Is your website ready to use AdSense?

Last Updated on April 1, 2023

Google AdSense is one of the largest advertising platforms on the web. While many advertisers need their services, many website owners register their sites as ad publishers. A perfect mutualism symbiosis.

However, from the publisher’s point of view, many site owners find it difficult to register their site to AdSense. Because, despite the lack of knowledge about AdSense, Google also applies strict rules. This does have a good purpose. It avoids the ads distraction to the site visitors and gets a natural response from visitors who really want to open AdSense ads.

If you want to register your site to AdSense, we share some tips that may help your site be accepted. However, before that, you need to understand the benefits and consequences of using AdSense on your site. Also, don’t forget that you must have an AdSense account first, by registering at the AdSense site.

A. Benefits and consequences of using AdSense

Maybe you were passionate about registering your site with Google AdSense. But, hold on, try to think beforehand whether you really understand what you will get and all the consequences.

The benefits

I believe you already know the benefits of implementing Google AdSense on your site.

Some of the benefits offered by Google AdSense are ​[1]​:

• Passive income; You just need to think about how many visitors come and like your site. Then, Google AdSense will give you income based on the number of curious visitors or those who headed to the ads from your site.
• Easy to implement; We can easily insert the code of Google AdSense into HTML code. Moreover, for a CMS like WordPress, many plugins can help you implement Google AdSense code.
• Easy to customize; We can adjust the ad appearance manually, semi-automatic, or fully automatic. Moreover, with AutoAds, you no longer need to think about where the ad will appear. Because it has been automatically optimized for the screen size of mobile phones and desktop computers.
• Practical; Besides being easy to implement, with only one AdSense account, you can register many sites you have. However, only the eligible site could be registered.

The consequences

Apart from its advantages, you need to consider the consequences of implementing Google AdSense on your site, such as ​[2]​:

• The income is based on the number of visitors; The amount of income you will get is directly proportional to the average number of daily visitors. Therefore, the higher the average is, the more revenue from Google AdSense becomes. Besides, you need to know that revenue from Google AdSense can only be paid if the value is equal to $100 USD. So if the number of visitors on your site is still low, there’s no point installing Google AdSense.
• Reducing site speed; Let’s just say Google accepts your site. Then, when you start implementing the Google AdSense code on your site, at that time, your site’s page loading speed will be reduced. It can even be two or even five times slower than without Google AdSense. Although this depends on the ad settings on the Google AdSense site. To solve this, you can head over to our page for a guide to increasing site speed.
• Your account belongs to Google; AdSense account and all the income in it (which has not been paid), belong to Google. Therefore, if Google suspects invalid clicks or other rule violations resulted from your ID, Google can completely disable or close your account, along with its income.

Many people are disappointed after implementing Google AdSense on their site, due to their lack of knowledge about these consequences. So, pay attention and understand carefully the consequences before you register your site with Google AdSense.

B. Recommended site

Google doesn’t really care about the type of registered sites. You can even register your online shop site (e-commerce) with Google AdSense. However, it may reduce your sales. Because your prospective buyers might prefer the products offered by ads from Google AdSense. Besides, it is possible that Google may accidentally display product ads from your own competing store.

However, there are several suitable types of sites that work with Google AdSense, such as ​[4]​:

• Blog site; A blog is a type of site that will periodically update or add content on a regular basis. Many popular blogs have implemented Google AdSense to monetize their visitors.
• A forum; Is a site where people discuss certain topics. Commonly, while there is no long-form content in a forum, it is more related to the frequency of interaction or discussion among forum members.
• Online tools; The free online tool is gaining popularity. If you develop a free online tool or software, it can also generate income through AdSense. Especially if you already have a lot of regular daily visitors.

C. Site eligibility guidelines

Here are some guidelines to help make your site eligible to be registered for Google AdSense.

1. Navigation

The navigation menu is one of the important things in a website. Because it lets visitors know how they are interacting with the site. So in a website, all navigation must intuitively be able to direct visitors to the page they should, and navigation shouldn’t confuse the visitor. Besides, visitors should be able to easily use the site navigation to find out what products, goods, or services offered.

Navigation eligibility

Commonly, several poor criteria of navigation as follows:

• false claims of downloadable or streaming content,
• linking to an incorrect destination or missing content (404 error),
• redirects users to irrelevant and/or misleading web page, and/or
• text on the page that is not related to the topic and/or business model of the website.

