Getting more from adsense sites

Sometimes adsense websites can just be plain frustrating. Once you achieve some good natural search engine traffic and you are seeing consistent unique visitors reading your well written content you will probably start to consider optimizing your websites revenue. Adsense is usually ok but turning that CTR fromj 1% to 3% really can triple your revenue from your site. So what are some strategies for improving adsense CTR and earnings?

Well Structured Page

By this I mean the entire page structure where your ads are showing. Good CTR and good earnings all start with excellent, captivating, interesting website copy focusing on good keywords. Pair with this a good page title, good use of H tags,  and include an image or 2 with nice alt tags. Lay a good foundation so google knows what your content is about and can serve you the highest paying ads.

Captivating keyword focused content will also ensure that you will mainly attract quality website traffic. This is also very important because if the traffic you are receiving isn’t actually interested in your content there is a good chance they won’t be interested in your advertising either and will just hit the back button or close the window.

Ad positioning

Seasoned adsense users already know what image I am going to show next…but here it is anyway:

This is adsense’s official advertising “heat map” which shows us the positions that google considers to give the best CTR for your ads. Google’s page here goes more into this! Generally I have found that Ad position really requires a bit of experimentation as each page tends to perform differently. Within the content and just after the content seems to work well in general cases but there are sites where anything below the fold just won’t perform. A simple change of placing an ad inside an article sent my CTR from 1% up to 3.5% over night. No change in the content, just a 5 minute change to my website yielded a fantastic result.

Ad Colors

This one surprised me most. I once had a site that was barely scraping 1% ctr but I had what I considered great advertising positions for the content. The ad’s matched the website perfectly, down to the font type but it just simply didn’t perform in the way I had hoped. So I tried something crazy (generally advised against anyway) and changed my ad colors to vibrant green which contrasted quite strongly against the regular grey background. My CTR jumped 1% right away.

The point I’m trying to make here is that sometimes if you make your ads stand out more you will actually improve the chances of getting clicks. Having said this in general cases  you will want your advertising to blend in with your content. Match the background colors, font sizes, types and colors and whack your ads in locations of your website that emulate the linking structures of your site if possible.

Bad sites mean more clicks?

Some people also believe that a bad site leads to more clicks. The idea behind this? If a website is ugly and hard to use the user will naturally want to get out of there as soon as possible. Pair this with some well positioned relevant advertising and users will most likely click on the ads to get away from the monstrosity. A classic example of this is the adsense giant plentyoffish.com which claims to have once made $10,000 in adsense in just 1 day.

I wouldn’t really condone going down this road but it is something to consider for those internet marketing philosophers!

Benefits

Ad optimization really is an important part of running an adsense website. When I started in the game I didn’t spend the time on this step until a year into developing sites. When I finally took 10 minutes to reevaluate my ad positions I actually kicked myself because I increased my revenue by around $5 per day just by making a few simple changes.

Spend some time experimenting with your ads and you will unleash the full potential of your sites!