low ctr? any suggestions to improve?

My site www.image4free.com has a very low ctr. :-(.

I would really appreciate any comments or recommendations on how to improve the ctr such as new locations I should add new units or changing the current colors.

The site gets a decent amount of traffic but i have a hard time thinking up other locations to add new units.

thanks,

juls

 

Only thing that i can suggest is to add a leaderboard add at the http://gallery.image4free.com/index.php?cat=1 page and all of them like that, like under where all of them are. Excellent job of adding adsense in to all the pages, one of the best!
P.S.- I wanted some information on Mesothelioma because my grandmother may have it so I looked it up on your search

 

hmm ya i was thinking of adding a leader board ontop of the google search. I guess i might as well try it out and see how it goes. I guess it cant hurt. I am really looking for some other non obvious locations heh.

 

The first think i wish to tell u is, the ad placement is bad. it is not the worst, but its bad. Try moving the ads a 60 px downwards.

 

lol thanks i will try it and move them down a bit but it will move the whole content table down as well.

I appreciate all the comments.

this is a site i bought recently and only just found the time to work on it.

keep the suggestions coming ;-)

anyone have a suggestion for placement and type but on another page not the home page?

 

You need better ad locations and better targeting.

 

Banners and leaderboard are not as good as rectangles. Perhaps you have to redisign your layout to fit in large rectangles. It works for me. Skysrapers come just after the rectangles.

 

Somehow, the ads don't stand out at all. Besides experimenting with different colours, try using a block on the top left hand corner. Shift the menu to the center. There is no exact science but you will have to keep testing different configurations every week and improving on them.

I have been tweaking my own site constantly and it does make some difference. Used to be around 1% or so but now it's close to 10%.

 

Best thing for higher CTR is less content. It is funny but it is true. If you have rich content pages visitors have no need for clicking ads - everything is right in front of them.

 

This goes against traditional thinking but you are absolutely correct.

 

maybe try to place adsense banners among a text - of course with masked colours of ad

and, I think You should try to place ads next to image (in gallery) in vertical position (background of ad in colour of site/[table] colour .

I'm not sure but I think that it can raise Your CTR

(sorry for my English )

 

Maybe you can try my new script:

http://www.vierstra.com/kidding/

(Internet Explorer Only)

 

LOL Gede, funny

Juls.. try using the 4 ad banner and putting it half way down the page above category. Give the ads the same background colour and border colour as your tables to make them blend in. My thoughts are that ads that are banner shaped at the top of a page tend to get ignored. You should still be able to keep it there though... you can have 2 ad units on the same page.

 

I tried to make an experiment with my website http://www.pro-real-estate-software.com. The site is to give tips on using real estate software. I used to have just one Ad Sense ad on each page. Other ad spots were used for alternative advertising. The traffic showed increased activity with Google's ads comparing to others.

The experiment was to place THREE ads of Google's on the homepage. First it took me hours to manage all the three. Finally, I was successful. However, CTR grew just from 1.2 to 1.4 with all three ones. When I tried to figure the thing, it appeared to be that Google AdSense links are misleading sometimes and work incorrectly to some extend.

I tried to change ad places, keywords and then, at the end of the day, you know what worked? You will not believe - the color. I changed the site color from nice blue to plain white. Google banners were less visible, however, CTR grew to 6.5.

Pro-real-estate-software.com is now white and successful.

 

nice info Oliver.. I too saw an increase in CTR when ads were made to match the colour of the site, but the highest CRT I have had in one day has been 1.9% :| looks like I have to pull my finger out and do something... maybe make it white

 

What is your current CTR ratio?

 

Haha, my site must be really bad content since I'm getting low to mid XX CTR!, I have very good CTR but little traffic I want out of sandbox!

 

I heard there's no sandbox at Google for the moment after its grand update on May, 14th. . If you take a look at Google web search now, you will see how many new pages became visible.


Some of my friends yell green as their well positioned sites turned into 'used to be well positioned'. Instead, a lot of doorway pages stuffed the web. There must be another update soon, I suppose, a 'broom-and-mop" one

 

Low CTR? How low is it? It is all relative.

 

I would switch around the ad placement...Remember, the most frequently clicked area is in the middle of the screen!