Therefore, check all the existing navigation on the site you have. Do not let any navigation that should go to a particular page, but goes to an incorrect page, or it cannot be clicked because the link does not exist.

Do not let any incomplete navigation exist on your site. For example, if your navigation still contains menu 1, menu 2, or something like that in Figure 3 above, then you need to set it up until it’s ready.

Tips for checking navigation

when creating a navigation menu on your site, please consider the following ​[5]​:

• Arrangement; The elements in the navigation menu must be neatly organized. This aims to make it easier for visitors to understand the navigation.
• Readability; Navigation text should be easy to read. Also pay attention to the color, font type, and size so that the text is easy to read.
• Functional; Visitors should be able to use all the navigations according to their function and/or lead to the appropriate content. For example, if the navigation menu on your site has drop-down menus, check to see if it is working properly.

Third-party links (External/outbound Links)

Many references said that it is not recommended to add external links on your site before Google AdSense has approved your site. This is not quite true!

External or outbound links are the links that direct visitors to other pages on another domain or website. In contrast to internal or inbound links, which direct visitors to other pages of the same domain or website.​[6]​

Recent studies have shown a positive impact on web pages when they use relevant external links. So, it is likely that Google will rank any pages based on the existence of the relevant external links on that page.​[7]​

It doesn’t matter if you want to add relevant external links to your content. Because Google AdSense might check the relevance of these external links. One of my sites has a lot of external links on every page, is in fact approved by Google AdSense. But if you add a lot of irrelevant external links, it will surely have a negative impact.

2. Language

Currently, not all languages in the world are supported by AdSense. If your site uses a language other than Indonesian or English, then you need to check the list of languages supported by AdSense.

3. Required pages

There are several pages that must be available and accessible on your website, such as: About Us, Contact, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service.

About us

About Us pages commonly provide the basic information or descriptions about the site or company, goals, and how the company/site works ​[8]​.

The main purpose of this page is to inform visitors about the site/company and how it operates. Besides, the about page sometimes helps to find potential customers via a search engine. ​[9]​

Contact

The contact page is one of the required pages that on your site. It aims to help visitors contact the site owner if they want to ask, report, complain, or have other needs related to the site.​​[10]​​

If the site owner is a company, it is best to write the company address and telephone number on the contact page. This will make it easier for visitors who want to go to where the company is located.

Privacy policy

The Privacy Policy page is a page that contains legal agreements that are very important for your online business/site. It also legally required to inform about how the site protects the personal data of its visitors.

European laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Electronic Privacy Directive (e-Privacy Directive), require digital publishers to provide information to visitors. This information contains the use and sharing of their personal data, and about the use of cookies, Mobile advertising IDs, and other forms of local storage. In many cases, these laws also require that consent be obtained first. ​[11]​

In addition, this page is also a way to show visitors that the site (and its administrators) can be trusted, and has procedures to handle the visitor’s personal data with care ​[12]​.

Commonly, the Privacy Policy page contains about:​[13]​

• information collected,
• cookies,
• collection method,
• information storage, and
• contact details.

Google will also use cookies to help serve the ads it displays on partner sites. When a user visits a site that contains Google AdSense, a cookie will be placed on that end user’s browser ​[14]​. Therefore, the Privacy Policy page is required on your site.

Terms of service

By the law, the Terms of Service page is optional, but it is highly recommended to have it on every site you have. Commonly, It includes some information about the scope, rules, and functions of the service, effectively and efficiently. So, every visitor can understand it easily and quickly. ​[15]​

Some of the reasons that this page is needed are to prevent misuse of the service and to limit the liability. Because a terms of service page acts as a binding legal contract between the service owner and the user/visitor. Besides, this page informs the limit of the responsibility of the website owner, if there is an error with the content on the website.​[16]​

Commonly, the Terms of service page contains about:​[17]​

• rules of service use by visitors,
• limits on the fairness of service use,
• limits of responsibility; also known as a disclaimer,
• copyright notice,
• the right to change the agreement,
• and so forth.

4. Content

Content is an important part of applying for AdSense. Apart from the feasibility of the site, this also impacts the quality of the site in the long run. Besides, it can even increase the number of your daily visitors.

