Below, you find some useful guides for developing your AdSense program. If you haven't yet signed up for the AdSense program, see the signup page.

• Official Google AdSense Terms & Conditions
  
  Acceptance into the AdSense Program requires that you agree with the Terms & Conditions.
   
• Google AdSense Ad Formats
  
  Examples of the AdSense text and image ads, link units, and themed units.
   
• The AdSense Tour
  
  Take a quick tour of how the Google AdSense program works.
   
• AdSense News
  
  AdSense news from leading publishers.
   
• AdSense Case Studies
  
  Learn how companies have used the AdSense program to increase traffic and revenue.
   
• AdSense Blog
  
  A look inside Google AdSense.
   
• AdSense Common Questions
  
  Frequently asked questions and answers about the AdSense program.
   
• AdSense Policies
  
  All publishers who apply to the AdSense program are reviewed according to these program policies.
   
• Where Should I Place Google Ads
  
  Check out the "heat map" to help you locate ideal AdSense locations on your pages.
   
• Webmaster Guidelines
  
  Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site.

• SEO Chat - Part of the Developer Shed network and easily one of the most popular forums for webmasters. SEO Chat has a very good collection of informative articles on search engine optimization, as well as good discussion on day to day SEO issues.
   
• Search Engine Watch - Has quickly evolved into an industry leader in terms of search engine news. Signup for the SearchDay newsletter and receive search engine news daily. The forums are the highest rated by the search engine community simply because so many SEO experts frequent the forum.
   
• WebmasterWorld - The highest Alexa ranking for an SEO related forum. The large number of members can be a bit overwhelming but if you ask a focused question, you'll probably get a reply within a few minutes. They also have a paid membership section where you can discuss more complicated issues with the pros.
   
• HighRankings - This forum is focused mainly on increasing your website rankings. Although somewhat less formal than the other forums, you can pick up a lot of "in the trenches" strategic advice for improving your rankings. There are several good resources available as well such as a comprehensive guide to linking strategies.
   
• Search Engine Roundtable - Started by Barry Schwartz (and supplemented by guest bloggers), this is by far the best source for getting a bird's eye view on the main SEO forums. In addition, Barry offers excellent SEO advice, and is a “white-hat” SEO – meaning that he is as concerned with the ethics of the SEO tactics he uses as he is with the website traffic that he gets.
   
• Threadwatch - Nick Wilson's Threadwatch.org is a unique experiment in community participation – is it a forum, is it a blog? It looks like a blog (individual blog posts) but acts like a forum (anyone can register and then post on the blog). After a year in existence, the jury's still out, but one thing is clear – Threadwatch gets the news to you fast, and it covers everything from SEO to marketing to search engines to technology issues. All in all, an excellent site to start your “information” dose with. There's just one problem though – for the most part (and especially Nick W), Threadwatch and its authors are anti-Google.
   
• Search Engine Watch Blog - This site wins out for its professionalism and sheer quality of reporting and boasts top SEO minds such as Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. Usually, Threadwatch and Search Engine Roundtable cover all the good stuff on the SEW blog, but with the SEW Forums so nearby, a trip to the SEW blog quickly becomes a habit.
   
• SEOmoz - Home of Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz is unique in the SEO community for its balanced and calculated perspective on SEO. Rand (or randfish, as he's known in the SEO forums) is also the author of “Search Engine Ranking Factors”, an authoritative list of “key” SEO factors a webmaster should keep in mind. If you want an intelligent discussion on SEO without the hype and bias, go to SEOmoz.
   
• Stuntdubl - Another blog with an emphasis on quality writing and insight that puts it heads and shoulders above the rest. You might not find the “live” coverage that blogs like Threadwatch and SERoundtable support, but the site serves a different purpose – to educate the reader about how search engine optimization actually works – for searchers, for search engines and for webmasters.

Search Engine Employee Blogs

We all know about the search engine blogs – Google has one for its search engine, for AdWords and even for AdSense. Similarly, Yahoo has a blog or two as well. However, these blogs toe the official party line, and while they are genuinely helpful, there's no substitute for one-on-one help that you can get from a search engine employee (such as GoogleGuy, the Google representative who posts on Webmaster World). Here are two blogs by search engine employees, and these offer valuable insights on how people on the inside think about SEO.

• Jeremy Zawodny (Yahoo)
• Matt Cutts (Google)

The forums listed above are really the best of the best — but it is only one part of a larger search engine optimization strategy: you must also find the right tools for improving your page rankings.
 

Create simple page designs for your sites. If your pages are too complex, delivering highly targeted ads will be difficult. You have to help the Google AdSense engine to deliver the right ads. If you are getting the wrong ads, no one will click on them. Take a look at the AdSense heat map to get a feel for ad placement.

Place ads above the fold. There will be a large number of visitors who will never scroll beyond the first page.

