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How to optimize your sites Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and grow customers without paying for Ads

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How to optimize your sites Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and grow customers without paying for Ads.

This guide is a shorter post around setting up SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and driving more traffic to your site without buying ADs.  In a nutshell, to have better SEO you need to jump some technical hurdles in order to drive more traffic to your site from search engines along with understanding your customer’s needs and making things easier for them.

I have blogged about these topics before but these posts are too long in reflection.

Buying Ad’s?

Facebook, Google, Bing and advertising agencies will recommend you set goals around growth and site traffic and pay for those goals to succeed (usually by advertisements).

Don’t get me wrong Advertising works but it is a competitive market, Online sites can easily setup the display of Ad’s on their site (my guide here Add Google AdWords to your WordPress blog, https://fearby.com/article/add-google-adwords-wordpress-blog/ ). You can buy physical billboard ad’s on the side of roads (e.g http://www.buythisspace.com.au/). I tried to enquire about the costs of a physical billboard but the agencies robot verification rejected my enquiry submission so I gave up.  Advertising is buying peoples times and people now how to avoid ad’s and not interact with them (7 Marketing Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies https://blog.kissmetrics.com/eye-tracking-studies/)

Do more of what works

Spoiler: This guide will recommend you do more of what works over buying millions of ad’s and hoping for new and engaged customers and customer growth.

SEO Tip’s

This older article on  How to boost your site’s SEO  attempts to mention what you need to do it to get better SEO.

Do run a modern great site

I am a big fan of word of mouth over free/organic traffic over paid customers via advertising (Mostly because I am tight and realize advertising can be a bottomless pit). The single biggest thing you can do to have more organic traffic from search engines is run a modern and fast website, have valuable content and make it as easy for the customer as possible. This is why I moved my site and setup an SSL certificate (link to article).

Search engines like your site to be fast, updated frequently, have sitemaps to make their jobs easier and have an SSL certificate to keep the web safe etc.

Google, Bing and other search engines will not send traffic your way if you do not satisfy them that your site is liked or has valuable content.  Google makes money from Google Analytics by helping people understand their site’s visitors then recommend you pay for ad’s to use on sites that have AdWords on their site ( WordPress to a new self-managed server away from CPanel ).

Traffic Source types

  • Organic – An organic visitor to your site is one who found your site by searching something that was relevant to their search term and not by clicking on an advertisement.
  • Paid – A paid user is someone who has clicked an ad to come to your site.
  • Social – A social visitor is one who is known to come from a social media site, using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram is a must to driving organic traffic (go where the people are).

Engagement

How engaged are your customers?  Have you asked your customers recently what they value or appreciate about your business or product? Have you asked for feedback recently?

User Engagement Levels

  • None – Do you have landing pages that quickly inform customers of your products or services?
  • Low – What do they need to know about your product or service?
  • Medium – Aware (engaged)
  • High – Can this person be an advocate for your business?
  • Gone – Did you get exit Feedback?

Ways to engage already engaged customers.

What can you do to help understand your customer’s needs and make their purchase processes easier?

Why are your customers leaving?

Understand more about your customers reasons for leaving and act upon preventing others from leaving.

  • Trying something new (Does your website need to be simpler?)
  • Are your products too expensive?.
  • Your site (or ordering) is not convenient (Do you need to setup online ordering/subscriptions and delivery?)
  • etc

Who are your customers

Are your customers.

  • Engaged
  • Informed
  • Advocates

Feedback

  • Do you have feedback loops (A simple feedback form can solve this)?

What do you know about your customers?

  • Product Satisfaction
  • Product Loyalty
  • Product Awareness

Paid Traffic (Ad’s)

Free Traffic (SEO + Organic Ad’s)

  • Blog Posts (Sharing value/passion)
  • Social Media Posts (use hashtags)
  • Instagram (Post value/passion)

Most importantly Do what works (Measure and replicate).

Focus on Business Value

Generate a  SWOT Analysis ( Free tool here https://xtensio.com/ )

  • What are your Strengths?
  • What are your Weaknesses?
  • What are your Opportunities?
  • What are your Threats?

Goals

Goals allow you to investigate, learn, act and measure I order to improve.

  • Investigate – Data.
  • Learn/Insight – Make Assumptions.
  • Act – Act and measure.

Read more about customer engagement here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_engagement

Bonus

 Do ensure your website is compliant with accessibility and technical standards

Conclusion

The more you know the better you can connect, Do set goals and as a minimum setup Google Analytics, SSL certificate and submit your site to search engines, then focus on a fast site that makes things simple for your customers.

