Hi, first post, stupid question (not in the FAQ). I make little flash games and license them to sites who host games and make their money from serving up ads. A couple of weeks ago, I threw up some AdSense ads on my own pages, and while it's not making much, it's a little more than what I was expecting (which was nothing) and I can certainly see the potential of setting up AdSense the right way. The difficulty I am having so far is that there is little or no text at all in the body of my pages - even on the front page, everything is contained within flash files apart from the ads. If there is text on a page, it is has nothing to do with the flash content as far as keywords go, eg: "if you dont have plugin x, click here to install it" sort of thing. I've had some success using meta tags for description and keywords, but in other cases, AdSense either refuses to serve up ads or serves up inappropriate ads, and I assume it is for lack of content. So, what are my options? I would really like to avoid putting visible text on the pages outside of the flash, but I understand that techniques such as using text specifically to target AdSense and hiding that text with CSS is (understandably) frowned on by google and might get my site banned. But, if some hidden text just serves to pull the ads in line with the real content of the page, surely that would be OK... right? Or maybe there is some whole other option I don't know about? The site URL (if you're interested) is www.bytesbyslight.com You can see it's working for some pages, but others are completely broken. I mostly want to serve ads for other sites with free flash games - they're 3 cents, but they get clicked. Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated, thanks.
I have the same problem in my image galleries. I think this is where Yahoo may have a strong upper hand. Being able to choose ad categories rather than relying entirely on page content will be a big advantage. That doesn't mean I think Yahoo is better all around. Well targeted Adsense ads on text pages convert very well for me. I do think though that for pages with little or no text, Yahoo is going to be the way to go.
add a unique title to each of your pages that you missed. You have enough text perhaps not enough pages (and i know people who would die for the ads you have, but don't get them.)
Have you thought about joining chitika? You can set the keywords for the type of ads you want great if you dont have much text.Check the link in my signature.
I've only just heard of yahoo ads and chitika a few hours ago from reading these forums. I'll check them out, but would like to see AdSense up and running since I already started with it. Solicitors Mortgages (heh, great name, BTW) thanks for the tips. Excuse my naivety, but can I ask which ones are the 'to die for' ads you mention?
This is some of the things i would do : 1 - Use section targeting to block out ANY text that is not directly keyword related. (( http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23168&topic=371)) 2- Make nice long, descriptive, and keyword rich alt tags for any images, etc. 3- Try to fit a paragraph or two of keyword text in there, and make sure to section target it in. Also make your title keyword rich (if it isn't) and target section that in. One thing you dont want to do is resort to cloaking, talmost all will die eventually and you are worse off then when you started.