Sometimes, the adsense ads on my site are related to the content of the site and most times they are not. What can one do to ensure that the adverts are article related to prompt the readers in clicking?
The ads you see aren't always the ads other see. Adsense serves ads based on the tracking cookie for the sites you visit via Google search and displays ads based on your interests. Also, visitors can set up how to see the ads. Either based on their interest or based on the website's content. There isn't much you can do except to make the site good in SEO so that the keywords/niche is clear to Google thus resulting in higher relevant ads. If you want to ban ads from showing on adsense, make a note of the advertisers URL and go to your adsense settings to block those ads. Alternatively you can go to google adsense settings and select the categories from which you want to display the ads.
Of course not. The settings in adsense is there for a reason. Changing them won't hurt you in anyway. However I find it very odd that you think the ads are not relevant. I suggest you check on your site from a proxy IP or maybe from a friend's computer on a diff. network so you can see the difference. You could also try to delete all cookies and temp internet files and try again.
Very nice tip about the Categories. I see this in Advanced settings and completely missed it before! However not sure blocking categories has an advantage over leaving them enabled. Thanks!
Personally I don't do adsense's job, I don't waste one second on it. It's their job to show relevant ads based on our content, so I suppose that's what they do. There are a few things you can do to attempt to increase relevancy, but honestly they are not important at all and don't need to be done. Just focus on your job as a publisher, that's my advise, after if you want to continue in trying to solve a problem that is not yours, ok, no problem.