Try using the borderless ad. They have a tendency to be less obtrusive.

Use colors that complement your site colors. Experiment with using the same color for the background of the ad as you use for the background color of the page. Also try using the same background color for the ad as you use for the background of a navigation sidebar. I think this sometimes causes visitors to think the AdSense Ads are part of your navigation system.

Optimize your pages so that each page discusses only one topic. It is easier to get highly targeted traffic for a single topic than it is for page that discusses multiple topics.

On simple page layouts, try wrapping content around the ads and near the top right of the page. I hear this works well for others.

Plain simple pages without a lot of competing hyperlinks usually perform better.

If you want to target the high paying keywords, make sure the keyword is in the page title tag, the file name and at least once in the first paragraph. You might also make sure the keyword occurs in a closing paragraph.

Create unique content for your site. Find a way to weave the things you are passionate about into your site.

If you use public domain articles for your site content, make sure to create your own introduction paragraph and conclusion paragraph. You might also want to sift through the content and change the wording around to make the content more unique.

If you keep getting the wrong ads delivered, try rewriting the title and a few paragraphs. Sometimes just the change in a word or two will snap the AdSense engine back to the topic. Also double check the anchor text in links to make sure you are using the right keywords.

Use a good keyword tool to help you find keywords that people actually use when searching for products and services.

Use good site design techniques. If you discover a new keyword opportunity and you want to create a new page to optimize for the keyword, you don't want to update every single page on your site to add a new navigation element. Use SSI or some templating system to "include" your navigation system if possible, or use a good content editing system like Macromedia's Dreamweaver templates. Make sure that during the site design stage, you plan for easily adding new content and new navigational elements.

If possible, use SSI or some templating system to "include" your AdSense code. If you decide to change the layout or color scheme of the ads, you want to change it in only one place.
 

1) What is the visitor looking for when they visit my site?

2) Where are the most likely places on my page where the visitor's eye will go?

3) What ads would be best to use without getting in the way of the visitor?

4) How can I keep the page uncluttered but yet keep the ads prominent?

More placement suggestions include the following:

• All other things being equal on the page, ads that are above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold.
• Ads placed close to the richest content perform well.
• Ads placed near navigation elements perform well (probably because the visitor is focused on that area)
• When reading an article, the ads placed directly below the content seem to perform better. "It's almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, 'What can I do next?'.

You should always put the visitor first, however, when determining where your AdSense ads will appear.
 

There are some other options available to help start building your traffic. I'm posting what I've used and what I know works, along with some comments about the service.
 

You can earn revenue from three different sources when you signup for the AdSense program:

• AdSense for Content - revenue generated from targeted ads on your site.
   
• AdSense for Search - revenue generated from the placement of the google search box on your site.
   
• Referrals - revenue generated from the products or services that Google endorses. Currently this includes Google AdSense, Google Adwords, and Firefox (with the Google toolbar embedded).

For each report, you can review the following page metrics:

• Page Impressions - the number of times that the ad was delivered. Since you can have up to 3 ad blocks, each time your page is viewed you can generate up to 3 impressions.
   
• Clicks - the number of times that your ad was clicked;
   
• Page CTR - page impressions divided by the number of clicks equals the click through rate.
   
• Page eCTM - cost per thousand is a bit obscure to say the least. Advertisers normally pay based on the number of times an ad is viewed. The effective cost per thousand then would be the number of impressions divided by the total earnings.
   
• Earnings - total amount your account has been credited for clicks.

You can dig deeper into the report if you have setup AdSense channels. Clicking the "top channels" will show you which channels have received clicks for the time period you selected for the report.
 

When you create an AdSense channel, you are basically grouping your AdSense ads. For instance, if you own two different sites, one related to real estate and another related to automobiles, setting up channels allows you to collect stats for each separately. You can then compare the results. You might assign tower ads to your real estate site and leaderboard ads to the automobile site. If the tower ads perform better, you might consider switching the automobile site to also use tower ads. Or, possibly, the placement of one ad might perform better than others and you decide to move ads on another site to the same location.

There are two types of channels available.

Custom Channels

Custom channels can be used to track the performance of different ad types or compare the performance of your page topics. You simply create a name for the channel and special code is generated along with the AdSense Javascript to identify the channel. When you place this code in your page, all of your AdSense clicks on that page will be related to the channel you have setup. Setting up new channels is really quite simple. You simply fill in a text box with the name of your new channel. When you format your ad, you just select the channel to which you want the ad related. Very Simple!

URL Channels

By entering a partial or full URL, you can use a URL channel to track pages with AdSense ads within a certain directory or all pages within a domain.

AdSense channels gives you better analysis about your ad performance. Setting up AdSense channels allow you to collect ad stats on the site level, sections of sites, individual pages, and even specific ad units.