AdSense Border vs No AdSense Border

Discussion in 'AdSense' started by SEO-Expert, Jun 15, 2008.

  1. #1
    I run over 50 WordPress installations and have developed my own AdSense/SEO themes for WordPress since when I got into using WordPress there wasn't any decent SEO OR AdSense WordPress themes, let alone themes that covered both (still isn't that do it well except mine).

    I have always used a visible border around my ads, my reasoning was I like to make money, but I also don't want to 'hide' ads from visitors. I know many will say it's not hiding anything, the ads are still clearly visible as ads.

    That said I also sell the WordPress AdSense themes I use on my own sites, so important to give my customers best CTR possible, so to test border vs no border I've changed the majority of my sites: these account for about half my daily impressions on AdSense so a big sample of impressions.

    So went from using borders like the image below-

    [​IMG]

    To no borders like I've used at http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/ and CTR has increased.

    Looking only at specific sites (so only looking at sites with no borders) CTR increased by almost 1% which was more than I expected (I expected an increase, but not that much!).

    This is only one weeks data and so could be coincidence, (will be 100% sure in a few weeks time), but looks very promising.

    About half my overall AdSense impressions are from sites using borders, my overall CTR has increased by 0.5% and so the ones with borders haven't increased.

    I was doing this for a test to decide how best to package my AdSense themes for customers, the default was bordered ads that customers received (is easy to remove the border, but many customers will stick with the default settings).

    This so far is a clear result that no borders is better than borders (1% is a BIG increase in CTR) so not only going to set the default to no borders for customers, but despite my reservations about using no borders will be keeping all my own sites border free (will be converting the remaining sites as well). The extra revenue from 1% is too much to pass up.

    Would be interested to hear from others who have run border free ads for a long period of time. This has pushed my average CTR on sites using the border free ads to over 3.5% which for the number of impressions a day those sites get (significantly above 10K) is very good.

    I can be bought for a higher CTR apparently :)

    David Law
     
    SEO-Expert, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  2. TheVccMatey

    TheVccMatey Peon

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    #2
    I've noticed this as well
     
    TheVccMatey, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  3. tykouk

    tykouk Peon

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    #3
    Has your overall revenue been affected at all?

    I have wondered if border-less adds might get a rise in CTR but result, long term, in smartpricing due to users clicking on ads because they confuse them with content - something that might adversly effect the conversion rates for the advertisers and so lower revenue for the publisher.
     
    tykouk, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  4. marketsnipers

    marketsnipers Peon

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    #4
    Interesting theory really. I can't contribute much at this point though, except that I am convinced NO BORDERS is the way to go.
     
    marketsnipers, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  5. mojtata

    mojtata Well-Known Member

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    #5
    If you wanna ctr incresed by 3% then place 336*280 on left side of the page.
     
    mojtata, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  6. Abhik

    Abhik ..:: The ONE ::..

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    #6
    Borderless adblocks normally blends well thus bringing more clicks..
     
    Abhik, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  7. pipes

    pipes Prominent Member

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    #7
    A while ago i removed borders from most of my ads, i believe it helps.

    What do you mean by SEO themes? ive not heard of that before.
     
    pipes, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  8. bass

    bass Active Member

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    #8
    Interesting for more clicks!
     
    bass, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  9. sucrey

    sucrey Banned

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    #9
    Personally I use them both
    some blocks with borders and others without.
     
    sucrey, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  10. SEO-Expert

    SEO-Expert Well-Known Member

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    #10
    Yes revenue is up, but I've not worked out how much is due to no borders yet as I'm always making content changes, so to say X% increase is just due to this one change, is almost certainly not true.

    It's definitely up though and will check out by how much through single sites when I have more data.

    That said a very quick look at one site (that I've made no other changes to gives this result over the last 14 days-

    June 1st-7th - averages $13.08 day
    June 8th-14th - averages $17.99 a day, CTR increased by 1.41%, 300 less impressions a day (roughly 6,000 impressions a day so a 5% traffic drop).

    There's not enough data here to say the 1.41% increase in CTR is going to be stable, I'll check again when I have a months data.

    It's only been a week and I've not converted all sites yet (about half running no borders), if revenue goes up then drops long term will post about it.

    David Law
     
    SEO-Expert, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  11. SEO-Expert

    SEO-Expert Well-Known Member

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    #11
    I'm an SEO consultant and have used my SEO knowledge to optimise the WordPress themes I use and sell.

    If you take a look at the code behind this page http://www.45-year-old-millionaire.co.uk/multiple-revenue-streams.html for example you'll see it's fully optimised around the title of the post. So as long as I use relevant keywords/phrases in the title half the on page SEO is done.

    Add to that no important SEO factors are wasted if I write reasonably well optimised posts and I get the off page SEO right (meaning backlinks) I do well long term in Google etc...

    For example with 99% of WordPress themes the name of the blog is in a H1 header within the logo/header area of the code. View source of the above page and you'll see that link is surrounded by a span which has no SEO benefit. However view source of the home page (the page targeted at the name of the site) and now there's a H1 header there.

