2016-07-09 | 2861 Print PDF
Optimizing Your Adsense Ads
When it comes to effective placement of your Adsense ads, optimizing your website for better Adsense targeting, as well as customizing the color scheme so that they are more appealing to your website visitors, these simple tweaks alone can do wonders in maximizing your Adsense earnings. The first thing to consider is that Adsense allows only three ad units to appear on any given page, as well as two search boxes and up to three link units.
This means that you need to focus on placing your advertisements in areas where they will receive the most exposure. Using a layout sketch, provided by Google itself, you can see the areas of a typical website layout. The color codes represent the different performance of ads featured in these specific areas, based on extensive research and case studies collected by Google.
Recommended: Read our previous post How to make Money With Adsense [Link opens in new window]
Recommended: Read our previous post Getting Started With Adsense [Link opens in new window]
The dark and light orange areas represent the best placement for your Adsense ads, with the yellow color blocks being second in terms of maximizing exposure, and the white spaces representing low exposure areas.
Remember, this is just an estimation of how your ads will perform based on different positioning, however, it's important that you consistently stay on top of how well your own ads are performing so that you can tweak or modify placement, in order to maximize exposure and your click through rates. When it comes to selecting a color scheme for your Adsense advertising, you will want to blend the advertisements into your existing website's theme. You don't want the ads to look like ads. You want people to feel that your advertisements are unobtrusive, and don't take away from their experience when exploring the content on your site.
Instead, focus on ensuring that your ads are integrated into the content itself, and appear as part of the content itself.
You can try the following color combinations:
- Closely match the background and border of the ad to the background of your page
- Match the link color of the ad with the link color on your page
- Match the color of the ad text with the text color of your page
You want to give the illusion that the ad is not an ad at all, but a part of your website.
Border Style:
You get border choices with AdSense but there are two styles that seem to work the best – borderless or rounded. Borderless works best when you are trying to integrate the ad into the website.
If you want to have some sense of separation then you can go with a rounded boarder. The sharp edged, square style borders do not tend to perform as well.
You can also choose how many ads you want to run on each page. Google limits you to using three. The number of units you use is completely a personal choice. Some people choose to maximize their abilities and use all three. Other people find that one ad works just fine.
You should experiment and see what number of ads works best with your website. It never hurts to give each option a try.
When it comes to choosing ad block templates itself, Google provides you with many different formats, including a text based ad blocks and various banner sizes.
You can review the different types of ads available through Adsense by visiting:
https://www.google.com/adsense/static/en_US/AdFormats.html
Lets take a closer look at each style so we can determine what will work best for your niche and website theme.
Recommended: Read our previous post How to make Money With Adsense [Link opens in new window]
Leaderboard Text Blocks
By far, this type of ad has performed best on the majority of my websites. It is a larger ad that will Leaderboards work best when placed in the upper area of your website's theme, rather than the footer area where it will generate less exposure.
There are various sizes of text blocks available as shown on Google's sample page. Depending on your website's layout and template set up, you will be ale to integrate a number of these ad blocks in your side bar columns, and within the content itself.
These types of ad blocks work best in smaller areas, however there is one ad in particular that I avoid altogether, and that is the 486x60 advertising block. The reason is simple; this ad block looks like an ad. After all, the traditional ad size of a banner is 486x60 and it is still widely used today.
When people see it, they quickly identify it as an ad, which will decrease the chances that they will click on it.
Regardless of the ad blocks, you choose to use, you should also take things one step further, and test out using borders versus no borders.
With borders, your ads can appear as exactly that, ads, which for the most part, your visitors will ignore.
By using no borders on my Adsense-based websites, I have managed to minimize the look and feel of ads, and blend Adsense into my website so that it appears to be directly connected to my content, thus increasing click-through rates. I've also thoroughly tested all of the different ad blocks and have found that regardless of my website's layout or overall topic, the 336x280 block has always performed best.
The reason for this is simply because by adding it into the side column of your website, and removing its border, you can make it appear to be part of your navigation menu, increasing the chances of your visitors clicking on the featured links.
The 300x250 ad also works very well on sites that can't reasonably accommodate the larger 336x280 size.
Again, it works best above the content or aligned to the left with the text wrapped around it. The 250x250 square can also work well.
The more you test and tweak all of the elements associated with your Adsense advertising, including color schemes, placement, and channels, the better your campaigns will do. Don't just set up your website pages and leave them running on their own.
Take an aggressive approach to maximizing your Adsense earnings by split testing different positions, tweaking color schemes and even incorporating different keyword phrases into your actual content to increase the relevancy of the featured ads.
Maximizing Your Adsense Earnings
While tweaking the color scheme, placement and the type of ad-block that you feature on your website will increase your click-through rate, in order to maximize the amount of money you earn for each of these clicks, you need to focus on thoroughly optimizing your website for both search engines, as well as Google Adsense itself.
This starts with ensuring that your website's content is extremely relevant to the types of ads that you want Google to distribute throughout your site. While you can't control the exact ads that appear on your site or the amount you are paid for each click, you can influence the types of ads by placing a heavy focus on exceptionally targeted, keyword-driven content.
Optimizing your website is very easy to do, first, start by entering in a unique title for every page on your site, ensuring that you incorporate your primary keywords based on the content that will be displayed on each page.
For example, if you create an article on 'Golf Clubs', make sure that you include the term 'Golf Clubs' when titling and naming your page (eg: GolfClubs.html) You should also add this keyword into the title of the page itself, and if you are placing this article into a directory on your website, make sure that you also include the keyword in the directory name. www.Your-Site.com/golfclubs/golfclubs.html
This is VERY important!
