High traffic site gets few clicks. An analysis would be apprciated.

I have a PR 5 site located at www.supernaturalminds.com that despite having large amounts of traffic, gets few clicks. I have begin changing the type of ads by using a 350x300 rectangle, but today I have still not received any clicks. My page impressions are also low. Could someone take a quick look and point out any errors?

 

What type of ads do you think people are looking for?

The ads I saw targeted 'black history month' and 'inventors'.

If that isn't your target audience, I think that is your problem.

 

Well, some of the articles on the site are about inventors, but the website is very niche oriented and there is a possibility the ads are not targeting the articles correctly. That may be a problem. The site gets clicks every so often, but the site gets over 250 visitors a day. It should be getting consistent clicks daily.

Do you think my ads are placed improperly, or should the ads themselves be more focused? There won't be many adwords publishers running ads about Michael Faraday or Hypatia.

 

When you say "high traffic", what are we talking about now?

But anyways, think about it: when you go to a dictionary site, do you click on the ads? I don't. I just go there for what I went there for -- info on the word, and then I'm gone. Maybe it's the same with your info site. People just go there for info and then leave.

 

ads placement
look at the google heatmap they offer
adn also study the "askthebuilder" case study google has online
just search google with that a.m. term in you find the google tutorial on nr 2 or so
i have posted more detailes here in another thread on very same topic and above 2 online help sources

with the small ad unit you have today
and the 2 ads displayed there i may predict that these would be less than 10 cents / click ads
250 visitors a day also is little
it depends on how accurate you can actually trace visitors or how many bots are included in that number

you may also want to solve that problem
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http://www.supernaturalminds.com/

if you do all the basics first
then all else will follow automatically
G will "worry" for your to get your the traffic you deserve - they earn from your productivity as well - you just have to offer more content to get more traffic and thus to earn more $

MUCH more productivity in new articles may bring your traffic up to a few thousand visitors a day and then the $ may be flowing

 

Just a thought, but in your case I think that the ads blend in almost too well. The blue beaker photo at the top and the photos of the inventors really drew my eyes away from your ads. A visitor cannot click on what they cannot see. At the risk of making your site look even more cluttered than it already looks, I think that you need to so something to make the ads stand out just a bit more.

 

that may be a very good point
i use webster usually a few times a week
i even dont know whether or not they have any ads at all - i never look at their page just the results then i leave

 

I have websites which get far less than 250 visits per day which get alot of clicks. Traffic is a matter of your perception. I'd rather have 20 websites that get 250 visitors a day each than one site that gets 5000 visits per day.

I think I will try that. Maybe use a sharper color which stands out.

Well, if this is true, it means I built an educational site that has a niche which is far to restricted. That could be the reason. I need to be more mindful of this in the future when I build websites.

I have good days sometimes, but that site gets less clicks, though it gets a considerable number of affiliate sells.

 

Try to think of what your site visitors may want to purchase and write your text accordingly. That way you will get targeted ads and a decent CTR.

 

if you know how to keep 20 sites secure - in your mind and in reality
then that is fine for you

in a very current hacker situation
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=60563

i mailed to all known sites with particular software
100% of those who ansered have confirmed having been hacked these current/past days/weks/months

one webmaster having 3 small sites
only one is clean - the other 2 affected in 2 DIFFERENT ways ( = twice as much to learn about how to solve/fix/prevent!)

hence 20 smaller sites may mean
15 attacked = 15 x more work to keep secure than one large
security may depend on many factors but surely a small site never is more secure than a large site
hence having many small sites increases the exposure to being hacked sooner or later
all hope for later
many among them might already have been hacked this very day more then they ever love to know

so far about many small sites ...
i amn fully busy since 5 days - nearly day and night with my one last security breach and all follow up work withjust one site

 

Have you tried using the
<!-- google_ad_section_start --> and
<!-- google_ad_section_end --> tags?

That was suppose to tell google which section of your site the ad should target. Put them around area of your page that you want adsense to use for targeting ads.

 

most of the advertising links on the left side of the page aren't related to the site, and there are several different versions of font types... i.e., some are underlined, some of the text is centered(ads), while some is left-justified, etc.

the result is a text mish-mashed page with no clear direction... when i first looked at it, the faces of the pics were the only thing that i saw... the rest of it was ad blindness.

don't mix all the ads up, because they don't match topically or textually(aka fonts, underlining, etc.)

people like looking at faces... i'd be putting very short captions under each face link, with a 486x60 ad block between each row of face pics... get rid of the column on the left entirely.

and call your css divs up externally... that page looks like a nightmare from a search engine perspective, it's no wonder that your adsense targeting could be an issue.

 

Hi

To be honest, I did not see the adverts. My eyes were immediately drawn to the images which are below the advert. I only looked for it because I wanted to see what the problem was.

I would suggest moving the advert to be right next to the image in each profile, or even integrated into the text.

The other idea would be to put an advert at the end of the content (bottom of the page). This, in fact, is an official recommendation.

Hope this helps.

 

Maybe if you are getting so much traffic, you should switch to CPM, maybe making you more money then you are now .