The road from having a website to turning it into an asset for your business is long and arduous. Building a website that attracts a good audience requires more than planning and hard work, good decision making, web savvy, understanding trends and a pinch of good luck.
But when you do things right – pick a good niche, develop a solid content strategy, and find cost-effective ways to promote your WordPress website – you can rightfully expect to start seeing good visitor numbers.
Good visitor metrics are a sign that it’s time to set up some type of monetization for your WordPress website. The words “Google AdSense” should come to your mind at this point, for no other reason than that Google and advertising are as inseparable as peanut butter and jelly.
Why Google AdSense?
Adding Google AdSense to your website can be a solid strategy to monetize it. Google is Google because it excels in many different areas. Finding great advertising products and services is one of them, so he managed to fill his coffers with 31% of the total. Digital ad spend in 2019. Google Ads, the company’s advertising platform, is a leader in its field.
Google AdSense, the advertising network for publishers, is not lazy either. This platform allows eligible online publishers to display Google ads on their websites and profit from their viewing. As a publisher, you can use AdSense to:
If you ask Google, he adds that the biggest advantages of using AdSense – aside from the opportunity to make money – are the network’s tendency to show you the ads that match your target audience and pay you the highest, and the control you have. through advertisements displayed on your website.
So if you’ve already done the hard part of choosing a niche, site with potentially good AdSense revenueand you’ve done everything from finding a good host to choosing the perfect WordPress forum theme, for example, the rest should be pretty easy, right? Let’s see a few different ways to add Google AdSense to your WordPress website.
How to Add Google AdSense to Your WordPress Website with Site Kit
In October 2019, Google announced that it was pulling the WordPress plugin out of beta. in your name Site KitThis plugin allows WordPress website owners to connect their websites to a number of Google services, including AdSense.
If you want to add Google AdSense to your WordPress website with as little hassle as possible, doing so via Site Kit may be for you. On the other hand, it means you have to relinquish some of the control over the ad placement to the plugin and AdSense..
If you’re comfortable with this, here’s what you should do:
Install and activate the Site Kit plugin. The easiest way to do this would be to find it using the plugin menu in your website’s admin dashboard.
Run the Site Kit setup. You will find the Site Kit option in the Dashboard menu. During setup you will need to sign in with your Google account and grant a few permissions.
If you already have an AdSense account, link it. Go to Connect More Services in Site Kit settings and connect AdSense in few steps.
If you don’t have an AdSense account, create one. Click “Create AdSense Account” during AdSense setup and provide all relevant information.
To wait. Because it can take from a few hours to weeks for Google AdSense to approve your website.
This will be the end of your troubles when you use Site Kit as Google recommends you to use it – the plugin uses auto ads to automatically determine the size, type and placement of ads on your website. But it’s okay if you want to be more involved in the whole process, so let’s see what other ways you should use to link your website to AdSense and place ads.
How Do You Link a WordPress Website to AdSense?
During the normal registration process, you will be asked to provide your website address and language. Fast forward a few steps where you provide your own information and AdSense will give you a piece of code to use to connect it to your WordPress website.
You need to place this piece of code in the Theme Title of your current theme. <head> and </head> labels.
There are two different ways to do this: manually and using a plugin.
Manually Linking AdSense to Your Website
Editing your WordPress website theme’s code can be a terrible idea. If the theme’s author releases an update for the theme and you decide to install it, any changes you make to the theme are instantly lost.
You can imagine how much of a problem this can cause for your website’s ads and ultimately your revenue. That’s why You only need to manually connect AdSense to your WordPress website if you know what a child theme is and how to create it or have someone to do it for you.
In this case, you need to:
Duplicate the header.php file from the parent theme. This is the file where you will add the AdSense code.
Copy the code from the AdSense website.
Paste it into the header.php file and between tags. You can find the file by clicking on Theme Editor.
Save the file and report it to AdSense. Go back to the AdSense page where you found the code and check the box indicating that you have pasted the code on your site.
Your next step is to wait until your website is reviewed. If any of these steps confuses you or you can’t create a child theme, don’t worry; there is an even easier way to embed the code on your website.
Connecting AdSense to Your Website Using a Plugin
For the website administrator who wants a way to add code to the theme permanently without having to deal with child themes, a plugin is the best solution. WordPress plugins are easy to install, so we will use I.Add Headers and Footers plugin.
To connect AdSense to your website using this plugin, you need to:
Copy the code from the AdSense website.
Install and activate the Add Headers and Footers plugin. You can handle all of this from the backend of your website.
Paste the script in the Header section of the plugin. You will find the plugin under the Settings tab in the main dashboard menu.
Save and report to AdSense. The same page where you got the code is the page where you need to check the “I pasted the code on my site” box.
After that, you will have to wait for Google AdSense to approve your website. Websites don’t always get approval. The common reason for this is, for example, lack of content or the use of plagiarized content on your website.. If this happens to you, do not despair – you will have a chance to fix and reapply.
How to Add Google AdSense Ad Units to WordPress
When you finally get the green light to display ads on your website, learn about ad units, to make and place them. The easiest way is to let AdSense use automated ads to get everything done. But this path may not be suitable for everyone..
If you want control over ad size and placement, you have to do all the work yourself. There are two different ways to place ad units on your website. Once again, you can do it manually or with the help of a plugin.
Manually Adding Google AdSense Ad Units to Your Website
To be able to place an ad unit on your website and eventually show ads, you need to get a piece of code from AdSense. You need to create the ad unit to get this code. Go to the AdSense website and find “Ad units” under “Content”.
Click the “New ad unit” button and go through the entire process of creating one. Make sure you choose the responsive ad size – you want people visiting your website via mobile devices to be able to see the ads too.. You can also choose the type and style of the ad; text and display ads usually work best.
After creating the ad unit, AdSense will give you a piece of code to paste into your website. Because you do this manually, you have to manually paste it into each post you want to display ads in-text. This can be a lot of work so doing it manually is only recommended if you want to display ads on a limited number of posts..
But if you want the ad to appear in the sidebar, you have to copy the code from the ad unit and:
Go to Appearance > Widgets. You will add the ad as a text widget in the sidebar.
Select the text widget. Drag it to the blog sidebar frame.
Paste the code into the widget. Switch to “text” editing first and save when done.
Placing ads in your blog posts isn’t that difficult either – just paste the code between two paragraphs of content, for example. Ideally, you would run a few tests to determine the best possible placement for ads on your website. It’s usually better to have it closer to the top of the page.
Adding Google AdSense Ad Units to Your WordPress Site Using a Plugin
If you want to automate some actions, but not all, using plugins is the middle ground between adding manual code and using automated ads. With different plugins, you will have different engagement levels. this Head, Footer and Post Injections pluginfor example, it requires you to enter the code manually.
On the other hand, Advanced Ads plugin It will fetch your AdSense code for you. It also has many more features than simple code injection. In that case, you’ll want to choose the plugin that gives you the level of control you want to have – no more, no less. And when you find one, you know the drill: install it, feed it the code or let it feed itself, and adjust the options as you go..
Let’s wrap it up!
Among all the different ways to monetize your website, Google AdSense is one of the most popular. It is easy to set up and use and with the right website it can quickly become a nice income stream for the owner.
But Google AdSense is also selective because they do not allow any website to join the network. That’s why you shouldn’t even try to do this until you have plenty of quality content and an established audience. Keep in mind that when it comes time to add the code, you can always choose between fully automated, manual, and plugin-assisted website linking and ad management. Choose the most suitable one.
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