Quality content

High-quality interesting content is one of the things that makes visitors feel enjoy reading. Commonly, the indicators of quality and interesting content as follows:

• Originality; The content is your original work, unique, not a copy of other content (plagiarism). The limit of plagiarism or similarity in content is should be below 25% of the total content ​[18], [19]​. Generally, this score can be checked using iThenticate, Turnitin, or similar. So, auto-generated content (AGC), spinners, or similar, won’t have a positive impact in the long run.
• Latest; Although it is optional, sometimes updating your content is needed. The novelty of the content sometimes determines the ranking in search engines. So if you have old content, you may need to update that content.​ [20]​
• Helpful; Original content doesn’t guarantee its quality. So, another indicator is the contribution of content. New and original content, but is not useful will not have any positive impact on visitors. Besides, visitors will feel enjoy reading thousands of words, if they think the content is very useful for them.​ [21]​
• Relevant; Creating quality content is draining your mind, time, money, and other resources. However, the content must also be relevant to search results by visitors on search engines. This is generally determined by the keywords in the content. ​[22]​
• Readability; Good content is not only useful but also easy to read and understand. Because readers who have difficulty understanding the content will not feel enjoy reading the content for long. In other words, the poorly written content, confusing, boring, or often uses complicated words, makes it look unattractive.​[23]​

There’s no point in applying AdSense if you haven’t finished creating content or it’s not in high quality. Moreover, do not have any empty sections or like lorem ipsum. For more information, please head to our article on the procedure for writing quality articles.

Make at least 30 to 50 quality content/articles on your site. This will increase the number of visitors, which will further affect increasing the revenue from AdSense.

Legal content/complies with Google policies

Google AdSense enforces strict rules regarding the site contents. This means that all the content on your sites must comply with Google’s policy in order to be monetized with AdSense. If the content on your site violates one of Google’s policies, then Google will most likely not accept the site.

The content that violates the rules, such as:​[24]​

• illegal content,
• abuse of intellectual property,
• promote the sale of products from rare or endangered species,
• dangerous or offensive contents,
• facilitate dishonest behavior,
• misleading content,
• contains malicious software,
• sexually explicit content,
• facilitate marriage with foreigners,
• adult themes in family content, and/or
• material on child sexual abuse and pedophilia.

Therefore, pay attention to your content, and don’t let any of your content violate these rules.

Number of contents and visitors

Google has no rules for the minimum amount of content or the minimum number of daily visitors to your site. However, this generally affects the likelihood of acceptance of the site. Hence, the more contents and daily visitors, the higher the chance that your site will be accepted by Google.

In general, it is highly recommended that your site has at least 30-50 articles, which contain at least 1000 words for each article. If your site only has less than 20 articles, it may be very difficult to get approval from AdSense.​[25]​

In addition, you need to make sure that your site is visited by at least 50 visitors every day. If your average number of daily visitors is less than that, you may need to increase the number of your quality articles. Technically, an average daily visitor of less than 50 won’t have any impact on you even if you’re approved by Google AdSense. Don’t forget that your income from AdSense really depends on the number of your visitors.

5. Indexed in search engine

The most important requirement is that your site must be active and can be accessed anywhere using an internet connection. Otherwise, you will have difficulty registering it with Google Adsense. Besides, your site must be found in search results, especially on Google Search.

To be found in search results, you should register your site on Google’s Webmaster Tool, Bing, Yandex, and maybe other search engines. But, to register a site with Google AdSense, it is highly recommended to first register it in Google Search Console (GSC).

After you register on Google Search Console, don’t forget to enter a sitemap on GSC. Because the sitemap that has been registered will be automatically crawled by Google every few days. However, your site content may get indexed within days or even weeks. So please be patient if your site pages are still not indexed by Google.

D. Register your site with Google AdSense

Registering a site on Google AdSense is very easy. I mean how to register it, not the acceptance rate.

Registering procedure

If you want to register your Blogger or Youtube channel, please follow this link:

• Blogger: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1269077?hl=id
• Youtube: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9914702?hl=id

However, if you have your own domain like www.example.com or example.com, then you can follow Google’s direct guide to registering your site.

Waiting for the confirmation email

Google AdSense reviews thousands of registrations every day. So it takes time to confirm the site you registered with.

Commonly, Google will provide acceptance information within 1-3 days via email. However, sometimes up to several weeks or even more than 1 month. So you need to be patient to get the confirmation email.

While waiting for confirmation, you can add content or improve its quality, which will increase the number of daily visitors to your site. Also remember, that income from AdSense is very dependent on the number of visitors.

References

Image cover by Freepik and Elidrissi.Ilyas (Wikimedia Commons).