Hi, Yes, it seriously does. My CTR is absolutely shocking. I'm getting 1-2 clicks for over 1,000 impressions. For example, lets see March's statistics so far: I've taken out some of the stats. Even with the removed stats, you can see that its incredibly poor. The sites that are generating impressions are: http://www.dir4you.net http://www.generaldir.net http://www.sitedir.net http://www.siteseo.org http://www.nintendoviews.com Strangely, most of my clicks come from Dir4You, a directory, which is quite odd. I also get a few clicks on Nintendo Views sometimes. The others, generaldir, sitedir and siteseo, despite getting traffic, get no clicks whatsoever. How would you recommend I get more clicks? Its incredibly poor at the moment, I really need more. All tips are appreciated, and I will do my best to follow them Thanks, Jake Ruston.
True, your CTR sucks. My very humble suggestions as to what could explain this (I'm just trying to learn, so take what you can from this and no more.) For example: Site Directory Ads have "blue" headings and black text while your content is the opposite - black headings with "blue" text. Looks weird, and ads don't blend in. I'm thinking this could be costing you money. General Directory Ad background and coloring looks very wrong - sticks out in an ugly, non inviting way. This is the reason why people hate adsense. Make them look like their part of your site, as if you put them there yourself. As for Nintendo Views, perhaps you could try place the ads on the left hand side of your page - that is where people actually put their eyes the most.
Your CTR is some of the worse I've seen in a long time. Try to blend better your ads. Change their positions from time to time ans test what's working for you. Are you sure your ads are targeted?
you need some blending in to do with your ads. almost all of your ads do look like ADS and no one goes to a site to click on them. your ad link color and text needs to be same as your page link color and text. since your main clicks come from the dir4yoou, you can work on getting that ad blended in better and make sure you pick a same background color as your body. currently its almost the same color but not the same and still look like ad. hope that helps
Directories does bring in lots of traffic but does not convert well at all. I have a couple of directories and you really can't rely on adsense for income from them.
Thank you for all of your tips everyone, its muchly appreciated. I've tried to follow some of your tips. I've made some small changes to: http://www.dir4you.net http://www.generaldir.net http://www.sitedir.net http://www.nintendoviews.com However, I didn't really know what to change on Site SEO. Could you give more information please? Thanks, Jake Ruston.
Perhaps get rid of the dotted line and the blue background that separates the ads from the content. Also, placement: They might be more effective somewhere else, like on the left hand side, for example.
That's true. Directories are frequented by webmasters and it is agreed that none of the webmasters will click any ad. They are clever people and have the capacity to differentiate the ads from contents. In that case, the cpm ads will be of some use.
There´s also the possibility that your font of incoming visitors isnt that good...for example links not related to your niche, the niche itself may be poor add-clicking
Thanks for the tips. I've got rid of the dotted line, and made the background blue. Thats true. I'll have to go looking for a good CPM network. Yeah, the Niche itself isn't good for ad-clicking, but I expect one or two clicks maybe.
Except for the Nintendo site, which is a forum, your sites are not "about" anything in particular. That causes two problems. First, Google ads won't be "about" anything in particular, and second, you won't have a very focused type of visitor. The chance of an unfocused visitor being interested in an unfocused ad is pretty small. Sites that are tightly focused on a specific niche topic, that gets tightly focused Adsense ads, that attracts highly focused visitors will have significantly higher CTRs. The Nintendo site is focused enough geneally, but forums don't do well with Adsense. First, it's hard to get the ads in the places they need to be, and second, visitors tend to be repeat visitors who become "ad-blind" after a while. In short, your sites are just not the kind of sites that are ideal for Adsense. Unfortunately, people don't click on ads just because they are there. They have to have a reason to click.
Whats that? I know. Poor me. If thats true, its a real shame. I'll have to find another way to make money from them. Okay, I'll try changing them slightly.
Okay, I've got proof that its even worse than I originally thought. Today, my blog has had a nice 5,607 impressions. 1 click from this. I'm being completely serious. Does anyone know a high-paying CPM network?
Jakeruston, if you created those sites for adsense revenue, you really went down the wrong path. The directories and seo site is not going to make much money off of adsense because they target webmasters/internet marketers. Webmasters/Internet Marketers are "ad-blind" and rarely if ever click on ads. As for your last site, nintendoreviews forum, forums are known to have low ctr, but out of all your sites, this has the best chance of making some adsense revenue if you can get a lot of traffic/visitors to it.
Jake, are the visitors legitimate? In other words, how do you know that most of the visits to your sites are not just bots?