Yesterday, we looked at What Doesn’t Work for AdSense in 2010. Today, let’s look at what does. Some of these may be things you know already, but if you’re like me, you could often use a good reminder. Others are tips that perhaps you haven’t tried before. Either way, these are the things you should be doing to maximize your AdSense revenue.

What Works for AdSense #1
Publishing Quality Content

This sounds really obvious, but there’s a reason this comes first on my list. It’s impossible to overemphasize the fact that the best way to make money with AdSense is to publish quality content.

Whatever it is that you happen to know about and have chosen to blog about, write it in such a way that it is highly informative and highly engaging. Write frequently and consistently. This will help you develop a consistent readership with a certain level of mutual trust, and in the long run, that relationship will bring you the most amount of profit from AdSense.

The reason for this is simple: People don’t go to the internet looking for advertisements. They go to the internet looking for information. When the information is good, it stands to reason that the advertised product or service might be good as well. It’s strictly an “If, Then” relationship. IF the content is useful, THEN they might click an ad. IF your site has poor content, THEN whatever is being advertised is probably poor as well.

A friend of mine asked me this morning over coffee, “Does anyone actually click on ads? Do you ever click on ads?” The answer is yes, but usually only ads that look both legitimate and interesting, and especially only ads on sites I trust because they consistently bring me useful content. I would bet that this holds true for most web surfers. It’s based on a blogger-reader relationship, and that relationship is built by content.

Let’s say, just for grins, that you write a blog with tips on how to groom your small dog at home. Sally logs on to your site looking for this information. Specifically, she’s wanting to know whether it’s better to brush the dog’s coat before you use electric clippers. If Sally logs on to your site and finds a very informative article on this exact topic, she mentally assigns a high degree of “usefulness value” to your site, and that’s something priceless that can only be purchased with good content.

Because of that high perceived value to Sally, let’s say she stops by once a week and reads two or three articles. Over the course of the year, Sally equals an extra 100-150 page views per year for you. And what’s more, when she sees an AdSense ad on your site offering an at-home grooming kit especially for small dogs, she finds that particularly interesting and clicks it. When she sees an article with some especially useful tips on grooming toy poodles, she forwards the link to her friend who is a toy poodle enthusiast. The traffic begins to replicate itself.

But if Sally had first logged on to your site only to find keyword stuffing, lots of ads and no real content, she would have left immediately. She wouldn’t have clicked a single ad and she would never have returned. You wouldn’t have received 150 page views from Sally. You would have received no click-throughs. You would have received no referrals. You would have received one page impression, one lonely impression that tells you only that Sally didn’t like your site at all.

A site without quality content is like a fishing net that allows fish to swim out as easily as they swam in. A site with quality content is like a magic hook that always catches just the right kind of fish, again and again and again. I’ll explore this topic more in the weeks to come.

What Works for AdSense #2
Putting your Past Articles to Work

I once worked in a bookstore, and I once owned and operated a restaurant. Having experienced both business models up close, I am convinced that too many of us think of our blog as a restaurant instead of a bookstore.

Here’s what I mean by that. At a restaurant, the product must be started anew every single day. People want to buy food that is freshly made. At the end of the day, what’s unsold will probably never be sold. It has a very brief window to make its money, and then it’s gone. The next day, if new food isn’t made, new profits won’t materialize.

At a bookstore, new products are constantly introduced, but many of the items on the shelves are books that were written decades or even centuries ago. They retain their usefulness and their ability to generate income. As long as the material is still relevant and useful, there is a potential market for that book.

Are you viewing your blog posts as books in a bookstore or food in a restaurant? Are you writing something that will be just as relevant and useful next month as it was today? Or is each article forgotten once it drops off your “front page radar?” (Or worse, are you making the amateur blogger mistake of deleting your old posts or moving them to an offline archive?)

Put your past articles to work. Reference your old posts in your new posts. Go back and read everything you’ve written, and know your own content inside and out. As you’re writing new entries, link to the old posts that will make for excellent further reading. (One quick example is at the top of this article, where we referenced yesterday’s article about What Doesn’t Work in AdSense in 2010. See, we just did it again!)

This translates into better AdSense performance, because each past article view equals another page impression. If you can take the people who read your daily post and get them to click two previous articles in addition, you’ve tripled your pageview count.

One quick sidenote — don’t try to disguise your old articles as new articles. Make sure that your readers realize that your link is referencing a past article or they’ll quickly get frustrated trying to distinguish what’s new and what they may have read already.

What Works #3
Engaging your Readers

When I take the time to comment on someone’s blog, I usually also check the box that asks me if I want to be notified of additional comments on that post. Why? I’ll give you a hint — it’s usually not because I want to know what other people are going to say. It’s because I want to know if the blog author writes back. I want to know if the author feels like I’m worth the time to acknowledge me as a reader. If so, chances are good that I’ll become a permanent reader. If not, it’s easy for me to decide that perhaps this particular author isn’t worth my time, either.

Engaging your readers on a personal level is what deepens the relationship that was initially forged by good content. Readers will come to your blog the first time because they’re curious. They’ll come the second and third time because the content was good. But they’ll come back every single day when they feel like they matter to the blog as much as the blog matters to them.

This improved relationship will be the most recognizable in AdSense in terms of your Click-Thru Ratio (CTR). It’s a simple fact that readers who have a great relationship with your blog are more likely to pay attention to your ads, and the more they pay attention, the better their chances of seeing an ad that’s relevant to their interests.

The Bottom Line

Maybe you’re surprised that all of these tips are focused primarily on improving your relationship with your readers. You were expecting, perhaps, a more technical AdSense strategy. I can already hear the questions. “But what about blending your ads into the page?” “What about positional placement?” “What about search engine optimization?” To which I reply, “Dude, that is SOOO 2007.”

In 2010, more than any year before, web surfers have finely tuned what I like to call their “personal junk filter.” I’m not talking about software. I’m talking about the way that you decide in about two seconds whether a website is worth your time. Without quality content, without utilizing your old content as well as the new, without engaging your readers — the rest of your AdSense strategy is absolutely worthless.

This is a new day, folks. Even my 80-year old grandpa can finally tell the difference now between an ad and content. The days of tricking, coaxing or goading people into clicking your ads have passed. A successful AdSense strategy begins and ends with content and relationship. Tweak the other variables all you like and see what seems to work best for you. But make your goal, first and foremost, serving up to your readers exactly what they’re looking for, and in the long run, you’ll reap the benefits in your AdSense numbers.