Pay per click optimization for publishers

Discussion in 'Pay Per Click Advertising' started by Luq, Mar 28, 2008.

  1. #1
    When it comes to pay-per-click optimization, there are two things I can talk about; design and placement. There are a few other miscellaneous tips as well which I could discuss. Lets look at the best design and placement for your site. These tips are meant to improve your click-through ratio (CTR) which will in turn increase earnings.

    Design

    * Text or Graphic - Most PPC services allow a variety of ad fomats which includes images and text-based ads. The best performing ads are text-based. Banner based advertising were the first types of ad formats available which are now generally ‘involuntarily’ ignored by site visitors. Text-based ads ‘feel’ more credible and are friendlier with site visitors.

    * Ad Style – ads come in a variety of sizes. Based on what I’ve tested, the large rectangle does best, i.e. provides maximum CTR. If you are concerned about your site design and placement though you might want to stick with the leader board and/or the skyscraper, as apparently it stays on the site and won’t obstruct your site’s content.

    * Colors – this is an important aspect of any website, site combination could decide whether a reader wants to stay on a page or not. If it’s difficult for the eyes, too dark or has a broad combination it could turn a visitor away from a site. In terms of ads, the best colors for the links of your ads, if they are text-based that is, is the color for links used in the rest of your site or the well-known default blue hyperlink color. Also keep the description of the ad in black or the color of the rest of the text in your page and keep the border of the ad block the same color as the background of your site. Using the above combination will help you optimize CTR and also ensure user-friendliness for your beloved site visitors.

    Well, above I’ve described how to design your ad now let’s look at where to place ‘em.

    Placement

    Placement is an important and tricky aspect of PPC optimization as you have to place the ads in a visible position to make sure visitors see them and also make sure you don’t annoy your visitors by obstructing or ‘intercepting’ the content.

    If you use a leader board for your ad block you might want to place it right below your site banner, ‘above-the-fold’ is an important thing to remember when placing ads, which is to place ads at the visible half of the site, place it on the part of the site which you can see before you scroll down the page of the site.

    The same thing applies to the skyscraper format as well; place it on the side of your site ‘above-the-fold’. If you really want to maximize CTR though you’ll probably be using the large rectangle ad format based on my advise above, in this case you might want to place the block just above the title of the topic you are talking about on your site or ‘accompany’ your content with the ads. Leave the ad-blocks beside the content.

    You can read my original blog post here

    Once you have implemented the above tips your CTR should go through the roof.

    Please dont copy and paste the above article in your blog without linking to my post....i posted this here to help the hundreds of dp members on this and the adsense forum to get their placement and design right as their are countless threads complaining that there ctr is low and the reason is always because the ads are poorly optimized. Finally make sure you have enough traffic before you expect any big green.

    Have a great day! :D
     
    Luq, Mar 28, 2008 IP