Get More Out Of Google Adsense - Insert Ads In Your Posts.

I spent the majority of the last two months experimenting relentlessly with my Adsense placement. According the the Google Adsense Online Standard Terms and Conditions, I can’t publish the exact click-through rates of each of my experiments, but I will tell you that the best placement without question was the 300×250 medium rectangle, inserted directly into each post. The click-through rate on that placement was about 50% higher than it was with any other placement.

You will notice that I still have a vertical Adsense banner in my sidebar, except on my home page, where it usually doesn’t show up due to the fact that only three Google ads will show up at any given time. If I have Adsense on three different posts, Google won’t display the one on the sidebar. It shows up on most of my other pages, including my individual post pages. The sidebar ad unit is still getting clicked somewhat, but the 300×250 medium rectangle gets clicked about three times as much.

How To Insert The 300×250 Ad Unit Into Your Posts
This was a trick that took me a while to refine. I originally added some code into my WordPress loop that did the trick - it only worked temporarily because as soon as I started writing sponsored posts, I couldn’t use that method anymore. Most of the sponsored post companies don’t want Adsense units within their sponsored posts. I had to find a way to insert Adsense into my content posts, without inserting it into my sponsored posts. I removed the code that inserted the ad units and found a different way.

Installing The Adsense Plugin
The easiest way I found to handle the problem was by installing the Adsense plugin for WordPress. The plugin gives me a simple button in my WordPress admin that allows me to insert the 300×250 ad unit into each post:

I click the button, and the plugin inserts the Google ad. When I write sponsored posts, I simply don’t click the Adsense button.

Installing the Adsense plugin isn’t super complicated. Here’s what you need to know to install it:

• How to download and extract files
• Editing a file using Notepad
• How to setup Google ads
• FTP/ File uploading

I’ll walk you through the steps, but it’s obviously going to help if you already know how to do that stuff.

Step-By-Step Installation Instructions

1. Download the Adsense plugin.
2. Extract the plugin. Right click your mouse on the file you downloaded and select ‘Extract All’, ‘Extract Here’ or whatever version of extract your computer has. Continue with the extraction.
3. Open the extracted file with notepad. You can do this by right-clicking your mouse on the file and selecting ‘Open With’. You will then choose notepad and it will open up.
4. In Notepad, look for the following piece of code:
   Your Google Adsense code should be here, but you forgot
   to edit the plugins/adsense.php file and replace the code
   there with your own.
   
   
5. Delete that entire section of code, you’re going to replace it with the code for your 300×250 rectangle.
6. Replace the code you just deleted with this new one:
   
   delete this and paste your 300×250 Google ad code here
   
   Adding that code will make a special box that will make your Google ad float to the right side of your post. If you want to make it float to the left, replace float: right with float: left. Note: make sure you delete what I told you, replacing it with your 300×250 Adsense code - you’re going to have to log into your Adsense account to get it!
7. Save the file and upload it to your wp-content/plugins directory.
8. Log in to your WordPress admin and go to ‘Plugins’.
9. Activate the Adsense plugin.

You’ve done it!

Using The Plugin To Insert Adsense Into Your Posts
When I first installed the plugin, I thought that I had done it incorrectly, because the Adsense button wasn’t there at first. I quickly figured out that the button only appears after the post has been saved. In order to make the button appear, you’ll first have to click your ‘Save and Continue Editing’ button on your ‘Write Post’ screen.

You should then be able to see the button by clicking into your code view:

You should then see the Adsense button in there:

Wherever your cursor is when you click the button is where your ad will appear. I usually insert my Adsense right up at the top, so I place my cursor at the beginning of the post:

After clicking the Adsense button, it should look like this:

In the spot where the shows, the plugin will insert your Adsense. Remember that I created a special box that makes my Adsense float to the right.

This should help everyone to get more clicks from their Adsense. Make sure you let me know if you run into problems anywhere. Be specific if you need to ask a question! If you only tell me that it didn’t work I probably won’t be able to help you out. I’m going to need to know at what point you ran into the problem and what the ’symptoms’ are!