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PWA Progressive Web App And Google Adsense

PWA Progressive Web App And Google Adsense – I wrote the following article after my initial experiences with PWA in WordPress using the AMP version on a mobile phone.

When it comes to using AMP in WordPress, there are two main plugins that are used; the original AMP version by WordPress.com or AMP for WP by Ahmed and Mohammed Kaludi.

I use the AMP for WP plugin on all of my websites, as it is much more versatile and allows you to do things like converting Pages to AMP not just Posts, personalise the look of Posts and Pages and allowing easy insertion of the two codes for Google Adsense Auto AMP ads in the head and content sections of just the AMP pages.

pwa progressive web app and google adsense desktop screen — PWA Progressive Web App And Google Adsense

PWA Progressive Web App Features

For those who have not had an app constructed for their website, then this is the next best thing in my opinion.

You can activate the PWA module within the AMP for WP plugin, which is currently free of charge.

Once the PWA is activated, it launches a new separate WordPress plugin, in which you can change the styling options, etc.

If you style in the same colours as your original website, it really does work well and looks much better.

PWA Progressive Web App And Google Adsense Problems!

After getting all the settings and visuals I wanted to make, I was kinda pleased with the final look of the websites on AMP using PWA.

However, (why is there always a “however” when I try things out for the first time?) my Google Adsense earnings for the next couple of days were only a fraction of what they normally were! They had tanked.

I kept checking the websites and eventually I noticed the Adsense Auto Ads for AMP stopped showing completely on the mobile versions.

Panic stations!

I quickly removed the PWA plugin and cleared the cache, but it took a couple of days for my normal traffic and Adsense earnings to return.

PWA and Adsense Don’t Play Well Together!

So my conclusion is that if you do not use Adsense ads, by all means use the Progressive Web App from the free AMP for WP plugin.

BUT if you use Google Adsense ads in any of your websites, then according to my own experience, your ads will not show up properly and your earnings will drop significantly.

You have been warned!

Enable Adsense AMP Auto Ads WordPress

How To Enable Adsense AMP Auto Ads WordPress Easily – Google Adsense have a great new feature of AMP Auto Ads and it is very easy to install on your WordPress website to get the maximum benefit.

Want To Install and Enable Adsense AMP Auto Ads WordPress Easily?

Before writing this I did a search on Google, but I found that most articles were giving very complicated advice on how they would do it, which included editing your WordPress Theme’s header.php file and amending the code, but the is a much simpler way of doing this and it is not a stand alone plugin either.

Which AMP Plugin?

Which WordPress AMP plugin are you using?

There is the standard AMP for WordPress plugin by Automattic which most people seem to be using, but it is really very basic and can cause some errors in the Google Search Console.

There is another alternative AMP plugin that is much more versatile and can be used instead and it is the AMP for WP – Accelerated Mobile Pages for WordPress by Ahmed Kaludi and Mohammed Kaludi.

You really should be using this plugin instead as you can do so much more with your AMP pages and I intend to do a full article on it shortly too.

Easy Implimentation

So, to get your AMP Auto Ads working exactly as they should, you need to insert 2 pieces of Google Adsense code on every AMP page only – not on non-AMP pages.

Go to your AMP for WP, then Settings and then the Advanced Settings tab and you should see the 2 places to enter the codes, as per below:

Go to your Adsense account and click on Optimisation and then Labs.

In here you can enable AMP Auto ads – Text & display and then click on Get Code.

A popup will give you the 2 separate codes you need; one for the Head and one for the Body. Save Changes and you are done.

The code will only be on the AMP pages of your website and Google Adsense will deliver the best adverts and positioning possible to give you maximum return.

How To Get Your Pages Indexed By Google

How To Get Your Pages Indexed By Google – after starting a new website or blog and producing some good pages and posts, what you really want next is the whole world to see them as soon as possible.

This means you need to get those pages and subsequent ones indexed by the major search engines, including Google and Bing.

However, how to get your pages indexed by google and Bing?

Some thoughts below may help on indexing or spidering.

Just How To Get Your Pages Indexed by Google and Bing?

To be honest, there are many factors that could be involved, but in this article I will just highlight the main things you need to do and check.

