Hello. I recently got advice that I should blend my AdSense ads at www.computalk.net I have tried doing this and to me it looks good but I need some advice about whether it is good or not and how to make it better. The url is www.computalk.net Thanks Calum
So will I get more clicks since it is blended? People say I will but IMO they don't stand out so people might not see them?
How do forums to with Adsense? Nothing against your site Calum..it looks good, but it seems that forums wouldn't have a good CTR. Just curious. This place is a forum, and i haven't once clicked on the adsense add up in the header.
Yes forums do not preform well with AdSense, or any other CPC ads but I do get some money from them. I get quite a large number of visits daily, 3 times as much as my blog but I have a very low CTR. My blog gets a third of the visitors as my forum yet gets twice as many clicks and earns 3 times as much (better CTR and better paying Ads). I do get some ad clicks though, I am trying to blend the ads in to get more.
You want to do everything you can to bring the page info tightly to the top of the screen. Set your page top margin to 0px. Change your banner design. Create a horiz banner as tall as your logo and spanning the entire page width. Split it into thirds. Left third, the logo. Mid third: headline quickly what your site is about. Make it exciting and sharp. Right third: adsense 234x60. Figure out your colorations and while the ad should blend, up here you can make it stand out a bit more, don't be ashamed that it's an ad. Then you can lose the long horiz adsense ad that is there now and taking up entirely too much space. Good luck, nice start. /Best
People are so used to seeing ads blended in on the site so I think they know to look right over them. Try more of a contrast or image ads.
Calum, In your case it is blended all right but not with the content of the page as it is usually advised here and recommended by Google. You have it blended with the navigational panel which is a different matter alltogether. First of all, by moving it far away from the "meat" of the page you are running the risk of having irrelevant ads which lowers CTR. Second, if people are looking for content on the page, they are going to skip navigation 'cause they don't need to navigate anywhere. They know that a 100% wide thick band of color on the page usually means navigation, so they don't even look there instinctively. Thus they'll skip your only ad. I know it may sound like I am giving you advise to make your site look trashy and MFA-ish, but you simply need to add more ad blocks to catch people coming to your page for different reasons. And yes, forums do generally suck on CTR.
It's nice, but I would place them somewhere else. But that's just me. See how it works for you, and in a week if it's not good, PM me and I'll give you a suggestion.