payment will be done to the adult responsible for your site.
2. Unique and interesting content
Google AdSense needs content that is unique and provides value to existing knowledge. The layout should be proper and easy to read. Good quality content also attracts genuine visitors to your website and generates good traffic.
Keep your articles well organized and easy to navigate. You can also include infographics, images, and polls to make your informative as well as visually engaging. You can follow the below-mentioned points to improve the quality of your content:
- Your website should have well-researched, engaging, and plagiarism-free articles. You can use “Grammarly” to check for any grammar or spelling errors and you can use “Duplichecker”, or “Copyscape” to detect plagiarism.
- Your blog should be unique and provide value to the topic with a minimum 800-word limit in each post.
- Never use “click-bait” titles or misleading information that may harm anyone. Don’t publish content that promotes animal cruelty.
- Don’t sell or promote counterfeit products in your blogs or that violate copyright claims.
Take care of these points and produce trusted content on your website. Remember, Google wants to approve you for AdSense, but they want to build a better and genuine advertising environment for their advertisers, which is possible only if you have original and real content.
3. Quality of traffic
Google AdSense follows strict rules for determining the quality of traffic. Google can identify fake traffic which it termed “bad traffic” and it should be eliminated. Though there are no minimum traffic criteria needed for AdSense approval. However, there are some points that you can keep in mind to improve the quality of your visitor:
- Your website should have an SSL certificate to ensure that it can protect visitors’ data.
- No copyright issues must be there in your content.
- Post regularly and optimize your content when needed to increase traffic.
- Edit your old content and keep it updated.
Check for bad traffic with the help of Google Search Console or Google analytics. You can determine the quality of the traffic that your website is receiving. It should not have clickjacking or traffic generated by fake crawlers or bots.
4. User experience & site navigation
Having an accessible navigation bar is key to providing a better user experience. Keep the below points in mind before applying:
- Your content should be easy to read and your navigational elements are able to take the user to the right and intended content.
- Your website’s drop-down menus and icons must be working properly.
- Navigational elements should be organized properly and appear consistently in every browser.
- Improve the user experience on your website by displaying all the web pages clearly.
- Images should be properly aligned along with header and footer links.
- Put content links on the sidebar.
For example, The “About Us page” should clearly state your work, niche, goals, and other team members. You can check the readability status of your content with various tools to improve the user experience on your website.
5. All pages must be crawled
Web crawlers are part of internet traffic. They are also called “spider or bot” that is used to process and index the content of webpages. AdSense Crawler help in determining the quality of content in order to display relevant ads. They search for the type of content you have on your website to show ads related to that.
However, we don’t know when a crawler will visit your website as it is done automatically. AdSense crawler is different from Google crawler and ads tags should be implemented on your web pages for providing access to AdSense crawler. Build authority so that all your web pages must be crawled by the bots.
6. Complete each of the pages
It is one of the most important factors that need to do before applying for AdSense. There are a few web pages that need to be completed and organized.
- About Us page
- Contact Us page
- Disclaimer/ Terms & Conditions
- Privacy policy page
All these pages are important for your website and need to be completed with relevant content. These pages will show your authenticity and make it easy for Google to recognize your website.
Less pages with more content is better than more pages with less content.
7. Content that has an identity
“Content is the king”. This in fact is true in online marketing. Content on your website must be unique and able to distinguish itself from the rest. Repetitive content or plagiarized one will ruin the image of your website.
Therefore, publish well-researched and unique articles on your website. Create an “About Us” page using responsive themes that show your true identity and objective. You can also do “Personal branding” to make your website unique.
Don’t hesitate to share your story, your vision, and your social links.
8. Enough content to know what the site is about
Keep your website complete with all the content needed. A minimum of 20 articles should be there on your website that reflects your niche. Use good featured images with no copyright images.
Use simple themes and light background colors. Do competitive research to find out the number of words written in an article that is related to your topic. You should include more words than that and do keyword research properly.
9. Setup Website Sitemap
The purpose of a “sitemap” is to display the list of your web pages clearly just like a table of content. It shows all the categories listed for blogs and web pages. Create a sitemap carefully as it contributes to getting your AdSense approval.
Google approves several types of sitemaps that you can consider. Setting up a sitemap is also helpful for SEO.
However, you can get AdSense approval even without sitemap, if your website is well organized and crawled.
10. Device Optimised
Make sure that your website is optimized for all kinds of devices. All the web pages are displayed in an arranged manner and are easily accessible to the users. Your website should be sticky and not load slowly on mobile phones. Most people use the internet on mobile phones and if your website doesn’t load then you may lose a lot of traffic.
Take a mobile-friendly test for your website: Check Here
11. Self-designed images or self-captured images work best
Images are important for your content as it provides information visually and gives a break from reading long paragraphs. One of the best ways to do it is to self-design these images with help of photo editing tools such as Canva or Adobe.
This shows the hard work and dedication that you have put into your work. Try to click images on your own and edit them as per your content to show authenticity.
12. Website speed
Website with poor speed do not rank well on Google search results. A slow loading website is not a good platform for displaying ads, therefore Google AdSense demands a high speed for website.
You can check your website speed for desktop and mobile devices as shown below on “PageSpeed Insights“.
Video resource (must watch)
This video series must be watched by everyone before applying to the Google AdSense
In the next articles we will learn the steps to apply for Google AdSense.
