Saturday, November 11, 2006

Tips for Improving AdSense Performance

Source: ArticleStreet.com

Tear Down the Borders

  • Remove borders on your AdSense ads.
  • Web visitors eyes wander around the screen; borders stop them from wandering.
  • Removing borders from your AdSense ads can lead to a significant boost in CTR.

Use Matching Fonts

  • Match the font of your site content to the fonts of your AdSense ads.

Use Matching Colors

  • Match the colors of your AdSense ads to the colors of your site content.
  • Make the ads look like content and more visitors will look at them.
  • One exception to the color matching rule is sites that are designed to appeal to scammers and spammers.
  • Those sites sometimes perform better with highly contrasting colors.

Use Blue Links

  • Another exception to the color matching rule is to set the links in your AdSense ads to blue.
  • Blue links tend to have a higher CTR than other link colors, because people have become used to clicking blue links.

Use Large Ads

  • Larger ads outperform smaller ads.
  • Wider ads also outperform more narrow ads.
  • The Large Rectangle (336x280) is the best performing ad unit.

Use Lots of Ads

  • Google allows you to use three ad units and one link unit on each page.
  • Use them all. The more ads you have, the higher your Page CTR will be.

Place Ads Above the Fold

  • "The fold" is industry jargon for "the part of the page that the user sees without scrolling down".
  • This will vary depending upon the resolution of the users screen and the size of their browser window.
  • Place as many ads as possible above the fold.
  • Ads placed below the fold are seldom seen and seldom clicked.

Place Ads on the Left

  • Web users are accustomed to seeing menus on the left side of the web page.
  • Move your menu to the right and place your AdSense ads on the left.

Use the Heat Map

  • Use the Google AdSense Heat Map to determine where to place ads.
  • The darker spots are areas where users spend more time looking.
  • Place your ads in the darker areas.

Integrate Ads with Content

  • Visitors will be reading your content.
  • Keeps your ads as close to your content as possible to ensure that the visitors also look at your ads.

Use Custom Channels

  • Use AdSense's Custom Channels to test the performance of different ad sizes, placements, colors and fonts.

Don't use Low-Paying Competing Ads

  • Don't clutter your page with competing ads that don't pay.
  • If a user clicks on an ad that pays you $.01, they are not clicking on an ad that pays you $.30.

Use URL Channels

  • Use AdSense URL Channels to determine which pages are making you the highest CTR, CPM, and earnings.
  • Focus your efforts on building pages like those.

Use an AdSense Reporting Package

  • Google only supports 200 channels.
  • If you have more than 200 pages, use AdSense reporting software to give you more insight into your AdSense earnings.

Don't Compete for Other Peoples High Paying Keywords

  • If a keyword is on a list of high-paying keywords, that means that thousands of spammers are already competing for that keyword.
  • Don't be a follower.
  • There is no money in being one of the crowd.

Do Compete for Your Own High Paying Keywords

  • Monitor your AdSense URL channels to determine which keywords are making you the most money.
  • Compete for those keywords.
  • Build more pages optimized for similar keywords.
  • Get inbound links for those keywords.
  • Spend your time and efforrt on the keywords which are making you money.

Increase Traffic

  • In the long run, the best way to increase your AdSense revenue is to increase traffic to your web site.

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