Gian Stavin
Getting your website monetized by Google AdSense is one of the first milestone for a new blogger in order to start earning some cash. However, the application for Google AdSense approval might be tricky and not as easy as it seems.
In fact, around 7 of 10 websites get rejected by AdSense at the first place. This is quite a huge percentage, isn’t it?
You might have tried everything by following all the Google guidelines, but things aren’t work as per what you expected. Each time a site get rejected, AdSense won’t tell any specific reasons why it did not passed the review process.
I get it. I’ve been there too at the first place. Don’t get frustrated yet, as I’m going to share you all the things you’ll need to know to get your website start monetizing with Google AdSense. So, make sure to read until the end!
I’ve been in the website industry for 10 years now and have more than 20 websites that are currently running with Google AdSense.
From my experience throughout Google AdSense approval, I’ve seen lots of wrong information on the internet. This might be the reason why most of the webmaster think that they’ve done it correctly, but their sites are still getting rejected by AdSense at the end.
Hence, I’m going to share my proven formulas to get Google AdSense approval for your website. The formulas that I’ve been using to get all my 20+ websites approved on Google AdSense.
Understanding The AdSense Approval Review Process
Before we get started, it is important for you to understand how AdSense review each websites that are submitting for approval. This will give you a better understanding on why and how they come to a decision whether to approve or reject a website for AdSense.
Throughout my experience in submitting approval for AdSense, there are some “similarity” that happen every time.
That is, if your website don’t get any reply from AdSense within 48 hours, your website will most likely to get rejected for the approval.
So, here come’s to a question: is the AdSense review process manual or automated?
Well, it is both.
It’s automatic at first, but a human has to manually do the final approval.
Therefore, I’m going to breakdown the formula into two main categories:
- Getting pass the automated review stage
- Getting pass the human review stage.
Let’s get started!
Passing The First Stage of Google AdSense Approval (Automated Review)
The automated process is usually intended to check if a website has any policy violations. This can be done as their system can scan all the words in every pages within your site.
So how to get pass this first stage of review?
Here’s the formula for you.
Formula #1: Delete All The Contents That Contain Policy Violations
Ensure your site does not have any content that contain AdSense’s policy violations.
This means the AdSense system will automatically reject your approval once they scanned prohibited content on your website that contain:
- Sexually explicit
- Gambling/casino
- Drugs
- Alcohol
- Tobacco
- Animal cruelty
- Racism
- Weapon-related information
- Unsupported language
A single word that related to the above list could risk your website get rejected by AdSense. To be safe, just go through all your content carefully and check if they’re containing all the list above.
If you accidentally put a single word that contain or lead to the above list, just replace it to the safer synonym.
For example: sex –> gender, drugs –> medication, and etc.
Formula #2: Your Content Must be Unique, Informative, and Thick
You might heard some of the “gurus” on the internet said that you’ll need to at least have 50, or even 100 content pages in your sites in order to get Google AdSense approval. This is definitely a myth and incorrect.
AdSense value the content quality more than the quantity. It doesn’t matter if your site only has a low number of pages as long your site has a high quality content for your readers. In fact, I managed to get one of my website approved by AdSense with just 15 high quality content!
Try to create content around >1,500 words and make sure you write it on your own. The search engine system is smart enough to know if you’re stealing content from other website (including re-paraphrasing or using translator).
Avoid hiring a cheap writing service in the 3rd party platform or bot writing service that are just giving you a piece of junk content (most likely spinning content).
Make sure the content are user friendly and easy to read. You can refer to our guideline to optimize a content.
Not only the words content, you’ll also need to avoid using copyrighted images. To be safe, you can use tools like Canva and create the image by your own.
Formula #3: Grow Some Traffic
Have you ever wonder why most of newly created websites are most likely get rejected by AdSense?
The answer is simple: a newly created website tend to not getting indexed by the search engine at the first place as they normally do not have much traffic.
Among all the hundreds of billions of web pages on the internet, Google bots are selective to choose which web page to begin the crawling.
One of the magnet that can attract Google bots to crawl a website is the website’s traffic. Hence, the Google bot tend to prioritize the big established websites as compare to the small and newly created site.
Although, there is no information regarding how much minimum traffic your site should have in order to get approved by AdSense, you should start working on growing your traffic.
Here are some ways to get a juice of traffic at the early stage of your website:
- Share content to your social medias
- Share content to forum or Q&A websites like Quora, and begin to answer some questions that are related to your content.
