Made some changes, CTR dropped significantly (which was already bad)

My blog has around 7k~12k hits daily, 60% of the visitors come from google. My CTR is usually around 0.38% of which I was totally unsatisfied so I decided to try some changes.

So now i have an 336x280 text only ad on the left side of all posts, an 728x15 on top and another one text/image on the right sidebar...
What i changed was the one in all posts. Before i changed it, it was a 728x90 image/text ad on top of all posts, just below the title.

I read a lot in this forum and other places and what i changed seemed to be the best option. The layout even got better, cleaner. But my CTR dropped a lot, which was already low to begin with.

I keep reading about people with CTRs of 3% or higher, and yet...

My blog is targeted at an specific market and is somewhat one of the references on the subject.

You can check it at http://www.exorbeo.com and to check the ads in every post http://www.exorbeo.com/2012/11/conheca-o-etc-tv-um-canal-exclusivo-de.html

Thank you in advance.

 

Your ads looks good... if you want to get high CTR, try out CTR theme.

 

thank you.

anyone else?

 

I suggest try only content ads instead of image ads

 

Everytime I tried to use only text ads my CTR dropped even more (alot actually), now i'm only using image ads and my ctr is around 0.7% which is a big improvement, but i'm still not happy with it, is there anything else?

thank you.

 

Sounds like you made some major changes without split testing. I would go back to the earlier version - You saved it, of course. Then make minor changes such as colors, fonts, placement etc and set up a split testing system. You can also check out any competition for ideas. Again, minor changes with testing. There's a lot of info on split testing.

<OR> since the original was not converting as well as you would like simply try another theme. It didn't look like a WP blog so it might be a little harder to move things to a new theme. Then split test the new theme against the old one. When you are happy with the new theme you can refine it with incremental split testing.

You might want to move to WP since it is so easy to change theme and there are lots of useful plugings to make things easier.

Actually, now that I think about it, I would (bit the bullet) and redo the site in WordPress.

Good Luck

 

Sounds like you made some major changes without split testing. I would go back to the earlier version - You saved it, of course. Then make minor changes such as colors, fonts, placement etc and set up a split testing system. You can also check out any competition for ideas. Again, minor changes with testing. There's a lot of info on split testing.

<OR> since the original was not converting as well as you would like simply try another theme. It didn't look like a WP blog so it might be a little harder to move things to a new theme. Then split test the new theme against the old one. When you are happy with the new theme you can refine it with incremental split testing.

You might want to move to WP since it is so easy to change theme and there are lots of useful plugings to make things easier.

Actually, now that I think about it, I would (bit the bullet) and redo the site in WordPress.

Good Luck

 

that's true, i did that... thank you, i'll be sure to follow your tips

 

Try an AdSense optimized theme and experiment with ad placement. Keep changing the position and format of ads on your blog till you get good results.

 

All of this so called "high CTR" themes are crap. I personally tried all of them and i didn't raise up my CTR at all.
It is widely known that as much as your theme is simple, without any fancy stuff, plain and simple, you will have a high CTR.

 

i will suggest try both as sometimes image ads gives more income than text ads

 

good sharing