I am assuming that you have written good quality content with certainly no less than 300 words on your pages or posts and no less than 1000 words on your main authority pages too.

Your website does not have to have 1000’s or even 100’s of pages before it starts to get off the ground with getting some traffic, you just need to be careful to have quality content rather than quantity.

Make sure you use the Headings correctly (H1, H2, H3, etc.) and do not keyword stuff your headings or your content for that matter.

Just write naturally with the aim for people and not search engines.

how to get your pages indexed by google cartoon spider — How To Get Your Pages Indexed By Google

SEO WordPress Plugin

It is a good idea to have a SEO plugin installed that will keep you right with your writing, format and technical stuff.

There are many plugins out there that wil do the job well and my own preference is the Yoast SEO Plugin.

I tried running an experiment using no SEO plugin at all and you can find out the results in my article on Why You Should Delete Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin!

Sitemaps and Robots.txt

These are both very important to set up correctly and use.

To save duplication, have a look at my page on What Should I Put in My Robots.txt File for more information on this.

Be very careful how you use the robots.txt file and what you put in it, as it is a very powerful thing.

You could very easily “noindex” your whole website f you are not careful!

I need to do a full article on using Sitemaps for both xml and html versions.

Sufficient to say that you need to have at least a xml sitemap to allow the search engines to easily see all of your content and to spider it easily too.

If you decide to use the Yoast SEO Plugin, then there is an inbuilt xml sitemap that you just need to setup and enable and your are done.

If you don’t use Yoast, then a great alternative is Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachhold.

Google Analytics and Search Console

Another important step to start getting your pages indexed is to set up Google and Bing Analytics and Search Console.

Here you can add your website, sitemap, robots.txt file and more, which feeds everything into the two main search engines right away.

Another function in Google Search Console is to go to the Crawl section and then click on Fetch as Google subsection.

In this section you can ask Google to either Fetch or Fetch & Render any of your pages to see how Google will actually see the pages you have created.

This is a great facility to make sure there are no errors and no restrictions on rendering your pages and if there are, you can take steps to correct the items listed.

It’s like being able to step into Google search for a few seconds to find out just how they see your website pages.

Another big plus is that once your have used the Fetch facility, you can submit individual pages to Google for them to index right away.

There are no guarantees of course but I have found this well worth doing on key pages and new pages too.

Try it our on some of your new pages and you will be surprised at how quickly Google will index them and start showing them in their search.

That’s what you want!

How Do I Know What Pages Google Has Indexed?

There is a simple search you can carry out to see just how many pages and posts of your website Google has in their index.

If you type in “site:” followed by the index page of your website, Google will list all the pages of your website that it already has in their index.

For example, if I want to know how many pages Google has indexed of this website, I would type in “site:brianhillier.co.uk” (without the quotation marks) and a list of pages and posts would be shown.

It is a great way to monitor what is in and what is out.

Conclusion

I have briefly listed some of the main things you can do to ensure that you have the best chances of getting your pages indexed by Google and the other search engines too.

Hopefully this will be of some benefit.

Should You Use Google Analytics Code On Your Website?

Should You Use Google Analytics Code On Your Website?

Yes or No? Could be, maybe?

I must confess that I have always used the Google analytics code on all of my websites as it provides very interesting and helpful data.

You can use this data to help increase the traffic to your website and find out so much more about your visitors.

So, is Yes the answer?

Well I was doing some reading of articles and some suggested that the analytics code slows down the loading of your site pages, so I thought I would investigate it.

So it might be Maybe then?

I use Pingdom for testing and right enough, there was a slight decrease in loading speed with the analytics code removed when I tested.

There was also an increase in the Performance Grade too, as the code didn’t have to be loaded each time.

Interesting, so I kept the code off, as I’m sure you know that website loading speed is a ranking factor in Google.

The difference was very small, but I thought every second or parts of seconds must all help.

Should You Use Google Analytics Code On Your Website?

So the answer is No?

This all seemed like a very good idea and I gave myself a pat on the back that night.

Actually, the answer is Yes!

I use Google Adsense adverts on my websites and next morning I checked my stats as usual.

Disaster!

Earnings were way down on normal, but I decided to stick with the test to see what might happen.

