There was a time when the following list of “old and busted” tricks for AdSense could yield higher payouts, but in these instances, the train has already left the station. Here are some tired tactics to avoid at all costs when implementing AdSense into your blog.

What Doesn’t Work #1
Clicking your own Ads

Almost every blogger, within a week of incorporating AdSense into their blog, gives into temptation and clicks an ad that appears on their blog. This is usually followed by a trip over to AdSense to see if the click registered. You’re excited to see if your daily earnings jumped up from the paltry $0.02/day you’ve been earning to something more reasonable, perhaps something in the $2-3 range.

There’s a major problem with this, however. Google aggressively monitors click fraud, and they will ban you if you do it. When you registered for AdSense, there was a checkbox that essentially made you promise, in no uncertain terms, that you would not click on ads on your own site. And don’t think you’re slick by using a proxy server to fool Google into thinking you’re someone else. Everyone else already thought of that, and Google can detect that, too. Even if you’re interested in the ad itself as a potential customer, it doesn’t matter. Don’t click it.

It all comes down to this: Preserving the integrity of the system is paramount to making sure the AdSense business model can continue. If Google were susceptible to click fraud, advertisers wouldn’t advertise. And without advertising dollars, AdSense publishers wouldn’t get paid. The system would rapidly collapse. As such, one of Google’s primary concerns is maintaining the integrity of the system. They work around the clock, day after day, month after month, year after year, to keep the system functioning correctly.

I can’t stress this enough here. If you click your own ads, Google will know it. In a best case scenario, they simply won’t pay you for the ads you clicked. In a worst case scenario, they will ban you from AdSense. Trust us, folks. It doesn’t work anymore, and it’s not worth it.

What Doesn’t Work #2
Mesothelioma and other “High-Paying Keywords”

About six years ago, someone discovered that certain keywords carried extremely high click values and that adding them to your blog could make you serious amounts of money with just a few clicks. The prime example was mesothelioma (a form of cancer usually caused by asbestos exposure), a keyword which by some reports was earning north of $35 per click. (Yes, that’s thirty-five dollars, not thirty-five cents.) Miraculously, a bunch of blogs suddenly started mentioning mesothelioma. Grandma’s Recipes, Bobby’s Movie Reviews and Cindy’s Celebrity Gossip all suddenly had a weekly feature about mesothelioma.

It’s true that mesothelioma still continues to be a high-dollar keyword. (The reason, incidentally, is that law firms specializing in mesothelioma lawsuits compete with each other for top billing on that family of keywords. It’s worth their money to spend $35 per click when they stand to make thousands.) But just because a click can pay big bucks doesn’t mean you’ll make any money from it. Just as those lawyers are competing with each other for genuine mesothelioma traffic, you’re now competing with all those other people who really have no information to offer on the disease and instead are just looking to cash in on the keyword. If your blog is about Persian kittens, chances are good that your incidental posts on mesothelioma are only going to yield a decrease in revenue when your readers get confused by the change in topic and make their visits less frequent.

Those of you who are considering learning all there is to know about mesothelioma and creating an entire, legitimate website about the disease, by all means go for it. But keep this in mind. With about 2,500 cases diagnosed in the US annually, that translates to about 7 legitimate potential clicks per day and you’ve got lots of competition.

The bottom line is to stick to your blog topic, whatever that might be. Earning money from AdSense isn’t a matter of choosing the highest-paying topics. Any topic can be a profitable topic if your content is well-written, interesting and informative. Make content your top priority and you’ll ultimately see your ad revenues increase as a direct result.

What Doesn’t Work #3
Tons of Ads

Google allows you to have up to three different ad blocks on each page. This limit somehow seems to gives the false notion that more is better, when the reverse may actually be true.

First off, Google doesn’t give you triple credit for having three ads on your page as opposed to just one. Your impressions count increases by one when someone loads a page that contains AdSense regardless of whether or not multiple ads appear on that page. The only reason to include more than one ad on a page is to try to make it more likely for a visitor to notice and become interested in an ad.

Second, having multiple ads on the same page is likely to drive down your eCPM. You’ll probably get better results with one well-placed ad than you will with three ads spread out around the page. Quality is more important than quantity, and a quality ad from Google’s perspective has to do with the ad’s location. Google likes ads to be prominently displayed right in the center of your main content, and it helps to have it displayed “above the fold,” meaning that it’s visible without having to scroll.

Third, having too many ads turns off your readers. If it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, you have too much advertising and not enough content. Throwing more ads onto the page isn’t going to make a visitor more likely to click one of your ads. It’s going to make them leave your website, and they probably won’t come back. The key to increased clicks is having ads that actually interest your readers, and the way to do this is with quality content. The better the content, the more relevant the ad.

What Doesn’t Work #4
Begging for Clicks or Offering Incentives

A final, common rookie mistake that no longer flies is asking people to click your ads. This is a bad idea because it expressly violates the AdSense terms of service. It’s just as much of a no-no as clicking your own ads, and is just as capable of getting you banned.

Back in the day, bloggers would have click contests or incentives to encourage visitors to click their ads. This one simply doesn’t work any more. Google evaluates click quality, not just click quantity. Advertisers themselves often implement tools as well to help them track their conversion rates. It helps no one for you to generate click waves that will never translate into sales. In the long run, it’s in everyone’s best interest (advertisers, customers, publishers and Google alike) to make sure that the people clicking on ads are people genuinely interested in the ad itself who are likely to consider making a purchase because of it.

Similarly, don’t include text on your site that asks for people to click your ads, and don’t use any text to label your ad space other than the Google-approved labels, “Sponsored” or “Advertisement.”

And avoid the temptation to call up or email your friends and relatives to ask them to hit up your site and click all of your ads. Google knows this trick, too. While you might think you’re being sly, Google finds it a bit odd when 30 different IP addresses from the same city log on in the same hour, and remarkably, each of those computers go straight to the ads without spending any time reading your content. Hmm, suspicious much?

The Bottom Line

The amount of time you’re going to spend trying to outsmart Google is detracting from the time you could be spending writing quality content for your blog. Play fair and honest. Write a good blog and promote it via legitimate channels. Don’t stuff your page too full of ads, and place your ads strategically and wisely.

The biggest difference with AdSense in 2010 as opposed to previous years is that Google continues to tighten up the system. You know if you’re playing dirty, and this year more than ever, Google knows it, too.