By Kim Roach
Google Adsense has empowered web publishers of
all shapes and sizes to make money from their
web sites. Whether you own a hobby site that
gets 100 visitors per day or a popular finance
portal that is flooded with millions of visitors
per month, you can benefit from the Google
Adsense program.
Simply sign up for a free account, grab your
Adsense code and paste it up on your website.
Well, it sounds good anyway. In reality, that's
not the whole story. Maximizing your adsense
earnings requires a little more care.
Fortunately, you can quickly increase your
earnings by reading every word of this article.
I will cover the basic necessities and also
reveal advanced tips that you won't find on
every digital corner. So, if you're looking
to put more money in your pocket with a few
tweaks of code, I urge you to read on.
As you are reading, keep in mind that Google
is actually one of the best resources for
finding information on Adsense optimization.
Think it's hard to believe that Google would
give good advice? Well, it makes sense when
you think about it. The more you make as a
publisher, the more they will make. Google
has a big incentive to help you perform well.
Not to mention, they have tons of data to
research what works best.
So, for much of my research, I took quite a
few tips from Google. But don't worry, there
are also some advanced tips here that Google
will probably never reveal to you.
Most Effective Ad Formats
In general, wider ad formats tend to
outperform the taller ads. This is because
the wider ads are much easier on the eye.
According to Google, the following ad formats
result in the highest number of click-throughs:
336x280,
300x250,
160x600
Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder.com increased his
revenues by 20 percent after placing the large
rectangle (336x280) in the upper left corner,
positioned within his articles.
Text links are another ad format that often
work well. Using text link ads, you can create
Adsense ads that blend in seamlessly with
your navigation.
For an example of this, go to
www.dealofday.com.
Tim Carter saw an 18 percent increase in his
revenues after placing link units in the upper
left corner under his site search bar.
Number of Ads
Multiple ad units can sometimes help optimize
your performance. This is especially true for
pages with lots of text, forums, and
message boards.
However, it could possibly lower your revenues
as well. When you show more ads, the ads
that are placed lower on the page often have
lower bid prices than the ones on top.
Therefore, you must test the number of ads
on a page to see what works best for you.
When using multiple ad units, make sure that
the ad unit with the highest click-through
rate appears first within your HTML code.
This will ensure that your prime real estate
is occupied by the highest paying ads. You
can use CSS positioning to get your highest
paying ads placed in the location with the
highest CTR.
Colors
Ads that blend in with the colors of your
site generate the highest click-through rates.
In most cases, it is best to use the exact
same color scheme for your ads that you use
on your web site. To see some good examples
of this, check out:
www.lockergnome.com
www.worldvillage.com
By using ads without background color or
borders, your ads seamlessly integrate with
your content.
Keep in mind that blue text links seem to
perform best for Google Adsense. Blue is
the assumed color of links on the Internet.
Therefore, our pyschie expects links to be
in blue.
However, you may want to rotate your colors
every once in a while to spice things up.
This way, your visitors don't get used to
your ads, which can cause banner-blindness.
Ad Placement
Just like in real estate, location is the
key to success with Adsense. Fortunately,
Google provides us with a heat map,
showing the best spots for ads.
One of the best places for your Adsense ads
are at the top-left of the page. Because
people are used to seeing navigation on the
left side of the page, the eye naturally
gravitates to this section of your web site.
Many studies have been performed to see how
the eye travels across a web page. You can
see a demonstration at
poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004.
Knowing how people view your web site will
help immensely when optimizing the placement
of your ads.
In addition, you should also place your Adsense
ads next to rich content and navigation elements.
These ads often do well because users are
focused on those areas of a page. You can see
examples of this at
Ezinearticles.com and Lockergnome.com.
As you can see, these sites have placed their
adsense ads next to search boxes and
navigation links.
Keep in mind that you shouldn't change the
layout of your site to fit the ads, but rather
use the ad formats that best fit with your
site layout.
Images
Many publishers have started using images around
their ads. As a result, many of them have
doubled their revenues.
One of the most successful implementations of
this techniques is to use the 728x90 leaderboard
with 4 thumbnail-sized images above each ad.
You can see some good examples at:
www.drawapig.desktopcreatures.com
www.sg-god.com/heaven/
Of course, you can't use images of blinking
arrows because this would be enticing visitors
to click. However, it is perfectly acceptable
to place related pictures beside your ads.
For example, if you have a page about laptops,
you could place a leaderboard with 4 laptop
images above each ad. In this way, you are
using images to complete the story.
In fact, Google is currently testing an ad
format that would blend images together with
related text ads. It seems that even Google
thinks that images are a good idea to bring
attention to ads. To see an example of the
Google ads in beta, go to
www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=3576
Forums
If you have a forum, I hope you are monetizing
it with Adsense. Many people include Adsense
within their web site, but when it comes to
their forum, they simply let the ball drop.
Forums can definitely be an extra source of
income when optimized properly.
To find out about the best placement for
Adsense within forums, I went to Google for
some advice. To my surprise, they also have
a heat map for forums .
One of the best ways to monetize your forum is
to place Adsense directly within the threads.
To see an example of this, go to
forums.digitalpoint.com.
Google advises that you place a skyscraper
above the fold on the left side of your forum
and they also suggest placing a leaderboard
directly below the top navigation and below
the first post.
If you are looking for additional ad space, you
can place a horizontal link unit near the top of
the forum, just below the header.
The next Adsense tactic is one that isn't talked
about much. However, when used appropriately, it
can be extremely powerful.
Newsletters
If you own an newsletter list, then you could
easily leverage that list in order to earn more
Adsense revenue. Whenever you send out your
newsletter, simply link to an article on your
site within the email. By doing this, you can
draw people to your Adsense pages and easily
increase your Adsense revenue.
This is one of the best things about building
your own list. You are able to direct traffic
to any place at any time.
In the end, the key to increased revenues is
testing. Not all sites are the same. You have to
experiment to find out what works best for your
particular site. What works for one site may not
work for another. Only by testing can you find
out which styles encourage your visitors
to respond.
About the Author
Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the
SiteProNews & SEO-News newsletters.
