Whatever business you’re into, knowing how to add Google Adsense to WordPress can be pretty useful. Not to say worth your while. No matter if you’re a blogger, freelancer, content marketer or small business owner, having Google Adsense on your website is a form of passive income – why not use it?
Not to mention, this is the most common and widespread way to make money online, which is why we’re going to teach you how to do it properly. Once you learn how to set it up, return to whatever is you do knowing you will increase your income just by having an additional piece of code on your site.
What is Google AdSense
Just in case people who aren’t familiar with it will read this article, Google Adsense is the most powerful advertising network that helps people earn money in a passive way. Whether you have a blog, a website or even a YouTube channel, you can make money from displaying targeted text, image and video ads on your platforms. And every time someone clicks on the ads that are on your site, you earn – isn’t that something?
But, before you start earning money with AdSense, there are few things you need to do to get Google’s approval. Yes, you got it right, Google needs to approve your website to add Google Adsense to WordPress (or any other website platform). This is how you do it.
How to get Google AdSense approval
In order to have a working AdSense on your WordPress site, you need to have it verified. And for that, you only need a Google account. But, before you start earning, there are few things Google needs from your blog/site:
good quality content that you post regularly, easy blog/website navigation, responsive theme.
Once all that is in place, these are the steps to take:
- Sign up for Google AdSense
- Enter your site URL and email address
- Enter payment address details
- Verify your phone number (in some countries)
After that, you’ll get the AdSense code you just need to paste into your WordPress site (directly or through a plugin), and you’re (almost) done! You’ll just need to wait a little while to get a response from Google. Once your site is approved, you go to the next step, which is creating new ad unit and getting your code.
How to add Google AdSense to WordPress
Once you verify your site, you’re coming to the next step – which is creating a new ad unit. Depending on the type of the add, you will need to create a new ad unit. You do this by clicking on My ads > Content > Ad units > New ad unit.
There, you’ll choose an ad type where you can choose from:
- Text and display ads
- In-feed ads
- In-article ads
For the first time, it’s recommended that you choose the text and display ads – you can always change it once you get familiar with the network.
After that, you should name your ad, choose the right size – always best to use one of the recommended sizes and then, the ad type. It’s ok to use both text & display ads, to diversify the ad content. Then, you should choose the ad style – align it with your site colors or play around. When you’re done setting up, click on Save and get the code you will then paste into your website.
In WordPress, the most common place to have AdSense ads is a sidebar. In order to have them placed there, the best way to do it is by using widgets. Just go to the Widgets page, choose Custom HTML widget and paste your AdSense code in there.
And that’s that. You can leave it like that or if you can optimize the ads with plugins. The reason to do that is that you can get more control over how you want the ads to look like. This is a good choice, especially if you’re using a theme with limited options or just want more control over the ad’s appearance. And, if you’re up for it, with some of these plugins, you can even place AdSense ads within content.
Google AdSense plugins
Ad Inserter
Implement ads in the sidebar, within content, before and after comments, in the footer and much more spots! With this WordPress Ads Management, you can set up and maintain not only Google AdSense but Amazon Native Shopping Ads, rotating banners and more.
Google AdSense plugin
A freemium plugin that lets you manage available ads easily right from your admin dashboard! With it, you can add AdSense to WordPress categories, posts, widgets, white papers and more.
WordPress Ad Widget
Very easy and intuitive plugin for beginners and yet professional enough for advanced users. WordPress Ad Widget lets you place ads on your sidebar as a simple widget.
BONUS
Google AdSense do’s and don’ts
- Do experiment with the ad placement and choose the one that best suits your site and your visitors.
- Do use Google Analytics to understand better and optimize your site traffic. This will help you in creating better content hence more visits hence more clicks hence more money.
- Don’t click on your ads, unless you want to be banned from the program. Google is smart, you know?
- Don’t use pop-ups or automatic software installations. Google doesn’t like when you force people to change their behavior nor when you do stuff that threatens the user experience. Ignoring this will only make Google not love you and not providing you a way to passive income.
- Don’t put AdSense code on forbidden sites, such as adult, gambling, sites with hateful content and similar.
- Do play by the Google rules and you’ll be just fine.
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