Optimizing

Ok...currently I own a tech blog that gets about 10k unique visitors a day. My CTR averaged over a few months is quite low. I understand that most techies don't click ads, but I'm sure I could boost it a bit higher. Currently I have my ads only on the left column of my site. I was wondering if I should

1.) Move that blog above the content with just a br tag in between.

- or -

2.) Create another ad block and do the above, and leave both of them. Also if you can browse around my site a bit and tell me some good placement spots that'd be awesome.

URL = cyber-knowledge.net/blog/

 

have you tried split testing at all? like different color combinations, or different ad sizes? If you already aren't making big bucks, it couldn't hurt to try..

 

The very first thing I saw when visiting your site was "A Windows Installer For Ubuntu", the article title. If you were to move your ads above or below that title I'm sure that would drastically increase your CTR.

 

Here's what you should do to triple (or thereabouts) your CTR and more importantly your earnings:

On the front page:

Instead of having full posts on the front page, make your posts excerpted after the first paragraph. Then get rid of the skyscraper banner and do this: put a 468 Adsense ad banner at the bottom of your first post (excerpted, remember), and a 336 ad banner at the bottom of your second post, and that's it for ads on the front page.

On your single/individual article pages:

Once visitors click on your "Click here to read more" (or something similar) to read the rest of your articles, you will have a 336 at the bottom of every article. Also, put a 234x60 (half banner) after the first paragraph of your article. And that's it for the single pages.

If you're so inclined, you can add a leaderboard adlinks unit at the top on all your pages, in the soft blue spot that separates your header from your body content.

Now I'm not sure what kind of blogging software you're using, but since you're a programmer (right?) you should be able to easily implement the above suggestions. (In Wordpress, you could simply download Mighty Adsense and Adsense Deluxe plugins to inject the Adsense codes into the blog for you.)

I promise you that if you do this, you will earn at least triple what you are doing now. Good luck.

 

My issue with that is that is a pay per impression ad. For a tech site that helps a lot.

K with that plugin can you choose to inject ads after certain paragraphs? That sounds like something I'd most likely want to try.

Also by your post I assume you want the left coulmn sky scraper gone correct?

Hmm no. Am I wrong to assume the best color is what would blend in with the content best?

 

I told you what you need to do to increase your earnings, as you requested in the original post. You may choose to follow it, or you may choose to not. /shrug

 

10,000 daily uniques is a lot of traffic. When you say CTR is low, do mean very, very low or fairly respectable figure?

 

what is your CTR (what is the percentage)?

 

I really prefer not to say as it's against their ToS

 

1) blend the border around your skyscraper to match the background of the sidebar - i.e. no border around ads

2) place half banner ad under the post title of your top two posts. I don't know if a plugin will do this for you or not, but it's pretty easy to code it by hand.

 

3) a square ad under your first post is also a great way to get clicks.

of course you will need to pick and choose (since google only allows 3 ad units per page). Always test test test. Play around with the units and see what works best for your site.

 

Can I ask what you mean by that? You mean on the main index page put a square ad after the first post?


Anyways thanks all for the suggestions I think I'm going to use a little bit of everyone's advice a little later tonight

 

This could be interesting...

Steve

 

I used an adsense injection plugin that actually parses p and br tags in post and auto inserts the ad code after the first paragraph. Instead of the adsense ad at the bottom of each post I went with feedburner...for now. If it doesn't pay off I'll ad the 336.