Some Adsense tips that quadrupled my CTR and got me some more $$$

I've experimented with many different products ranging from affiliates to own products to adsense to direct deals to something else on my site. Here's some things that helped me to increase my click through rate. Quadrupled is said there to get your attention I had quite poor CTR, so getting 200% increase was pretty simple and didn't require much work.

If you already have a a good CTR - then these tips might not be for you. If on the other hand you have a poor CTR, then these most likely might work for you.

Anyway.

Here's some of the adsense tactics what worked for me

BLUE LINKS PEOPLE
I've heard many times that the blue links are the best... and you know what? They are.

Blue links work. I'm almost convinced that you can try putting different ad blending coloring whatnot stuff to get better CTR... but in the end BLUE LINKS perform best (#0000FF blue links).

I tried black, white, red etc. colors... but only the red was working pretty well - but didn't get as many clicks as the blue links - so, blue it is.

GET RID OF (MANY) IMAGES
Obviously now as my blog is not concentrated on having adsense ads, I have some image banners on the site. If I was to use Adsense more, I would need to get rid of some images.

So basically, the more images you have on your site - the less clicks you will get (and if you try to put images next to your ads, you might get banned, so it's not such a good idea).

So when I was testing my site CTR, I took away images - and it helped me to increase click through rates.

SEE WHERE YOUR TRAFFIC COMES FROM
I once see a website that didn't have google adsense ads on its LATEST blog post pages. If they published a blog post, it had to be at least one or two days old before they showed adsense ads.

I suppose this tactic means that you cater for your loyal audience an ad-free use (since they probably will not click so often anyway), and try to concentrate on getting those people to click who visit just once in your site (coming from google or from somewhere else).

You could think about putting more heavy ads to "random surfers", while balancing the ads for your latest content.

NO NO FOR AD BORDERS
If you want to get more clicks - then borders are NO NO

BLEND YOUR ADS
It's pretty obvious... but unless you aren't doing this - better start now. I won't go into details, but basically if you have a green background for your site, then getting ad unit with the same background color probably performs better than if you put some striking red background.

VERY ACCURATE CHANNEL NAMING
If you don't know what the ad channels are, you better check out google adsense's help files right away

You gotta use channels.

Don't name your ads like "blue_ad" or "big_page_ad". Those are crap.

What you should do, is to have very accurate names. I use names such as:
- Homepage5LinkUnitRedLinks728x15
- BlogPageBelowHeaderBlueLinks336x280
- BlogPageAfterPostBlackLinksFirst338x280
- BlogPageAfterPostBlueLinksFirst338x280

From this, it's pretty easy for me to see whether Blue or Black links work better for blog post pages, or anywhere on my site.

This type of naming gets you immediately the idea what kind of ads you have. Google has made some updates on the adsense channel tracking, so pay attention to their work.

TEST!
Even when I say "no no for borders", in reality you need to TEST what you do. It's your site. Remember that you might be easily get +1% CTR with some simple tricks. In fact... when I started I was shy about putting ads and had a poor CTR. With the stuff I mention here, I was able to increase my adsense CTR & get more $$$.

And all it requires was some testing and little bit of work.

IT'S NO ROCKET SCIENCE - DO WHAT WORKS
You can get some adsense books and try reading some forums, but in the end it requires some testing to get it all together.

The best free method I know is to check out what other people are doing. I knew some people & sites that were making pretty good adsense income, so I decided to do what those other sites do. I saw what they were doing, tested it in my own site, read some tips and tweaked until I was pretty happy with the results.

It's no rocket science.

HERE'S MY BEST AD SPOT FOR BLOGS
In the end of this post, I've attached a pic that shows the template I was using for my blog. I tried having ad units in the left side, but those didn't work as good as when I put the ad slots "inside" the text content (see the 336x280 ads in that pic).

What's also important, was the use of LINK UNIT in the (pretty) top of the site. These links gave some pretty good income, even though their CTR wasn't super high.

Before I had the link unit, I was using 728x90 banner in the top header. That worked fine as well, so I really recommend testing it too.

Last but not least, I had placed couple of ads (naturally you can use just 1 if you already have banner & one 336x280 slot in use) in the end of a blog article. Those worked "okay" too.

 

Good tips. I'd agree on blue ads - they may not blend into your site well but they attract a hell of a lot more attention and clicks. My CTR doubled by simply going from green to blue.

 

Nice tips..
I must say, you DID a good research on this.

 

For me it went the opposite way. But still, all depends on the general layout and used background colours.

Excellent article by the way!

 

nice drawing you've got there
thanks for the tips...

 

thanks very much mate, i really appreciate ur help

 

waoo! thats quite a write up. good work

 

Nice tips, thanks!

 

I agree with everything you said game producer. Blue links rock!

 

Yeh, blue links work, blue links works, blue links work.

I wonder why many people aren't using them...

When I was testing Adsense, I spent time on these forums on got some ideas from other people (via chat) and then it was trial & error.

From that experience, I pulled this article. Cheers.

Thanks

Yeh, as you can see from all the fancy details - it took me ages to draw

Thanks for the thanks!

 

Thanks man. Awesome tips. I will be using them. I just have one question though. The two ad blocks that u have put side by side in the middle of the text, is it allowed by google?
I am kinda new to webmastering, so i dont know. Also rep added!

 

thanks Game Producer, very nice explanation, its very much benefit for newbies like me.

 

Good tips....we need more posts like this..!

JR

 

Many thanks mate....very nice drawing...........I will use this idea for myself.....

 

Wow, thanks for taking your time to write so much. Very comprehensive and detailed explanation provided. Got to try out your blue links suggestion and I'll use channel and monitor and see

 

hey good collection of tips. i will try to name my ad slots accurately

 

Great tips dude! + Rep! I also do some of the tips but about the border, I sill use it.

 

good one. trying to use blue links on my site based on your advice.

 

interesting... gonna try that today.

Nice write up

 

Cheers... I'll do my best. Here's on thread you might wanna check out: Couple of things that helped me to create 5-figure business from scratch

Heh, no problem.

Remember to try using different combinations for the header banner / link units too.

Yeh, cheers. It actually didn't take so much time to write... or draw

I really recommend not try... just DO it.

It will require bit of work in the beginning, but will save lots of time in the future.

Thanks.

As mentioned: you gotta test them too. These were the tips that worked for me. In some situations you might have better ways to use colors/ads.

Cheers