- Write a guest post on other site that linked back to your website.
Avoid Bad Traffic
If you think that by visiting and keep on refreshing your own website to gain more traffic, this isn’t going to work.
Google is smart enough to know if your traffic is a real traffic or a false traffic simply by your IP address and reading time. This means, false traffic like click/visitor bots are not going to work as well.
A good traffic must come from the real visitors that are truly reading your content.
Formula #4: Create Robots.txt File and Upload XML Sitemap to Google Search Console
The next formula to get your website approved by AdSense is by making their task easier. This can be accomplished by creating robots.txt file ready and proper sitemap XML.
Robots.txt is a text file to instruct the search engine on how to crawl your website. You can read our guideline to create proper robots.txt file here.
XML sitemap, on the other hand act as a roadmap for the search engine to discover what content available on your site. You can read our guideline to create proper XML sitemap here.
Applying these two things is important if you want your website to get higher chance of getting approved by AdSense by ensuring that you welcome the Google bot and making their job easier.
In addition to that, it will also somehow make your website stand out from all the spammy sites that tend to have missing robots.txt and XML sitemap.
Formula #5: Create Privacy Policy Page
User privacy is a global concern and many countries have strict rules, particularly regarding advertising and personalized targeting.
Google takes these laws seriously in which AdSense has similar legal requirement within their policies.
Your privacy policy page need to clearly states your policies to the visitors. This includes, third-party vendors, advertisers, cookie settings, GDPR compliance, and COPPA.
Passing The Last Stage of Google AdSense Approval (Human Review)
While the formula 1 to 5 above is to get pass your website from the automated review by AdSense system, here come with the final stage: Human review.
AdSense team will double check on all the sites that have passed the automated review before finally getting approved by AdSense.
This means, a real human (not bot) is going to visit your website and do a peer check if your site is eligible.
So, what are their criteria in determining whether a site is eligible for AdSense?
AdSense value their user experience more than anything. If AdSense rejected your website, one of the reason might be due to poor user experience on your website.
In order to create a great and compelling website, here’s what you need to follow:
Formula #6: Website Design
Does website design actually matter to get Google AdSense approval?
Yes and no.
Yes, if your site look like this:
And no, because you don’t need the expensive theme that look super fancy and standout.
In my experience, even a simple design website can get approved by AdSense. This will work as long your site is presentable to your audience in a good manner.
Now, think as the advertiser. If you’re the advertiser, will you place an ads on your own website with this layout?
Formula #7: Easy to Navigate Menu
When the AdSense team visit your site for review, don’t make them confused on where to go on your website.
Instead, you should use a proper navigation to put categories and important pages on the menu bar.
Don’t forget to place a link back to the homepage for each pages on your website. Normally, this can be done by placing the logo on the header.
Extra Things You’ll Need to Remember
While I’m pretty sure that you’ve followed the extra tips that I’m going to mention below, it still worth to remind in case you’ve forgotten some of the below.
Ensure That You Only Have One Account
AdSense restrict only one account per publisher. The publisher might have another account that has been previously disabled due to AdSense policies.
Ensure The Ad Code Has Been Placed Correctly
If AdSense couldn’t find any ad code or if the code is incomplete or malformed, your site will get rejected automatically.
No Other Advertising on Your Page
AdSense will reject your application if they found your page contain excessive advertising. It is recommended to remove all the other ads when applying your AdSense.
Common Misconception About AdSense Getting Rejected
Last but not least, I will also include some of the misconception that has been shared on the internet regarding the reasons of a website getting rejected by AdSense.
This might clarify your thought of why I did not include on the tips above.
Website Age
Some of the “gurus” said that you’ll need to wait until your domain age reached 6 months before applying for AdSense.
This is definitely incorrect as in my experience, I had most of my sites getting approved by AdSense with just 3 weeks domain age.
About Us and Contact Page
I’ve seen the statement many times on the internet stating that you should have about us and contact us page to be eligible for AdSense.
Again, this is invalid as per my experience as I had my sites approved without having these 2 pages. Having both of the pages is good to build credibility around your web visitors, but it is definitely not necessary to get approved by AdSense.
Bottom Line
Building a good website takes time and process. Don’t ever think to speed up the process by keep adding bunch of poor quality content to your site and hope that AdSense will reconsider your approval. Remember, it doesn’t work that way!
Make sure that you have followed all the formulas above before submitting for re-approval appeal on AdSense. If you have further question, do let me know in the comment.