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v1.0 Initial version

Setting up Google Analytics on your website

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Google Analytics is a popular easy to install and use statistics and reporting tool that you can add to your website (and it’ free)

To setup, Google Analytics go to https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/ and create an account. From here you can add a site and generate a tracking ID.

Google Analitics Geenrate ID

The website tracking code was (I changed the code to 555555555).

I opened WordPress and went to Appearance then Editor and selected header.php and added the tracking code under the <head> HTML tag.

edit file

This tracking ID allows Google to generate stats from your visitors.

I was unable to update the file in WordPress until I set permissions in Ubuntu in (Read these guide to setup an Ubuntu Server on Vultr for as low as $2.5 a month of setup a $5 a month with Digital Ocean or AWS).  I have guides on moving WordPress here or setting up WordPress from the command line here). If you update WordPress you may need to re add the tracking ID.

sudo chmod 666 /www/wp-content/themes/twentyseventeen/header.php

I loaded my WordPress website and verified that the tracking code was loading in the HTML source.  You can also embed the tracking code in static HTML websites.

html source

After a few days, you can view your sites statistics. from the Googe Analytics home portal.  This will allow you know when to publish, know how popular your content is, know what new content to create etc.

Page Hits

The best feature of Google Analytics is page hit information. To me, the total number of hits is less important than Avg. Time on Page and Bounce Rate.

page hits

Dashboard

The Google Analytics dashboard home is very informative.

Analitics Home

Google Analytics Terms

Google has a glossary for terms here.

  • Users – The unique user that visited your site.
  • Bounce Rate – The percentage or users who loaded your site and left after viewing the initial page.
  • Active Users – The total number of active users reading your site.
  • User Retention – The percentage of users who have returned to your site.
  • Device – The device (Desktop, tablet or mobile device) that was used to read your site.
  • Organic Search – The number of users who found your site via a search engine.  Having a highly efficient SEO will see a higher Organic search percentage.
  • Sessions – The number of unique sessions that your users have accessed your site.
  • Direct – The times a user has directly typed your website URL (or have visited your site in incognito/privacy mode).
  • Referral – The percentage or know referrals from other websites.
  • Social – Known number of visits to our site from social media platforms.

Overview

You can watch in real-time users accessing your site. This is important when you send out mailing list to users when new content is posted, will 1,000 visitors take down your site? Are you posting at the right time for your sites visitors timezone?

active usersAudience Overview

This report will tell you a lot about who and where people are visiting your site form and what language they speak, OS they use, what browser they use and what city they are from.

audience stats

Google Analytics allows you to drill down on most captured data.

City breakdown

I can see Apple devices are the most popular mobile devices accessing my site (but mobile devices in total only take up 12 % of my site’s traffic).

Devices

The User Flow report is a great way to see how people interact with your site (where they come from, what they do and where they drop out).

user flow

Google Analytics has a handy page speed tool that you can use to identify what you need to do to speed up your site.

Page speed

Google Analytics have goals that allow you to set targets to meet. Usually, Google encourages you to assign a monetary value to a goal then suggest you buy Google Ad’s to achieve these goals (this is why Google Analytics is free). Read my guide on setting up Google AdWords on your WordPress blog.

goals

You can set email alerts on key stats.

alerts

More to come later.

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v1.1 added page hits information

Securing Ubuntu in the cloud

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It is easy to deploy servers to the cloud within a few minutes, you can have a cloud-based server that you (or others can use). ubuntu has a great guide on setting up basic security issues but what do you need to do.

If you do not secure your server expects it to be hacked into. Below are tips on securing your cloud server.

First, read more on scanning your server with Lynis security scan.

Always use up to date software

Always use update software, malicious users can detect what software you use with sites like shodan.io (or use port scan tools) and then look for weaknesses from well-published lists (e.g WordPress, Windows, MySQL, node, LifeRay, Oracle etc). People can even use Google to search for login pages or sites with passwords in HTML (yes that simple).  Once a system is identified by a malicious user they can send automated bots to break into your site (trying millions of passwords a day) or use tools to bypass existing defences (Security researcher Troy Hunt found out it’s child’s play).

Portscan sites like https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=scan are good for knowing what you have exposed.

You can also use local programs like nmap to view open ports

Instal nmap

Find open ports

Limit ssh connections

Read more here.

