How To Increase Adsense Earnings in 2017 Using Right “Categories”?

Everybody knows that, more the CPM and CTR of Adsense, Earnings will be better. This SEO tactic is valid irrespective of Panda, Penguin, Rankbrain etc algorithmic changes. One of the simple approach to this kind of problem, that is conveniently overlooked, is the “Blocking” Technique. Many think it’s a big task applying this principle. But if you carefully weed out the grass from the crop, you can benefit from this simple strategy.

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What is the “Blocking” Technique?

It is nothing but blocking the advertiser URLs, general, sensitive categories in Adsense to only display high converting Ads or impressions on the visitor’s computer. This should be done in a systematic manner, instead of doing it randomly.

Generally, the optimization pane of Adsense suggests to unblock all categories. But over a period of time, from my experience, I found that blocking unwanted categories which are giving low earnings, is a better bet than follow Adsense suggestions.

How to Implement the “Blocking” Procedure?

The following steps will walk you through the tentative process, on how I was able to reap benefit from this method.

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First copy all the list of advertising URLs from the above link.
Then paste them in the text box provided. Click “Block URLs” button.
Under “General Categories” there are several categories listed.
Allow all categories initially.
Similarly do the same thing under “Sensitive Categories”.
After 2 weeks, look at the “%Ad Impressions” and “%Earnings”.
If you see that any category “%Earnings” are way less than “%Ad Impressions” block them.
As a general guideline, you can block those which are less than 1:1 ratio.

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My Experience with Blocking Advertising URLs?

I don’t remember when exactly I blocked certain advertising URLs. But it must be around 3 to 4 years. From then onwards I saw a steady increase in the Adsense income.

You can follow these steps to reach this topic.

Login to your Adsense account.
On the left side under Adsense > Allow & block ads > Content > All my sites. You need to click the arrow next to content to see “All my sites”.
You can block a maximum of 500 URLs using this feature in Google Adsense.

Many publishers may have a doubt whether this comes under white hat or black hat SEO strategy. But you need not worry. This is 100% supported by Google and you can block any advertiser URL to your liking.

Case Study in Blocking General and Sensitive Categories?

When you have a look at the below image, you can see that I block the following “General” categories.

Arts & Entertainment
Beauty & Personal Care

Since the websites, I’m displaying my Adsense Ads are mostly on Tech and SEO niche, I could safely do this. As you can see, the “%Ad Impressions” were 3.0% and “%Earnings” were 0.6%. The percentage of earnings were far less than the percentage of Ad Impressions. So, I resorted to blocking that category completely.

Earlier I blocked “Finance” category to see any change in earnings.

Now I wanted to see if “Finance” category ads are doing well. So, I unblocked them.

But for starters, you can unblock all and run the experiment for 2 weeks. Then you can block the low-paying CPC ad categories.

[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=””]Bookmark this article and come back after 2 weeks and I will show the results of this experiment. [/thrive_text_block]

You can also do the same with “Sensitive” categories.

[thrive_text_block color=”green” headline=””]For example, I blocked the following categories initially.

“References to Sex & Sexuality”
“Dating”.

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This was done taking user experience into consideration. So, after 2 weeks, I can see the results.

[thrive_text_block color=”purple” headline=””]One thing you can observe from this current image is that, “Drugs & Supplements” category is serving 24% Ad Impressions and giving 18.2% Earnings, which is impressive by my standards. So, I kept it unblocked for the current experiment. [/thrive_text_block]

If I find that the %Earnings are decreasing with this setup I may have to resort to the last set up.

Always make notes of what categories you are blocking and when, to find out which works out for your niche. There is no disadvantage in doing that. Google does not impose any penalties with this type of experiments.

Conclusion

You can see that there are other options like “Ad networks”, “Ad serving”, “Ad review center” etc which are more subtle changes.

You need to spend lot of time in reviewing these items and blocking if any. So it’s best to leave them as it is. I also observed that the amount of time required to find out which works and which doesn’t is little big.

Also, you can let all the categories under “Ad serving” to be allowed.

[thrive_text_block color=”orange” headline=””]This setting worked for me which produced around $5 CPM for my tech niche blog. The “Ad Review” center blocking takes lot of time to implementing. [/thrive_text_block]

You have to go through each Ad which works for your niche and which doesn’t. Even though your Internet connection is much faster, the amount of time taken to go the next page is also not less.

This is because, all the Adsense report transactions take place via client-server architecture, which depends on the Adsense server load speed.

[thrive_text_block color=”note” headline=””]Please share this article in your social circles if you like it. Come back after 2 weeks and you can see the results of my case-study. [/thrive_text_block]