How To Implement Google Adsense Section Targeting On Blogger Blogs

Posted on December 8, 2007
Filed Under Adsense Tips, Blogger Platform Tips |

Since my post on How to implement Google Adsense Section Targeting, I have had several people ask me the details of how to implement Adsense Section Targeting on Blogger (blogspot) blogs. I mentioned in my previous article that it took me a while to get it working on Google’s Blogger platform, so in this article I will explain the process of implementing Adsense Section Targeting on Blogger step by step.

But before we launch into the instructions, a quick refresher - why would you want to use Google Adsense Section Targeting? Put simply, it can increase the relevance of your ads - and that means a better click through rate and more Adsense revenue. It lets you tell Google what the important parts of your page are. In addition, you can mark certain sections of your page to be ignored by Google when choosing which Adsense ads to display.

So, What Is Important?

Normally, your blog posts will be the most important section of your page when targeting ads. This is because a reader will visit your blog to read one of your posts so any ads displayed will do better if they are relevant to that post. The following instructions describe how place the Adsense Section Targeting tags in your template to mark your blog posts as the relevant content.

How To Target Your Blog Posts:

1. Log in to your Blogger Dashboard.

2. Click on Layout.

3. Click on the Template tab.

4. Click on the Edit HTML tab.

5. Backup your template by clicking on Download Full Template. This will prompt you to save your template file to disk. Keep it somewhere safe just in case…

6. Check the Expand Widget Templates checkbox.

7. When deciding where to put your section targeting tags, think about where the most relevant text is going to be to help google with it’s ads. If you want to target just the body of each post, do the following:

Find the text

<p><data:post.body/></p>

and replace with

<p><!-- google_ad_section_start --><data:post.body/><!-- google_ad_section_end --></p>

8. Click Save Template.

There are many variations on the above depending on the what you want to emphasize but I would suggest starting simple. Then experiment and see what works. Just remember to be patient because it can take up to 2 weeks for the ads to reflect any changes you have made.

What About The Rest?

There are sections of each of your blog pages which may contain content which is not directly related to the body of your blog post. The sidebar is a good example - it may contain ads, links to other blogs and who-knows-what-else. Using the “weight=ignore” option on the section targeting tags, you can tell Google to ignore the content in your sidebar when choosing ads to display.

Telling Adsense To Ignore Your Sidebar:

1. Log in to your Blogger Dashboard.

2. Click on Layout.

3. Click on the Template tab.

4. Click on the Page Elements tab.

5. Click on Add a Page Element at the top of your sidebar.

How To Implement Google Adsense Section Targeting on Blogger Blogs

6. Choose HTML/Javascript.

7. Add the text <!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>

Google Adsense Targeting On Blogger

8. Click on Save

9. Make sure the new widget is positioned at the top of your sidebar.

10. Click on the Add a Page Element at the top of your sidebar again.

11. Choose HTML/Javascript again.

12. Add the text <!– google_ad_section_end –>

13. Click on Save.

14. Drag the new widget down to the bottom of your sidebar.

15. Click on Save to save these changes to your blog template.

Your sidebar content should now be wrapped with google_ad_section markers. You can check this by viewing the source of your blog page.

Marking sections to be ingnored may also be useful for page headers and footers (or even sections within blog posts) where they contain text which is not relevant to the ads you would like to see. Just apply the same method as for the sidebar.

Also keep in mind that if you want to implement adsense section targeting inside your blog post while you are writing it, you will need to switch to the HTML view and insert the tags there. You can switch to the HTML view by selecting the Edit Html tab at the top of the editor in Blogger.




Keep up to date with the latest articles at Monetize Your Blog. Subscribe via rss for free.

Related Articles


Comments

4 Responses to “How To Implement Google Adsense Section Targeting On Blogger Blogs”

  1. How to implement Google Adsense Section Targetting | Monetize Your Blog on December 8th, 2007 5:26 am

    […] UPDATE:  I have now posted detailed instructions for the blogger platform in my article titled How To Implement Google Adsense Section Targeting On Blogger Blogs. […]

  2. Robert Di-Salvo on December 24th, 2007 9:55 am

    I found this to be very useful. I just implemented all the code step by step and I now hope it works fingers crossed

  3. Brett on December 25th, 2007 3:57 pm

    Thanks Robert. I hope you have some success.

  4. OLED TV Guy on February 11th, 2008 8:05 pm

    Saved my bacon. Well, lots of frustration and stupid “Blog” ads appearing on my airline site anyway. Thanks.

Leave a Reply