Use ufw to set limits on login attempts

Only allow known IP’s access to your valuable ports

sudo ufw allow from 123.123.123.123/32 to any port 22

Delete unwanted firewall rules

Only allow known IP’s to certain ports

Also, set outgoing traffic to known active servers and ports

Don’t use weak/common Diffie-Hellman key for SSL certificates, more information here.

More info on generating SSL certs here and setting here and setting up Public Key Pinning here.

Intrusion Prevention Software

Do run fail2ban: Guide here https://www.linode.com/docs/security/using-fail2ban-for-security

I use iThemes Security to secure my WordPress and block repeat failed logins from certain IP addresses.

iThemes Security can even lock down your WordPress.

You can set iThemes to auto lock out users on x failed logins

Remember to use allowed whitelists though (it is so easy to lock yourself out of servers).

Passwords

Do have strong passwords and change the root password provided by the hosts. https://howsecureismypassword.net/ is a good site to see how strong your password is from brute force password attempts. https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm is a good site to obtain a strong password.  Do follow Troy Hunt’s blog and twitter account to keep up to date with security issues.

Configure a Firewall Basics

You should install a firewall on your Ubuntu and configure it and also configure a firewall with your hosts (e.g AWS, Vultr, Digital Ocean).

Configure a Firewall on AWS

My AWS server setup guide here. AWS allow you to configure the firewall here in the Amazon Console.

Type Protocol Port Range Source Comment
HTTP TCP 80 0.0.0.0/0 Opens a web server port for later
All ICMP ALL N/A 0.0.0.0/0 Allows you to ping
All traffic ALL All 0.0.0.0/0 Not advisable long term but OK for testing today.
SSH TCP 22 0.0.0.0/0 Not advisable, try and limit this to known IP’s only.
HTTPS TCP 443 0.0.0.0/0 Opens a secure web server port for later

Configure a Firewall on Digital Ocean

Configuring a firewall on Digital Ocean (create a $5/m server here).  You can configure your Digital Ocean droplet firewall by clicking Droplet, Networking then Manage Firewall after logging into Digital Ocean.

Configure a Firewall on Vultr

Configuring a firewall on Vultr (create a $2.5/m server here).

Don’t forget to set IP rules for IPV4 and IPV6, Only set the post you need to allow and ensure applications have strong passwords.

Ubuntu has a firewall built in (documentation).

Enable the firewall

Adding common ports

sudo ufw allow ssh/tcp
sudo ufw logging on
sudo ufw allow 22
sudo ufw allow 80
sudo ufw allow 53
sudo ufw allow 443
sudo ufw allow 873
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status
sudo ufw allow http
sudo ufw allow https

Add a whitelist for your IP (use http://icanhazip.com/ to get your IP) to ensure you won’t get kicked out of your server.

sudo ufw allow from 123.123.123.123/24 to any port 22

More help here.  Here is a  good guide on ufw commands. Info on port numbers here.

If you don’t have a  Digital Ocean server for $5 a month click here and if a $2.5 a month Vultr server here.

Backups

rsync is a good way to copy files to another server or use Bacula

Basics

Initial server setup guide (Digital Ocean).

Sudo (admin user)

Read this guide on the Linux sudo command (the equivalent if run as administrator on Windows).

Users

List users on an Ubuntu OS (or compgen -u)

Common output

Add User

e.g

Add user to a group

Show users in a group

This will show users in a group

Remove a user

Rename user

Change user password

Groups

Show all groups

compgen -ug

Common output

compgen -g
root
daemon
bin
sys
adm
tty
disk
lp
mail
proxy
sudo
www-data
backup
irc
etc

You can create your own groups but first, you must be aware of group ids

cat /etc/group

Then you can see your systems groups and ids.

Create a group

Permissions

Read this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FilePermissions

How to list users on Ubuntu.

Read more on setting permissions here.

Chmod help can be found here.

Install Fail2Ban

I used this guide on installing Fail2Ban.

Check Fail2Ban often and add blocks to the firewall of known bad IPs

Best practices

Ubuntu has a guide on basic security setup here.

Startup Processes

It is a good idea to review startup processes from time to time.

Accounts

  • Read up on the concept of least privilege access for apps and services here.
  • Read up on chmod permissions.

Updates

Do update your operating system often.

Minimal software

Only install what software you need

Exploits and Keeping up to date

Do keep up to date with exploits and vulnerabilities

Secure your applications

  • NodeJS: Enable logging in applications you install or develop.