    So for post pages like the one posted above there's no wasted H1 header, the 1st H1 header on the page is the title of the page. The same is true for category, tag and search results pages, the category, tag name or search phrase is within the H1 header which is what you want for SEO reasons.

    Most WordPress themes use H2 headers for the headers of menu items, I remove those H2 headers so no SEO benefit is wasted on words like Links, Categories, Pages etc...

    I've made these types of changes to the entire theme, basically everything is optimised. This makes for a search engine optimised theme (SEO theme).

    Converted 11 WordPress themes this way, all listed on the home page of http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/ and so far I've not seen another WordPress theme come close to how well they are SEO'd.

    It's hard to sell SEO themes, most people looking for them don't know what SEO is anyway, (they don't understand why you don't waste the H1 header on the name of the site) so I've gone on the AdSense side of things when selling as it's more visual.

    David Law
     
    SEO-Expert, Jun 15, 2008 IP
    pipes likes this.
  12. pipes

    pipes Prominent Member

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    #12
    David i must say im seriously impressed as i was at first (and i hope you know what i mean here) expecting to read a reply of just a couple tweaks made and it being referred to as an SEO theme, but from what ive just read in your post i can really see the thought that your putting into those SEO themes, ive very recently been creating themes for personal use, not to release, their nothing fancy, im still very basic with the CSS and all that but i try and absorb all that i can about setting them up the correct way.

    From what your saying, it sounds like it really does pay off quite well in helping with ranking, as well as combined with off page seo efforts as you mention.

    Im going to reread your post a few times as admittedly i cant take it all in in one go :eek: but if i can get the seo as good as you do i would be happy with that. :)

    No competition to you either as i have no intention of releasing my themes, only for my own blogs. :)

    Thanks for a detailed explanation.
     
    pipes, Jun 15, 2008 IP
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  13. SEO-Expert

    SEO-Expert Well-Known Member

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    #13
    I know what you mean, I see plenty of themes that are supposedly SEO'd and when you look at the code your lucky to see one item optimised. The term SEO is thrown around way too much by theme creators who haven't a clue what real SEO is.

    It's taken 2 years to get the theme code where it is today and includes support for plugins that can be used to help with SEO. With WordPress (which IMO and experience is the best CMS around from an SEO perspective) you can create an OK SEO'd site without the need for understanding much about HTML/PHP or even SEO and with a little knowledge use WordPress to create a great SEO'd site that can match the efforts of even the best SEO consultants. If I could I'd use WordPress for every site I own, but it doesn't cover everything you need for some types of sites.

    Feel free to take a look at my sites that use my SEO themes and use them as something to aim for, some of the SEO is really obvious like changing the comment headers from something like "Respond to Post" to "Respond to Title of Post".

    Financially I rely completely on online income, which is completely dependent on organic search engine traffic, so if my SEO efforts didn't work I'd be screwed :)

    No problem.

    Noticed your sig link to http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/, I recently purchased a copy and have been working on a theme for one of my sites. Using my AdSense/SEO version of the WordPress Talian theme and have a test site at cypherguard.com/dir3test/ (removed the www as don't want links to it). That's a really good directory script with good out the box SEO features, when I get some time will finish the optimisation I want added to that theme then use it for a new directory.

    David Law
     
    SEO-Expert, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  14. TheVccMatey

    TheVccMatey Peon

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    #14
    Using them both is another way. It's got some mind confusing theory to it. Too complicated to explain :D But it works better :)
     
    TheVccMatey, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  15. SEO-Expert

    SEO-Expert Well-Known Member

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    #15
    You can't say something like that and not give details, it's not right, I'm going to loose sleep over this and you can't let that happen, I need all the beauty sleep I can get :D

    David Law
     
    SEO-Expert, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  16. dgridley

    dgridley Guest

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    #16
    Borderless and blended is the way to go IMO
     
    dgridley, Jun 15, 2008 IP
  17. SEO-Expert

    SEO-Expert Well-Known Member

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    #17
    I made the borderless ad unit change to 99% of pages now and my CTR over all sits is up well over 1%.

    One of my sites with over 5K impressions a day is seeing over 6% CTR for three days in a row now which is highest I've seen it.

    So clearly it helps a lot.

    I must have missed out on thousands of dollars running bordered ad units!

    David Law
     
    SEO-Expert, Jun 19, 2008 IP
  18. effektz

    effektz Active Member

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    #18
    I tried this a few months ago, I only compared one month vs one month but my overall CTR raised by .07, and has stayed high these last few months
     
    effektz, Jun 19, 2008 IP
  19. sultanofseo

    sultanofseo Notable Member

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    #19
    i have used both and borderless ads gets more clicks. its understandable because with border it looks like ad, without border it looks like part of your content. i always go borderless
     
    sultanofseo, Jun 19, 2008 IP
  20. Overheard Daily

    Overheard Daily Active Member

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    #20
    I like the designs you have made. I am interested in purchasing. Which one has the best CTR?
     
    Overheard Daily, Jun 19, 2008 IP