Cracking the Google Adsense Code 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
Subscriptions 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:
336280 300250 160600
Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder.com increased his revenues by 20 percent after
placing the large rectangle (336280) 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 http://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:
http://www.lockergnome.com
http://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, (http://tinyurl.com/ld8d2
) 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/main.htm . 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
72890 leaderboard with 4 thumbnail-sized images above each ad. You can see
some good examples at:
http://www.drawapig.desktopcreatures.com/
http://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 http://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 (http://tinyurl.com/d7xsr
) .
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
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=106170
. 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. You can contact Kim at: kim@seo-news.com
This article may be freely distributed without modification and provided that
the copyright notice and author information remain intact.
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