Trying to find the best Google AdSense click through rate isn't as hard as you might first think. With a little bit of thought and a touch of experimentation you can get some great results and find out exactly how your readers react to your layout. Think Like Your Reader One mistake that many internet marketers make when using AdSense on their sites is putting their ad units in locations that a read will never naturally look. Placing a large skyscraper unit in the navigation sidebar might look great and may make it look like a part of the site, but do readers really look there? Usually not! The Mindset of the Reader Most AdSense sites rely on traffic coming straight from the Google search engine. Organic traffic is often looking for a solution to a problem they currently have. When they visit a site they found through Google they are there for one reason, to find the answer. After this person has read the article and the answer is solved, they aren't like going to look elsewhere on the site to find more information. The probably never even notice the ads in the sidebar. So Where Do They Click Then? They are more likely to click on links inside the article answering their problems. This is why many successful marketers suggest placing an ad unit embedded in the content. It then looks like part of the solution and not some afterthought. If you do insist on giving the user an option after reading the article, try an ad unit in the footer.
You are right about placing ads inside the actual content on you website, but another great place to ads is in the header of your website. Normally a banner ad is placed in the top right of the site. When someone visits a site one of the first things you see is the top of the page, meaning most people will see the advert, whether they click on it or not is down to the relevance of the ad, and the relevance is down to how well you have setup the page.
I wish it was that easy! I've put ad units within my content, but my CTR is still almost zero. I've tried everything that people suggested, but I just can't improve my CTR. I wonder why ...