The Adsense stats never improved until I put back the analytics code.

Google say it should not affect Adsense earnings in any way, but in practice it does seem to be a problem.

So, Should You Use Google Analytics Code On Your Website?

If you are tempted to try removing the Google analytics code from your website to try to speed it up, I would say don’t bother!

Have a look at Find The Stats For Google Adsense Mobile Anchor Overlay.

Google Adsense Revenue Drop After New UI

Have you noticed a Google Adsense Revenue Drop After New UI was introduced?

Well, you are not the only one!

I noticed a big downturn in Adsense revenue since they introduced their new user interface and you need to know how to fix this problem right away.

When Adsense first introduced their new UI into each account, there was an option to either continue using the old version or switch to the new version of the console.

However, Google Adsense have now rolled out the new version totally and you must now use this version from now on.

Google Adsense Revenue Drop After New UI but what happened?

Apparently Adsense updated all the adverts as well, when they updated the new UI, especially the link ads which are now in a different colour scheme.

If you do a comparison of the traffic shown in Google Analytics with the traffic in Adsense, you might find a big difference, especially with the text adverts.

It would appear that the old adverts are not serving as well as they used to.

Google Adsense Revenue Drop After New UI

The solution?

Replace all of your Google Adsense advert coding!

Yes, I’m afraid it can be a big job if you have a number of websites, but this is the only way to be sure your adverts have the latest code displayed on your websites.

If you are sceptical about what I am saying, then try creating new adverts just for one of your websites and replace the code in your website to see what I mean.

When I replaced the advert code with the new code, there was a significant increase in revenue.

Do Not forget your Caching and CDN

Remember that if you use a caching plugin (WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, etc.) or CDN (e.g. MaxCDN, Cloudflare, etc.), make sure to completely clear your cache after you replace the new Adsense code for your adverts, otherwise you old adverts will keep being served to your customers.

You might also be interested in Be Careful How You Use Yoast Internal Linking Suggestions and Double Google Adsense Earnings Changing Ad Style Setting.

Block Motherboard.vice.com Google Analytics

Block Motherboard.vice.com Google Analytics – are you seeing this website in your Google Analytics stats recently?

The Russians are Coming!

It would appear that there is a Russian spam artist called Vitaly Popov that is behind all of this.

It started just before the results of the US election and has continued citing some kind of support to Donald Trump and his victory.

But spreading pro-Trump messages isn’t the only reason Popov started this Analytics little game, because it appears that he has something of a grudge against Google.

According to Popov, many years ago, Google blocked his account on Adsense, the company’s system for placing ads on websites and this greatly displeased him.

“Revenge to Google,” he wrote.

“Personal glory. I like my name—Vitaly Popov and want that it was known,” he wrote. “Intellectual and technical superiority against strong opponents in a really important and competitive field—money and influence.”

“Money,” Popov wrote. “Traffic is money.”

Well I wonder why Google banned him!

How to fix it

This is really what you want to know!

Log into your Google Analytics Account
Click on Admin at the top and then All Filters on the left hand side

Block Motherboard.vice.com Google Analytics google analytics spam control

3. Now click on + Add Filter

4. After that, hit New Filter.

5. Add Motherboard.vice.com in the Filter Name value.

6. Choose the Custom Filter Type and once you see the Filter Field, go with Campaign Source.

7. Next, when you see the Filter Pattern text box, enter Motherboard.vice.com.

Block Motherboard.vice.com Google Analytics google analytics spam

8. Under Apply Filter to Views you should see All Web Site Data under Available Views.

Just click on it to highlight it and then click on Add >> to move it to the Selected views column and finally Save at the bottom.

Block Motherboard.vice.com Google Analytics blocking url

All done!

This will stop the website URL from appearing in your stats from now on.

If you come across other spam websites like this one, you can just use the same instructions and procedure listed above to block it, by just inserting the new URL instead.

Great to get rid of that annoying website, as it was distorting the stats.

Update:

So, it looks like we have another website to add to this, namely: washingtonpost.com

It is exactly the same problem and the same source as well, so all you need to do is add a new filter for: washingtonpost.com

Everything is set up exactly the same as above, but you just change the name/website URL.

No doubt there will be more!