Ban repeat Login attempts with FailBan

Fail2Ban config

Hosts File Hardening

Add

Add a whitelist with your ip on /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf (see this)

Restart the service

sudo service fail2ban restart
sudo service fail2ban status

Intrusion detection (logging) systems

Tripwire will not block or prevent intrusions but it will log and give you a heads up with risks and things of concern

Install Tripwire.

Running Tripwire

This will scan your system for issues of note

My Output.

sudo nano /var/log/tiger/security.report.username.170809-18:42

Security scripts *** 3.2.3, 2008.09.10.09.30 ***
Wed Aug  9 18:42:24 AEST 2017
20:42> Beginning security report for username (x86_64 Linux 4.4.0-89-generic).

# Performing check of passwd files...
# Checking entries from /etc/passwd.
--WARN-- [pass014w] Login (bob) is disabled, but has a valid shell.
--WARN-- [pass014w] Login (root) is disabled, but has a valid shell.
--WARN-- [pass015w] Login ID sync does not have a valid shell (/bin/sync).
--WARN-- [pass012w] Home directory /nonexistent exists multiple times (3) in
         /etc/passwd.
--WARN-- [pass012w] Home directory /run/systemd exists multiple times (2) in
         /etc/passwd.
--WARN-- [pass006w] Integrity of password files questionable (/usr/sbin/pwck
         -r).

# Performing check of group files...

# Performing check of user accounts...
# Checking accounts from /etc/passwd.
--WARN-- [acc021w] Login ID dnsmasq appears to be a dormant account.
--WARN-- [acc022w] Login ID nobody home directory (/nonexistent) is not
         accessible.

# Performing check of /etc/hosts.equiv and .rhosts files...

# Checking accounts from /etc/passwd...

# Performing check of .netrc files...

# Checking accounts from /etc/passwd...

# Performing common access checks for root (in /etc/default/login, /securetty, and /etc/ttytab...
--WARN-- [root001w] Remote root login allowed in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

# Performing check of PATH components...
--WARN-- [path009w] /etc/profile does not export an initial setting for PATH.
# Only checking user 'root'

# Performing check of anonymous FTP...

# Performing checks of mail aliases...
# Checking aliases from /etc/aliases.

# Performing check of `cron' entries...
--WARN-- [cron005w] Use of cron is not restricted

# Performing check of 'services' ...
# Checking services from /etc/services.
--WARN-- [inet003w] The port for service ssmtp is also assigned to service
         urd.
--WARN-- [inet003w] The port for service pipe-server is also assigned to
         service search.

# Performing NFS exports check...

# Performing check of system file permissions...
--ALERT-- [perm023a] /bin/su is setuid to `root'.
--ALERT-- [perm023a] /usr/bin/at is setuid to `daemon'.
--ALERT-- [perm024a] /usr/bin/at is setgid to `daemon'.
--WARN-- [perm001w] The owner of /usr/bin/at should be root (owned by daemon).
--WARN-- [perm002w] The group owner of /usr/bin/at should be root.
--ALERT-- [perm023a] /usr/bin/passwd is setuid to `root'.
--ALERT-- [perm024a] /usr/bin/wall is setgid to `tty'.

# Checking for known intrusion signs...
# Testing for promiscuous interfaces with /bin/ip
# Testing for backdoors in inetd.conf

# Performing check of files in system mail spool...

# Performing check for rookits...
# Running chkrootkit (/usr/sbin/chkrootkit) to perform further checks...
--WARN-- [rootkit004w] Chkrootkit has detected a possible rootkit installation
Possible Linux/Ebury - Operation Windigo installetd

# Performing system specific checks...
# Performing checks for Linux/4...

# Checking boot loader file permissions...
--WARN-- [boot02] The configuration file /boot/grub/menu.lst has group
         permissions. Should be 0600
--FAIL-- [boot02] The configuration file /boot/grub/menu.lst has world
         permissions. Should be 0600
--WARN-- [boot06] The Grub bootloader does not have a password configured.

