Earning revenue using Google AdSense really is about trial and error. Every site performs differently and while there are best practices, you’ll need to experiment in order to get the most from your placements. I’ve found the reports in Analytics extremely useful for testing ads on the sites that I monetize with AdSense.

Here are the three AdSense reports available in Analytics and some suggestions on how to use them to earn more money:

• AdSense Content- Provides details on how various ads perform on your site and which pages perform best.
  • Use this report to:
    1. Optimize underperforming pages. If you see that a certain page has many pageviews with a low click-through rate, you might want to test different ad sizes, fonts and placements within your template. Subtle changes to your ads can have a significant impact on earnings.
    2. Analyze what content has a high conversion rate and produce more of it.

• AdSense Referrers- This report specifies where the traffic that generates revenue is coming from.
  • Use this report to:
    1. Optimize or discontinue underperforming ad campaigns and invest more in the ones that are working.
    2. Analyze your free organic traffic and build an SEO strategy around the data provided on high performing keywords.
    3. Overall, focus on the strategies that work based on the data from your report.

• AdSense Trending- Specifies the revenue generation during different hours in a day and during different days in a week.
  • Use this report to:
    1. Schedule the posting of new content to coincide with peak times for Adsense earnings.
    2. Time when you submit articles to your social networks.
    3. Send out newsletters or marketing material during those peak times.

AdSense overview report screen-shot:

Linking AdSense with Google Analytics is quite simple. Here’s how:

• Sign in to your AdSense account
• Click on the link titled “Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics”.
• Once linked, you will find an AdSense menu on the left hand side of the navigation bar in your Analytics home page.

Once you integrate your account, you`ll be on your way to earning more revenue by using the data to your advantage. Good Luck!

There are numerous benefits of Google Analytics such as:

• Discover what users are doing on your website
  • What pages are your visitors spending the most time on?
  • What pages are your visitors leaving your website from?

• Discover the origin of your visitors
  • Did they find you on a search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN?
  • Were they referred to your site by another?
  • Did they type your web address into their browser and come to your site directly?
  • What country, state/province or city are your visitors from?
  • If they did find your site through a search engine, what keywords are they searching?

• Track conversions
  • What traffic sources convert to paying customers?
  • What traffic sources sign up for newsletters or perform other desirable actions on your site?

These are just a few of the many benefits Analytics provides.

Here is a snapshot of a Google Analytics account dashboard report:

How do you install Google Analytics on your website?

If you are using Blogger or WordPress, please visit my posts on adding analytics to them:

Blogger – Adding Google Analytics to Blogger

WordPress – Adding Google Analytics to WordPress

If you aren’t using these platforms, go to the main template on your site and look for the </body> tag. Place the code right before that tag.

Once you have installed Google’s tracking codes, you’ll be able to get various reports on your website right away.

Use it to your advantage and you’ll be able to get more  from advertising campaigns and learn valuable insights that help you grow your online business.

1.) First, visit your Google Analytics account to give Google some information about your site. Once you login, click the add a new profile link like the one below:

2.) Fill in the required information as seen in the image below.

3.) When you click continue, Google will give you a snippet of code to add to your WordPress template. Copy that code and login to your WordPress admin.

4.) Once logged in, click on Editor listed under the Appearance tab:

5.) In your theme editor, select the Footer (footer.php) file or possibly the end.php file (depending on your template), from the right hand column:

6.) From here, take the code you got from Google and add it just above the </body> tag as shown below:

7.) click Update File and you’re done.

You can now track your site traffic with Google.