How I Tripled my Adsense CTR in One Hour

This thread is dedicated to improving your CTR in Adsense. I have receive a lot of clicks using this techniques. Some of you already know this especially the pros but for the newbies it's a good read. Although I cannot guarantee the same results but if you followed this tips, you should at least see some improvements in the CTR. This is based on what I have learned and in my experience and it's not some untested theory that I just came up. Most of it came from this forum. Ok enough with the intro, let's get to the good stuff.

Before we begin, Let's define first what is a CTR. CTR is Clickthrough rate, it's a way of measuring your success with adsense advertising. If you have 100 visitors to your website and 1 of them click your ad, your CTR would be 1%.

1/100=0.01 x 100%= 1%.

Let's say you got $1 for that click. What if you made changes to your layout, and adsense colors and improve your ctr up to 3%. That would make you 3/100 per visitors. You would be earning at least $3 for every 100 visitors you get. That's an easy way to improve your earnings if you ask me.

So if you can improve your ctr at least 3 times that would definitely help your earnings in adsense.

Tip #1: Don't Make your Ads look Like a Ads

Most users have experience banner blindness. They tend to ignore anything that looks like an Advertisement. Even if the user is interested in the ads, they will most likely not click it because of this reason. So you have to put where your ads are mostly like seen by the user. So you need to put them in the right place where users can see them.Check out this Heat Map from adsense:

Of course you still need to experiment on your placement. This is just a guideline not a rule.

Tip #2: Always Use the Best Performing Ads

Here are the top performing ads for me:

1. 336 x 280
2. 300 x 250
3. 728 x 90
4. 120 x 240
5. 160 x 600
6. 120 x 600
7. 468 x 60

As you can see in the list. 468 X 60 just doesn't perform well for me. This ad seems to be ignore most of the time. It's a one of those banner blindness. Now I'm not saying you should not use this ad this is just from experience. There are other ways to improve your CTR using this 468 X 60 ad. An example would be putting it at the header as graphic ad. Although I cannot comment on this because I have never actually tried but some people have been successful using this approach.

728 x 90 is a bigger ad of 468 X 60 but doesn't get ignored much as 468 X 60. The 120 x 240, 160 x 600 and 120 x 600 get lower CTR because they are usually put in the sides. As you can see up in the heat map. Users don't look much at the sides.

The best performing ads for me are 336 x 280 and 300 x 250 ads. The great thing about this is that you can put them anywhere in your website thus giving you a better CTR.

Tip #3: Choose the Best Color Combination for You Ads

Here is what worked for me and might work on your sites also. If I have a white background in my site, I would also use white as an ad background and border colors for my adsense ads. So if you have a site that has blue or pink. Make your adsense ad background and border blue or pink also. This way it won't look like another banner blindness advertisement.They will blend in with your website. Most of the time I use blue for Link color and make the the the url color non Dark green which is the standard color for the adsense ads. I always use the same color for Text colors and url colors. If I use either black or gray for text colors, I would also use the same color for the url color. I make it rule of thumb that if I was using blue colors for the navigation links or any other links, I would use blue also for the Link title of the adsense.

Tip #4: Put You Ads in the Best Positions

Putting your ads on the sides and in the bottom will lower your CTR. As you can see in the heatmap above. Users will most likely not see your Ad. We want them to see the ad. When a user browse your website. They are looking first for your content. So if you structure your ads around your content, that will boost your CTR. Here is an example:


Putting your ads inside the content greatly increases your CTR. Users will see the ads and get interested and will click on it. Here is what I usually do. I use 336 x 280
or 300 x 250 in the content. I would put one inside the title, the 2nd one would be in the middle of the content and the last one would be after the content which would be just before the author's box like in the ezine.

For the ad links I usually put them in the navigation links. Here is an example:


Notice the navigation links look exactly like the ad links. This improves your ctr a lot.

I hope this tips will help you improve your income in adsense. You will need to experiment in order to get the best results. I recommend you make changes for a week and see what happens if your ctr is doing better. If it's not try making changes again and see the results for a week.

Of course none of this will help if you if you are not getting enough TRAFFIC. You will need to have constant traffic to see the results from your experiment. Just remember the saying here:

TRAFFIC IS THE KING, CONTENT IS THE QUEEN.

I don't remember who said it here in the forum first but he/she was right.

Good luck.
Mike

 

Wow, this one of the most indepth guides I've seen on Digital Point yet. Kudos to you man!

 

Thanks Eniak. I'm just giving back to the community for the all the free information I've got.

 

Sometimes I use Google Image Ads to improve the design of my site.. !

 

Finally someone posted something useful for the community.
I use these strategies already, but yeah! very good for newbies.

 

Although I don't have much experience in Google Image Ads but they do work. Like I mentioned in the example of 468 X 60. It will add as a design and improve CTR at the same time.

 

ctr is related to impressions and not visitors.

 

But you have to remember - without content, you can't drive traffic, so obviously content is king as well - there is really no true king, they both work along each other.

 

Yes I agree they work with each other. I wish I could remember who put that saying here. It wasn't really my quote.

 

MikeBuyco, Google also sent me best places to put ads to maximize revenue. Even nice and details info is shared by you. "TRAFFIC IS THE KING, CONTENT IS THE QUEEN." is true.

 

Thanks glad you like it. Some of the info were given by google itself so you know these tips do work.

 

intersting

 

Thanks for the tips, as a newbie its really helpful for me and I will follow it

 

Do you guys know if rich Image ADs is better than Text ADs in adsense? For me I prefare text ADs

 

Is it with the google TOS to place ads just beneath the title? Google clearly stated that, the ads should not be looked like the content of the webpage. Please enlighten me. Anyway thanks for this article.

 

i m surprised to see some usefull post on digital point forum.
You did a great job. You deserve appriciation.

 

Don't you think it's against their rules to disguise adsense ads to match the site ? The second part i.e. nav and site link does that.

 

I haven't A/B tested different positions and colors yet (which I should), but the placement at the spot just below the title tag brings me CTR's that is much higher than the 3%

 

Thanks for this post!

 

nice information about ads