# Checking for vulnerabilities in inittab configuration...

# Checking for correct umask settings for init scripts...
--WARN-- [misc021w] There are no umask entries in /etc/init.d/rcS

# Checking Logins not used on the system ...

# Checking network configuration
--FAIL-- [lin013f] The system is not protected against Syn flooding attacks
--WARN-- [lin017w] The system is not configured to log suspicious (martian)
         packets

# Verifying system specific password checks...

# Checking OS release...
--WARN-- [osv004w] Unreleased Debian GNU/Linux version `stretch/sid'

# Checking installed packages vs Debian Security Advisories...

# Checking md5sums of installed files

# Checking installed files against packages...
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.dep' does not
         belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.alias.bin' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.devname' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.softdep' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.alias' does not
         belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.symbols.bin'
         does not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.builtin.bin'
         does not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.symbols' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-87-generic/modules.dep.bin' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.dep' does not
         belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.alias.bin' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.devname' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.softdep' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.alias' does not
         belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.symbols.bin'
         does not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.builtin.bin'
         does not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.symbols' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/modules/4.4.0-89-generic/modules.dep.bin' does
         not belong to any package.
--WARN-- [lin001w] File `/lib/udev/hwdb.bin' does not belong to any package.

# Performing check of root directory...

# Checking device permissions...
--WARN-- [dev003w] The directory /dev/block resides in a device directory.
--WARN-- [dev003w] The directory /dev/char resides in a device directory.
--WARN-- [dev003w] The directory /dev/cpu resides in a device directory.
--FAIL-- [dev002f] /dev/fuse has world permissions
--WARN-- [dev003w] The directory /dev/hugepages resides in a device directory.
--FAIL-- [dev002f] /dev/kmsg has world permissions
--WARN-- [dev003w] The directory /dev/lightnvm resides in a device directory.
--WARN-- [dev003w] The directory /dev/mqueue resides in a device directory.
--FAIL-- [dev002f] /dev/rfkill has world permissions
--WARN-- [dev003w] The directory /dev/vfio resides in a device directory.

# Checking for existence of log files...
--FAIL-- [logf005f] Log file /var/log/btmp permission should be 660
--FAIL-- [logf007f] Log file /var/log/messages does not exist

# Checking for correct umask settings for user login shells...
--WARN-- [misc021w] There is no umask definition for the dash shell
--WARN-- [misc021w] There is no umask definition for the bash shell

# Checking symbolic links...

# Performing check of embedded pathnames...
20:47> Security report completed for username.

More on Tripwire here.

Hardening PHP

Hardening PHP config (and backing the PHP config it up), first create an info.php file in your website root folder with this info

Now look for what PHP file is loadingPHP Config

Back that your PHP config file

TIP: Delete the file with phpinfo() in it as it is a security risk to leave it there.

TIP: Read the OWASP cheat sheet on using PHP securely here and securing php.ini here.

Some common security changes

Don’t forget to review logs, more config changes here.

Antivirus

Yes, it is a good idea to run antivirus in Ubuntu, here is a good list of antivirus software

I am installing ClamAV as it can be installed on the command line and is open source.

ClamAV help here.

Scan a folder

Setup auto-update antivirus definitions

I set auto updates 24 times a day (every hour) via daemon updates.

tip: Download manual antivirus update definitions. If you only have a 512MB server your update may fail and you may want to stop fresh claim/php/nginx and mysql before you update to ensure the antivirus definitions update. You can move this to a con job and set this to update at set times over daemon to ensure updates happen.

Manual scan with a bash script

Create a bash script

Bash script contents to update antivirus definitions.

Edit the crontab to run the script every hour

Uninstalling Clam AV

You may need to uninstall Clamav if you don’t have a lot of memory or find updates are too big.

Setup Unattended Ubuntu Security updates

At login, you should receive

Other

  • Read this awesome guide.
  • install Fail2Ban
  • Do check your log files if you suspect suspicious activity.

Check out the extensive Hardening a Linux Server guide at thecloud.org.uk: https://thecloud.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Hardening_a_Linux_Server

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v1.92 added hardening a linux server link

Add Google AdWords to your WordPress blog

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Google says “Turn your passion into profit. AdSense is a free, simple way to make money online by placing ads on your website.” How hard is it to setup Google AdSense on your WordPress site?

First, you will need to create a Google AdSense account here and add your site to Google AdSense. Don’t forget to add your account and payment type here.

Ad Sense

You will need to add a bit of HTML script from Google to your site to verify you own the domain you are adding ads too.  Lucky for me my theme Genesis allows me to paste code straight into the header and footer sections for my site.

Ad Sense

Google AdSense steps are quite clear and will let you know what you need to do (I monitor this from my phone).

Ad Sense

After your site is verified (automatically) you will have to wait up to 1 week for Google to review your site. You will receive an email when Google has approved your site.

Ad Sense

Then you are ready to log in to Google Adwords page and create an Advertisement style that matches your site. Now you can create your first ad type in the Google AdSense screen.

