I just cracked something I had been working on for over 5 months now. Something that will get my CTR as high as 30% (Obviously I dont want to share this huge secret as I am just starting on it a week from now). Just for info... would a CTR that high get me banned? I would be FULLY withing the GOOGLE TOS. Advice would be appreciated.
May not get you banned, but they will be checking your site most the time for the slightest breaking of the TOS.
CTR alone can't get you banned. Email Google to see if your new strategy is within the TOS. 30% you say? Can you share any insights at all?
Yes, find ways to trick your visitors into clicking. Of course once your visitors realize you've tricked them, they won't be back. As long as you don't care about repeat visitors, or people spreading the gospel of your site around, this should earn you a few extra bucks a day, I guess.
So, in your opinion that's the only way is it? If so, you might want to learn a bit more about ad placement and page layouts. A CTR of 30% plus is definitely possible without any trickery whatsoever. Some other factors that may come into play are whether or not there are plenty of advertisers in your niche and how eye catching (As in how well written their ad titles are) and targeted their ads are. I would say that higher CTR's are easier to get on sites that don't get a lot of returning visitors, because repeat visitors tend to become blind to the ads after a while. DP would be a good example of this and I would be very surprised if the CTR ever gets above 5%. Compare it to a site that is built around a particular niche product, like "water beds" for example. Such a site would undoubtedly get a higher CTR due to the steady stream of new visitors that want to read up on water beds before making a purchase. After they've found the info they were looking for and bought a bed they aren't going be coming back every week to read more, but yes... ...they may tell their friends about your site if you provide high quality information on it. Great! That means more new visitors to help you maintain your high CTR. So, to the original poster; if, as you say, you are operating completely above board, you don't have anything to worry about. Best of luck to you.
30% will be good indeed but as jack pointed it will be good only if you have 10% or less returning visitors else that's the result you will have