There are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles online that go into the detail as to how a user of Google 
Adsense can increase the amount they earn from the program. I could honestly write a 10,000 word article alone on the different ways you can optimise your Adsense account. However, from performing a multitude of experiments on Adsense, I have come to the conclusion that Adsense optimisation is always a compromise.
The problem I have with Adsense optimisation is that by changing one thing might improve one thing. However, at the same time, it will affect other things in a negative way. Below are some of the main examples of Adsense optimisation where one change to cause a positive impact will also cause a negative impact, making the change potentially neutral.
- Blocking general categories – Blocking general categories can improve the performance of your Adsense channels since blocking poor performing categories from showing adverts will give better performing adverts more exposure to generate you revenue. However, blocking general categories will cause the competition for your ad spaces to decrease. So, although some general categories are poor performing, they are still contributing to your estimated earnings by increasing the overall CPC you gain through competition and bidding.
- Blocking sensitive categories – The same above point applies to sensitive categories. Although some of them do not get impressions and will perform badly, they still contribute to your account through helping to increase the CPC your ad space achieves.
- Choosing larger adverts to generate the most revenue – If you are not Adsense savvy, then your best bet is to go for the largest adverts since these will be most noticeable and get the most revenue. However, in some cases, they do not and can actually perform quite badly as well as not helping your website’s health too. For this reason, try to blend your adverts and ‘fool’ advertisers into clicking onto adverts without thinking they are adverts – in these situations, the largest adverts are not always the best choice to go for (responsive adverts are becoming very popular: especially for mobile devices).
- Choosing both text and image ads – This is the preferred option in Adsense as Google claims it improves the performance of your adverts as the competition for your ad space has increased, which is all true. However, just with the above point, savvy adverts in the right location and size can perform better when just image adverts showing only or text adverts only. Therefore, the best situation in these cases is to test both over at least a month and see what performs best for your website’s setup.
Ultimately, the main point to take away from this article is that not every change you make in Google Adsense will give you a desired positive effect. Most Adsense optimisation make it seem as if, well, they are going to optimise and improve your Adsense earnings. However, the reality of these changes is that one change to Adsense can have both a positive and negative effect. Therefore, be careful when you do make such changes…
