There are plenty of ways to make sure your AdSense performs as best as possible for you, putting as much money in your bank account without violating Google's Terms of Service. Take a look at our best rules of thumb, tactics and strategies, keeping in mind, naturally, that YieldBuild can optimize your AdSense extremely effectively without the guesswork and ongoing fuss.

AdSense Formats

* You can place, at a maximum, 3 ad units and, additionally, 2 text link units, on any given page. If you're skittish about placing so many ads on a page, start with a smaller number and ramp up slowly, making sure traffic changes don't bely disruptions to user experience.

* We suggest using the following three, most popularly-supported ad unit sizes:

300 x 250 ("medium rectangle")

160 x 600 ("wide skyscraper")

728 x 90 ("leaderboard")

Their popularity leads to more competition among advertisers, for wider topical breadth and better payouts.

* Make sure you maintain the default ad unit settings for your ad units, allowing display (image) and video ads to be tested by Google. Google will determine which formats will perform best.

* Keep abreast of new formats introduced by AdSense (by checking your dashboard frequently). The YouTube video unit is an example of an ad unit type that might work great on your site, but, unless you're using YieldBuild, you'd have to find out about its availability and know to generate the ad code for it, in order to use it. (Keep in mind Google tends to roll these out by geography, so make sure you're up to date with which features are supported for your geography)

AdSense Formatting (Background Colors, Border Styles & Colors)

* the basic rule of thumb (with plenty of exceptions - read on) is to blend your ads; this means you should first try background colors that match or are a shade darker or lighter than your page template background

* exception: if an ad unit is below the fold (below the initial viewable area in most browsers), also try bright, contrastive colors

* exception: if you are placing ad units near site navigation sections (a good idea), you should blend your ad units with the navigation; i.e. if your page background is white, but the left-rail navigation is bright orange and you have a skyscraper embedded in the left rail, you should make it bright orange as well

* exception: for dark backgrounds, try contrastive, even bright color-background ad units, not only similarly dark-hued ads

* for border color: test both "borderless" (the color is the same as your background color), and just a shade darker.

* for border style: be sure to test rounded borders (both "slightly" and "very" variants), since they tend to perform better than square corners.

Read more on AdSense formats and formatting.

AdSense Layout/Placement

* Try to place all ads above the fold (within the frame of visibility for most browsers, before scrolling down), unless you have strong reason to believe that a substantial portion of your viewers really do read all the way down to the bottom of each page (most don't).

* Have ad units abut each other (as closely as possible). In other words, have a horizontally-oriented leaderboard or banner run up against a vertically-oriented skyscraper, or right above a medium rectangle embedded in your content. This is called "the L" (Rule #2)

* Embed ads wherever user eyes are. This means adjacent to content, and next to frequently-used navigation. The shorter the distance between the content the viewer is reading/viewing and the ads, the better.

Read more on AdSense placement (and for blogs and discussion forums)

General AdSense Tips

* follow a testing protocol and be consistent. Your intuition and gut-feeling might be wrong, and the more wrong you are, the more money you leave on the table. (Our advice on AdSense optimization)

* although it can feel like a tedious process, take the time to set up AdSense ad placements from your custom channels (how to do that) for your site. These will allow advertisers to find target advertising to specific parts of your site. Use it as a marketing opportunity, and make your channel names descriptive: share demographic information, typical content, etc. So few sites do this, so you'll have an edge with advertisers interested in targeting if you do.

* make sure your testing process is fair and rigorous; don't get sloppy! A good protocol will tease out the effects of seasonality, time of day, and other effects that interfere with a correct reading of your testing results. Even if you want to avoid true multivariate or A/B testing, make sure you're comparing apples to apples: keep everything about your testing protocol the same except those variables you are testing.

* a final "tip" is to not forget about your users' experience on your site. Although just about everyone is comfortable with advertising these days, it's always a good idea to not do anything that could be widely perceived as deceptive, or unduly disruptive to user experience. Roll out changes slowly, to give your viewers ample time to adjust.