Ad Sense

I created a “Text and Display Ads”.

Ad Sense

I then entered a name and chose “Automatic Size” and “Responsive”, feel free to add your own colors here and customize.

From the Google Adsense page go to My Ads, Content then Ad Unit, Now you can click get the code.

I can use this code to place auto responsive ad’s on my web pages.

I should have embedded this code into my WordPress theme but I decided to place the code manually into each of my posts (in text mode).

This is how a Google AdWords Ad looks in this post (below the first paragraph).  Very smart that Google chose to serve an AdWords company Ad in my post about Google Ad Words.

Here are my earnings 10 minutes after adding my first ad to my blog ($0 as expected).  I plan on using any revenue to speed up this website as the host is very slow.

Ad Sense

If you like this post please click my Ad’s.  I will update my revenue numbers here in the future.

Thanks to Emma who runs a great blog and encouraged me to blog years ago and big thanks to my wife Alison who ran a blog for years (way before me with loads more visitors).

Payment

It appears you can’t add a payment method or add a payment method until you reach $100 earned.

It looks like earnings will be paid monthly if you meet the target. Payment placeholders are available at https://play.google.com/store/account#  I guess new payment methods can be added here.

AdSense Mobile app.

I use the AdSense mobile app



FYI: For me, Estimated revenue on the mobile app is in Australian dollars and estimate revenue at https://www.google.com/adsense/ is in USD.

Searching reveals that estimated revenue will be evaluated at the end of the month and the final amount will be reduced.

Content

Make the content relevant to the reader to gain revenue. I guess I need to look at Google Analytics and blog more of what people want.

SEO

Don’t forget to ensure your sites SEO is working as expected. Also, a slow website will have poor SEO  so consider a faster private VM from Vultr or Digital Ocean.

Ad Glossary

  • Page RPM – Page revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views you received, then multiplying by 1000.
  • Page CTR – The page click through rate (CTR) is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of page views.
  • Impression CTR – An impression is counted for each ad request that returns at least one ad to the site. It is the number of ad units (for content ads) or search queries (for search ads) that showed ads.
  • Cost Per Click – The cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you earn each time a user clicks on your ad. The CPC for any ad is determined by the advertiser; some advertisers may be willing to pay more per click than others, depending on what they’re advertising.
  • Impression RPM – The impression revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is the average earnings per one thousand impressions.
  • Page ROM – Page revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views you received, then multiplying by 1000.
  • Coverage – Coverage is the percentage of ad requests that returned at least one ad. Generally, coverage can help you identify sites where AdSense isn’t able to provide targeted ads.
  • Maximum CPC Bid – A bid that you set to determine the highest amount that you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad.
  • CPM Bid (Cost Per 1000 Impressions) – CPM bidding means that you pay based on the number of impressions (times your ads are shown) that you receive on the Google Display Network. Starting this year, CPM bidding will be replaced by viewable CPM bidding.

How costs are calculated in AdWords.

Read the Google AdSense Glossary and help here.

Ad Sense Rules

Ad Sense Beginner’s Guide – Stay compliant with our policies.

Summary:

  1. Don’t click your own ads.
  2. Don’t ask others to click your ads.
  3. Don’t include any prohibited site content, including adult content, violence or excessive profanity, drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) or copyrighted material.
  4. Don’t modify the AdSense code.
  5. Do follow our Webmaster Quality Guidelines.
  6. Do provide a good user experience.
  7. Don’t place more ads than content on any page.
  8. Don’t place images near ads in a way that may mislead users into thinking that the images are associated with the ads.

Google Webmaster guidelines.Payment

Payment

You will be unable to receive payment until you verify your address.

If you are on a 14-day free trial you will need to setup billing before the trial expires

Tips

  • Do add the show ad’s code to WordPress over manually adding to pages or posts.
  • You can only add one script to your page once (e.g Header or Footer (not Both)) or multiple ad banners will be visible and only one will be clickable.

Bonus

Read my guide on managing WordPress via the command line where I automatically (with one command line added the word Advertisements) to over 80 post and pages.

sudo wp search-replace '<script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com' 'Advertisement:<br /> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com'
sudo wp search-replace '<script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com' 'Advertisement:<br /> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com'

Update June 2019

Google is now demanding you add a /ads.txt file to your site (with this format).

I added the following to mine

google.com, pub-9241521190070921, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

I used this site to validate my ads.txt file

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Draft: v1.91 June 2019 ads.txt info