Today I am here to help you get Google AdSense approval. Quite a few people have asked me about this, so I have put together 12 tips that’ll help you get approved quickly.
Google AdSense, truth be told, can be a pretty tricky beast if you’ve never been approved before. If you already have a website that’s been approved on Google AdSense, it’s pretty simple to get other websites onto your account.
But what about those who have never been approved, or are having a lot of problems getting approved? That’s exactly who this list is for.
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1) High-Quality Content Is Crucial
Number one is what I consider to be one of the most important things to do if you’re trying to get approved with Google AdSense. That is, you need to make sure you have high-quality content on your website.
Some people think this doesn’t matter, but it does, because now Google making sure websites they’re approving aren’t just a bunch of spam content or people who are copying and pasting content from other websites.
They want to make sure to keep them out of their search results in general, so anyone who’s trying to do shortcuts, forget about it. You’re not going to get approved for Google AdSense.
Just make sure that you have high-quality content on your website. You can look at the Google Publisher Policies to help you understand what Google considers to be good.
Google wants good results in their search engine result pages, so if you don’t have high-quality content there’s a good chance you’ll get denied.
They’re not going to monetize your website because they know if they don’t, you’re probably not going to make money and you’re probably going to quit.
2) Create 10-15 Posts
Number two goes back to high-quality content. Before you even apply to Google AdSense, you should have 10-15 high-quality posts on your website to make sure Google knows you’re taking it seriously, and that your website has some articles that can be monetized.
Generally speaking, you want to have 10,000-15,000 words on your website. If you have about 1000-1500 words per article, that’s a pretty good number. This will help you get approved because it shows the voice of your website and helps Google understand the quality of your content, which is very important.
3) Create About and Contact Pages
Number three is something that I think a lot of people miss out on. When you create a website, you have to have an About and Contact page before you apply to Google AdSense.
It’s pretty simple why; when Google is reviewing your website, they want to make sure it’s legitimate, so they want to know who’s behind the site. You can include the different staff involved on the About page as well.
It is also important to have a Contact page so all of your website visitors can reach out to you if they need to.
By having those two pages, you’re going to further validate the fact that you are a legitimate business. That is really important to Google when they’re looking at you from an AdSense perspective.
4) Create a Privacy Policy Page
Number four is to make sure you create a Privacy Policy page. This is a common mishap people have because they’ll say, “I don’t really know what to include in the privacy policy page.”
Honestly, you can look on Google and find a ton of different generators. The most important thing to know is that Google requires specific verbiage to be in your privacy policy.
This link explains everything that Google AdSense has to say about the privacy policy, including the verbiage they want you to include in yours. It is actually very easy; you just have to copy and paste it.
Check out my list of privacy policy generators for free and paid options to help.
5) Confirm Website Content Isn’t on the Restricted List
Number five is one that I think some people probably don’t really think about before they create a website. That is, you need to make sure your content isn’t on the restricted list.
Yes, Google AdSense does have a restricted list. If you have a website and your content is restricted, then goodbye to AdSense. That’s just the reality of the situation.
There are a lot of different rules, so here is a link telling you exactly what the publisher restrictions are.
Generally speaking, you can’t have anything sexual, and you can’t have shocking, like killing, terrorism, explosives, guns, tobacco, recreational drugs, the sale of alcohol, online gambling, prescription drugs, and unapproved pharmaceuticals or supplements.
The unapproved pharmaceuticals or supplements is something that I think was added pretty recently. If you have a health-based website and it includes different supplements that maybe aren’t proven or could be kind of sketchy, Google AdSense might deny you for that.
Again, if you want to see the full list, just click here
6) Don’t Use Images with Copyright
Do not use copyrighted images. I can’t stress this enough. If you have taken an image directly from Google and put it on your website, never do that again.
There are usage rights that protect photographers who work hard to put up those images. They need to be compensated for their work.
If you just go into Google and grab an image and put it up, there’s a good chance Google AdSense will come there, see what you’ve done, and say, “No, we’re not going to approve you because these aren’t even your images.”
It’s not a legitimate way of doing things, so make sure you don’t do that.
If you’re sitting there saying, “Well, I don’t have a ton of money for images,” or “I don’t really know where to get images,” I personally use two different sources. The first is completely free and it is called pixabay.com.
