How To Prepare Your Website For A Google Audit [2023]

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When it comes to Pay-per-click and selling ad space Google AdSense is one of the best ways to monetize your website traffic. However, the process of admission to Google’s ad network can be sometimes very brutal. Sometimes they will ask you to fix certain issues without telling you what went wrong. If they find your website extremely unfit for their ads they can even blacklist your domain forever.

Luckily, I know a thing or two about AdSense audits and I’ll happily share my knowledge. When it comes to Google AdSense audit the preparation is key. Therefore, we will focus on preparing a website to the audit in the first. If you wish for tips on Google AdSense account creation process, please check out ​ Shorte.st blog about web traffic monetization​ .

Check your content

The first thing you should always start with is to check if your content is suitable. Google is known for their very strict approach to content and a really long list of prohibited topics. If most of the content on your website can be found on the prohibited list, you may as well start searching for other ad networks or options to monetize. On the other hand, if you infringe their content policy just a little bit, you’ll have to think and decide which content you have to erase and which you can change.

They do not accept adult content, gambling content, and pornography, nor, quite naturally, hacking or cracking content. However, they also don’t accept topics such as alcohol, tobacco products or weaponry. They block even content that theoretically should be totally ok, e.g. healthcare content. If you have any doubts you may always cross-check with their official list.

Analyze your website navigation

When you’re ready with you content checkup, it’s time to take a closer look on your website navigation. Think from the perspective of a total newcomer. Do you have a clearly visible and working navigation tab/site menu? Are all the relevant subpages correctly linked? Do all links work or are there missing pages? Google is really bent on UX stuff, so they may block you if they find any problems with your nav bar.

About Us, Privacy Policy and Contact Us

Google AdSense requires transparency from their partners and publishers. They will never accept your website if there will be no page listing the whole Privacy Policy as well as some sort of legit Contact Us/About Us page with a working method of communication between you and your audience. If you currently don’t have such pages, be sure to add them to your website before applying for AdSense approval.

Clear and comfortable UX

I already mentioned Google’s fascination with good UX. Your website has to be easy for the eye – no unnecessary contrast, no colorful mess. The visitor has to clearly see where they are, what they supposed to click on to achieve an effect and what the website is all about. Use a font that is easy to read, use proper headers and text formatting. Moreover, your design can’t be misleading. If you have any doubts about the readability and design of the website you may want to try Google’s own design tutorials. There is a ton of tutorials and tools on the other websites that can help identify potential problems with your website.

Break partnership with any other ad networks

Even though theoretically there are some website plugins and ad possibilities that can work together with Google AdSense, there are very rare and usually not efficient. Therefore, it is safe to assume that if you want to join the AdSense ad network you have to leave any other ad networks, affiliate programs and PPC ways to monetize your traffic. In the end, you have to check which option is more profitable for your business, but in many cases, it is better to combine different types of advertising and not keep all eggs in one basket.