Google identifies the type of content you are offering by the keywords used within the page title, the directory where the file is contained, as well as the content within your page itself, so the more accurately you title these areas of your site, the greater chances of displaying relevant ads.
When creating content for your website, do your best to incorporate the h1 tag whenever creating a title or headline. Make sure that you also incorporate keywords within this h1 tag and structure it like this:
By using H1 tags, you are emphasizing the title, making it larger than the remaining content on your page which will stand out to Google's search engine crawlers when they index your site.
When injecting keywords into your content or your overall website itself, there is something else that you need to keep in mind; Incorporate them directly beneath the Adsense blocks. These keywords can have a dramatic effect on the ads that are triggered by Google Adsense simply because you featured specific keywords beneath the ad's positioning.
For example, if you are trying to generate Adsense ads focusing on the 'Work At Home' niche, try entering in a short keyword string that incorporates 'Work At Home» into the text, such as: 'Work At Home Jobs' or 'Legitimate Work At Home'.
You'll be surprised at how much influence placing specific keywords under each ad block has on the tyes of advertisements that are displayed on your site.
Another effective strategy for diplaying more relevant ads on your website is through section targeting.
With section targeting, you are clearly defining the most important areas of your website, so that whenever a Google spider visits and crawls your site, they are instructed to pay attention to specific areas of importance.
Here is the code that you can use to develop areas of your website that indicate significant importance:
Section text.
Just make sure that when you use these strategies, you are genuinely targeting relevant advertisements based on your websites theme and topic.
You can get banned by Google if you attempt to generate advertisements that have very little to do with your overall website's content.
Besides, if you are truly interested in maximizing click through rates to the featured ads on your site, you need to ensure that the ads being seen are relevant to what your website visitors are searching for.
To thoroughly monetize your website and capture additional clicks to your Adsense ads, consider implementing the Google search bar into your existing website. This way, you can motivate visitors to enter in keywords based on the content they are looking for, and you will receive credit for each click they make to these search results!
Better yet, unlike Google's restriction against requesting that your website visitors click on your Adsense advertisements, this doesn't apply when featuring Google's search button.
One great strategy is to place a Google search box directly beneath the Adsense blocks on your website. From within your Google Adsense account, you can set up and customize the way that your search box looks and operates.
You can even set your preferences for search, as well as how the results are displayed.
Google will provide you with a snippet of code that you simple paste into your website's template to feature a fully functional search engine.
Each time someone clicks on an advertisement appearing within the search bar, you'll get paid!
I suggest placing a search box in the side bar of your website, or within the upper area under the header.
Make sure it’s above the fold and that you have an Adsense ad block featured directly above it.
Notes: Google has a complex method of determining what you get paid for each click. Part of this process involves the use of something called Google Smart Pricing.
Google Smart Pricing helps Google determine just how valuable your website is. When you get a good review by Google Smart Pricing then you will be sent the higher paying ads.
Smart Pricing prefers websites that are targeted. The more exact and focused your website is the better you will come off to Smart Pricing. When this happens you get the best paying ads.
Conclusion: Overview
We've covered choosing a niche, incorporating keywords, creating content and what placement,color scheme and ad blocks to use within your website. Here is a quick overview of what you need to remember when structuring your pages and maximizing your Adsense earnings:
Blend the ads to fit your website.
Use the customization features that Google provides to make the AdSense ads fit in with your website instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. Blended ads tend to get more action than those that are obviously advertising. Use Section Targeting To Define Important Areas
With section targeting, you are clearly defining the most important areas of your website, so that whenever a Google spider visits and crawls your site, they are instructed to pay attention to specific areas of importance.
Focus On High Exposure Ad Positioning.
You have to find the right places to put your AdSense ads to maximize them for clicks. Focus on different positioning, paying attention to your overall performance. Once you've found a 'hot spot' on your site that is maximizing your click-through rate, apply the same positioning to other blogs and websites that feature Google ads.
Track Your Performance Closely.
You have to track your AdSense performance. Do not let yourself get so focused on generating traffic, or monitoring your website stats that you forget to pay attention to just how well your AdSense account is performing. You need to stay on top of this if you want to maximize your Adsense income.
Use the filter Google offers.
A huge mistake people make is not filtering out competitors ads. You have to do this or else chances are these will be the ads you get. With Google, you can enter in up to 200 URL's that you do not want to display ads for, which can help you in preventing direct competitors from being featured on your site.
Incorporate High Quality, Fresh Content
Make sure that you give people a reason to return to your website and click on your Adsense ads. Do your best to consistently add fresh, relevant content to your website that your visitors will find appealing. Consider implementing a newsletter into your website so that you can contact your subscribers each time you add new content to your blog or website. You can download a free autoresponder plugin that will instantly add an opt-in form to your website at https://rabbut.com/ Keep Your Website Focused On Quality
Do not overload your website with AdSense ads. Less is more when it comes to AdSense.
You are allowed to put a certain number of AdSense ads on your web pages, but you should always make sure that you are not overloading your pages. Be reasonable and only use ads when they work with your site and add value to your content.
Consistently Tweak & Optimize
You should never stop making changes to your ads until you are achieving a high click through rate.
Keep on top of your earnings, and overall performance and test out different positioning, as well as size and color schemes. You should always be working towards improving your ads performance and maximizing your CTR and overall income.
You now have the knowledge you need, in order to create a fully optimized website that will showcase your ads and generate maximum click through rates. What you now need to do is apply this knowledge by creating your first Adsense-based website, applying all of the information contained within this guide to your first campaign. Taking action to test and tweak your advertisements is an important element of being successful with Adsense, and if you take a proactive approach, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of your competition.
Recommended: Read our previous post How to make With Adsense [Link opens in new window]
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