You’re now in a position where you understand ad formats and you can generate the ad code. Does that mean you’re all set? Far from it. You still need to figure out precisely where to put all that nice HTML code you’ve just generated on your page and watch the dollars ad up.
In previous webpages, I point you to the AdSense help pages for information on code placement. If you made your way through those pages, you may already know where to put your code, but if you’re like me, you haven’t made it over there yet, so you’re still clueless. No worries. I help you get up to speed right now. Getting code where you want it
How you place the AdSense code on your site depends on how you’re accessing the HTML for your Web site. There are two basic ways to do it:
* Using a WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor: If that’s your weapon of choice, be sure to switch from Design view to HTML view.
* Using an HTML Insert capability: If your Web site design software application offers an HTML Insert feature, all you have to do is paste the HTML into the window provided and click OK.
In both cases, when you view your Web site (or preview your Web site), the ad should appear. Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that because you need to know exactly where to paste the code. If you’re using the HTML editor, you’ll have to navigate your way through
your HTML code. One major landmark to look for involves the tags on your Web site. You may remember from earlier webpages that a very scaled down version of your HTML might look something like this:
After the heading of your Web site comes the body. That looks like this:
It’s between those body tags that the code for your AdSense ads should be placed. If the code doesn’t appear between those body tags, the ads won’t show up on your Web site.
Now, if you go back and look at the source code for any given Web site (remember, you do this by choosing View➪Source or View➪View Source Web from your browser’s main menu), you see that there’s a whole lot of gobbledygook between the body tags. Basically everything that you see on your site below the header and above the footer will appear in there somewhere.
Knowing where in that jumble of code to paste your AdSense code makes all the difference in the world. It takes a little bit of trial and error to get the code in the right place if you’re not an HTML guru.
If you read through the HTML (don’t panic, after you focus on it for a few minutes, you begin to see the patterns that translate into a Web site), you’ll start to see common tags, like
(which means division) and
(which indicates the beginning of a table).
As you begin to see the patterns in your code, you also begin to recognize where you want to paste the code. For example, if you’re pasting the code for a leaderboard-sized link unit into your page, you want to paste it immediately following the opening body tag (). This ensures that the ad gets placed at the top of the page.
To paste a rectangle text ad into the beginning of an article, paste it immediately before the first word of the article. And if you want to place an ad in a sidebar, place it after the division tag for the sidebar. It’s only slightly different if you’re using a Web design program that allows you
to insert snippets of HTML into your site design. If that’s the kind of program you’re using, place your cursor or pointer at the place on the page where you want the HTML snippet to appear, and then select the HTML Insert command from the main menu. In the window that appears, paste in the code and then click OK. You can then drag or resize the section that contains the HTML code until it’s in the exact location where you want it displayed.
When installing the HTML code onto your site, remember that location is everything. Review the placements that I share with you earlier in the webpages and try them to see how they work for you. Of course, don’t let those guidelines become your prison, either. Test different sizes, colors, and locations until you find the combination that suits your site the best and draws
the most clicks.
Resisting the urge to change the code
When you’re installing your AdSense code, one of the most important things to remember is that you can’t change the AdSense code in any way. You can’t add to it, take away from it, or otherwise change it. Period. It’s not only against the AdSense policies, but it could also render the code useless. When Google generates code for you to use as a display on your site, there
are some very important elements in that code. Among those elements is your user ID as well as information that tells Google what ads to display on your site.
If you start messing with the code, Google might not recognize it and ads won’t be pushed out to it. Or worse, ads that are completely irrelevant to your site might be pushed out. At least until Google figures out you monkeyed with the code — and then you could be banned from the AdSense program altogether.
So don’t ever mess with the AdSense code. Copy it; paste it; forget it.