The second does cost money but has a lot of different images that you can get at a pretty reasonable price if you do a monthly plan. It is shutterstock.com. If you’re interested in that, you can go ahead and click on that link and go directly there to see what they have.
7) Know That (Sometimes) Website Age Matters
This doesn’t apply everywhere, but I had to include it here; sometimes your website age will matter.
This isn’t as big of a deal in the U.S. and many other countries, but Google has specifically made a call out to those who are in China and India saying that you have to have your websites for at least six months before you apply to Google AdSense.
I believe they’ve done this because there were a lot of fraud websites that were created and pushed into the ecosystem of their Google search results.
They didn’t like how people were trying to play the system. I don’t know all the specifics, but I know that they’ve made mention of those two countries.
So if you’re in one of those two countries, then wait six months. If you’re not, that’s probably not the issue if you’re getting denied, so you don’t really have to worry about it.
8) Make Sure Your Website Isn’t Banned
Make sure your website isn’t banned. For those who have created a website from scratch and bought the domain fresh, you don’t have to worry about this (unless you were already told you were banned from Google AdSense).
But if that’s not the case, and you have purchased a website or domain name, then there’s an off-chance that your website has been previously banned from Google AdSense. It’s something definitely worth looking into.
Again, there is a website called bannedcheck.com where you can check to see if you’ve been banned by Google. Usually, most websites aren’t, but it’s worth checking.
9) Make The Website Look Decent
Number nine is to make your website look decent. This doesn’t mean you have to go buy premium themes, but you want to make sure your website looks good.
Make sure your website has all the bells and whistles so when someone visits, it doesn’t look like a bunch of old-school, 90’s, jumbled HTML, thrown together to where it’s hard to navigate.
As long as you’re using something like a WordPress default theme, or have a theme that you’ve purchased somewhere, you’re going to be in good shape. If you’re interested in this, you can watch my tutorial on my recommended themes.
Just make sure you have something that looks decent. It can be very minimal. You don’t need to have a lot of images as long as it’s organized and looks like a website should.
Also, try to stay away from custom coding unless you really know what you’re doing.
10) Have Clear Website Navigation
Make sure you have clear website navigation. For most people, this is an afterthought. They’ll probably say, “Of course I have a clear navigation.”
But sometimes websites don’t, or whatever they’re using isn’t very clear. That’s a problem because it doesn’t give validity to the website itself. Make sure the main navigation for your website is easily found and easily accessible.
11) Make Sure You’re Over 18 Years Old
Number 11 is to make sure that you are of age. With Google AdSense, you have to be 18 years or older to have an account.
When you are filling out an application to join AdSense, they ask you for your birthday. If you are under 18 years old, you are not allowed to get an AdSense account.
That being said, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. If you’re under 18 years old, and if you are awesome, keep doing what you’re doing; it’s great that you’re starting so early.
To fix this, all you need to do is have a parent or legal guardian put their name on it. Just remember that the checks are going to be made out to that person and not you, so make sure it’s someone you trust.
As long as that person is willing to cash in for you and help you with that, then you should be fine.
12) Remove Other Ads When Applying
Here’s a little hint—if you keep getting rejected and you’re not sure why, make sure you remove any ads you already had on your website.
Although Google says within its terms of service that it is 100% fine to use other ad networks in conjunction with Google AdSense, when you are applying, someone is going to review your website.
If they see a bunch of ads popping up all over the place, they may just say, “You know what? This website’s already kind of spammy. They already have a bunch of ads, so we’re not going to approve them because they’re already taken care of with those other guys.”
When you’re going through the application process, just remove the ads for the three to five days that it takes for Google to approve it. Once they approve it, you can go in and put up any other ad network you want as well.
From there, you can focus on increasing your Adsense revenue by taking these steps.
Good info
Glad to hear it helped you!
Thanks buddy, it’s useful. I’ll try it for sure.
Wow! Great information Ron.
But do real people in google actually review our websites, or is it done automatically?
It’s a mix of both, but I’d suspect most of it is machine based.
Excellent Source of Information…
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed 🙂
And your information is so great
Thank you 🙂
Your blog is excellent. But I have a question my website is not being approved and I haven’t received any email from google Adsense it is about a month since I applied. Can I know the reason why it is being so late?
Thanks! Since the pandemic, things have been slow on their end. Have you checked again in your account to see if they said anything there? May want to reapply again….