Every once in a while someone unsubscribes from my AdSense newsletter. My mailing list provider provides my subscribers with a form to use for unsubscribing. On that form there's a comments field where the subscriber can optionally explain why they're unsubscribing. Most subscribers actually give a reason for unsubscribing, for which I'm always grateful. The most common reason for unsubscribing (which doesn't happen very often) is that they're subscribed to so many lists that they can't keep up with the messages. (My list is low volume, though.)

But every once in a while I get a very different reason. Here's the message I got today from a former subscriber:

..just got banned from adsense..now gonna go for online currency trading..

Well, this person seems to have taken the banning quite well, and a mailing list about AdSense certainly won't do them any good anymore. Still, it made me wonder what the person did to get banned. It was probably one of the following items. Here are the top five ways (in no particular order) to get banned from AdSense.

1. Clicking Your Own Ads (Click Fraud)

Click fraud — see my click fraud page — is a hot topic these days, especially with yesterday's release of a Google document critical of third-party click fraud auditing processes. No matter how you slice it, though, there are definitely people out there who click their own ads, or encourage others to do so, for their own monetary gain.

Mind you, accidental clicks do happen and you shouldn't panic if you accidentally click an ad on one of your own sites. Just drop a quick note to Google telling them about it and take steps to prevent it from happening again.

2. Not Following the AdSense Terms and Conditions

It amazes me how many people never fully read the AdSense terms and conditions, often referred to as the TOS (terms of service). Though the TOS is vague about some things (like defining what a content page is), it is very explicit about various things you can't do.

3. Not Following the AdSense Program Policies

The AdSense program policies are technically part of the AdSense terms and conditions, even though they're listed on a separate page. This is where you'll find the information about how many link or ad units you can use on a page, what kind of sites are acceptable, etc.

4. Opening Multiple AdSense Accounts

This has become much harder to do since Google has added algorithms to detect multiple accounts belonging to the same person or entity. Each person or entity can only have one account. If you have a legitimate need for two or more accounts, you must create a separate legal entity (like a corporation) for each additional account, and that entity must separately apply and be approved for a new account.

5. Ignoring Warnings and Questions From Google

Although certain events cause Google to automatically terminate your account, many terminations are preceded by a warning note from the AdSense team. This is your chance to defend yourself and to change your site/behavior in response. If you're not responsive, they'll just go ahead and ban you. (If you're going away for an extended period of time, you should check your mail every day or two and keep an eye on your AdSense earnings as well. Be sure to report any suspicious activity as soon as you see it.)

See also my tips on keeping your nose clean.

Sponsored Link: Do you know what one-time offers are? Read about them at GeekAffiliate.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?

Search engine optimization (SEO) types have a wide array of tools available to them, ranging from free to commercial. But they're all software. Is there any hardware you can use as an SEO tool? Well, how about your camcorder?

If you really want an eye-opening experience as to how others use the Web, and more importantly how they find (or not find) your site, do the following:

1. Put your camcorder on a tripod and aim it at your computer.
2. Open a browser window to your favorite search engine.
3. Invite a non-techie (this could be your spouse) to sit in front of your computer.
4. Adjust the camcorder so that you can see the screen and the subject. Start recording.
5. Ask the subject to find your site. Don't give him or her the address of the site, but give a description of the site and tell them to search for it.
6. Record what they do. Stifle all attempts to direct them the right way. Do not ask leading questions. Do not imitate Homer Simpson. Let them do their thing.
7. When subject finds your site or gives up in frustration, thank them profusely.
8. Now watch the video you just took. Take notes on what the subject did or didn't do.
9. Repeat this process with different subjects.
10. Apply what you learned to make your site more findable.

It's easy to forget that most visitors are not like us. A few video sessions will remind you of that.

Of course, you can also make videos that drive traffic directly to your site. But that's a different kind of SEO…

Sponsored Link: Lots of hype today about the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript. So many of the new sites that you see (like The List FX, Mr. OverDeliver, Secret Page Spy) were built using the Butterfly Marketing techniques that there's probably something to this book, so check it out.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?

It's always good to pay attention to what Matt Cutts is saying. Google has created Webmaster Central, a “one-stop shop” for webmasters (that's you) looking to submit their sites to Google, find out why they're not being indexed, and so on. Most of the resources available from Webmaster Central are not new, but now they're conveniently located in one spot. You can also subscribe to the Webmaster Central Blog to keep abreast of new tools and resources.

As part of this reorg, Google Sitemaps is now known as Google webmaster tools. I like the new name better, because “Google Sitemaps” always had an ambiguity to it, either referring to a Google “sitemap” (an XML file listing all the crawlable URLs on a site) or else the special webmaster “console” where you could check to see if your site was being indexed, etc.

If you don't already have a webmaster tools account, now's the time to go grab one. One of the things you can do now is tell Google what the preferred domain is for each of your sites, i.e. do you prefer the “www” version of your domain name or the non-”www” version? You should definitely set your preference. Note that this is no excuse for not redirecting one version to another: if all was good in the world, Google wouldn't even need to add a “preferred domain” option, they would just handle the redirections correctly (see The AdSense-ready WordPress Blog, Part 1 for details on how to do the redirection) and not force you to specify a preference. But they have problems with identifying multiple versions of the same site, so this feature is a little hack to avoid the problem. But you still want to redirect things on your end so that incoming links go to the right spot.

I'm sure more tools will be coming down the pipe in the next few months. Of course, if you're paranoid or a black hat type then giving all this information to Google about your sites is probably not a good idea. There are tools out there like SEO Elite that can help you get better rankings without Google's help.

Sponsored Link: Get free e-books and software from Mr. OverDeliver.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?