After following the threads here and looking over some of the advice I finally got around to redesigning part of my site to add more content and make navigation easier. It involved adding around 50 pages (same again to come) with an image, a paragraph of text and some links to relevant pdf files on each page. A single 4 advert skyscraper in site colours then went on the right hand side of each page; not too in your face but more noticeable than tucked away at the bottom where my other ads are, and they seem very well targeted to the page content. The thing is overall page impressions are up around 1000 a day and I'm getting 10 times the CTR on these pages than the rest of the site! Its only put up my overall CTR a little (most hits come from my forum) but earnings are up ALOT. The funny thing is my forum members seem to really like the changes and nobody has mentioned the addition of adverts. Am I pleased I got around to it? You bet! Am I worried the increased CTR is due to some idiot gone click crazy? Oh yes, this place makes me soooo paranoid Cheers, BP
Congrats! I've been working on my content / Adsense placement as well and have noticed a nice change, too
I'm looking at going back to all my sites and redesigning the lot with the stuff I've learnt here. Its a massive job but its already paying dividends on some of me newer sites. Everything from content, file naming, <h1,2,3,etc> and page titling sees an improvement. For me the main driver is good relevant content - its the best driver IMO.
Yea, just switching the location of your ads can double your CTR. How about removing the borders? I read that works well.
JohnsonSmith - I have seen your sig many times today. I receive over 100 spam emails every day now. What is your PRIVACY POLICY? Just saying, "Give me your email address" doesn't cut it for me. Why should I? Are you just harvesting email addresses? Where is the carrot? AdSense riches? Yeah, right! Many others may feel the same as me. I think that you need to do a little more selling, before you ask for email bombing privileges. Maybe your product - idea - software - whatever it is - is really good. But my curiosity about whatever you are pushing is totally overcome by your methodology - "Gimme your email address". Just a thought.
Once you get a steady amount of visitors, experiment. I've been trying bright colors in comparison to site matching colors...no difference yet. I have noticed that in text ads have a MUCH greater return than those that are on a side margin. Once I have 10 posts my sites will be in my sig and you can see my experiments Brandon
It does work, my new pages don't have any borders around the ads, just plain text ads on the same white background as the text area, all inside an 800 pixel wide table so its all visible on a 15" screen and doesn't lose formatting on a 21" Cheers, BP
For those that have asked to see my ad placement here goes; not rocket science and I'm no graphic designer but its all mine A page from my articles section with ads still at the bottom of the page: http://www.vinylengine.com/stylus.shtml One of my new pages with ads incorporated into the page (more text to come): http://www.vinylengine.com/manuals_syrinx.shtml Theres alot more work to do and tons of info to add to the pages but the site is pretty content rich which keeps the visitors coming. FWIW I also get more clicks from the gallery than the forum. Cheers, BP PS I put adsense on the site to help pay for hosting etc as everything on the site is free and I reckon its working out fine.