Sunday 2 August 2009

Make Money With Adsense - Adsense Position

The position of your adsense units could significantly affect your click through rate.

I honestly thought this was Adsense 101, you know the basic basics of Adsense.

So why is it that when browsing the net you come across web pages with the Adsense at the end of the page?

Lets quickly run through how to determine the best position for Adsense on your website or blog

For this I am assuming that Adsense is the main source of income from the web property you are optimizing.


General adsense position rules
  • Adsense Block above the fold of the page

This one is really basic. You want to put the adsense units above the fold of the page to maximize the chances of any website visitor seeing your adsense ads.

Make it the first thing they see on your page.

If you have just content above the fold of the page, a visitor could quickly look at the content and decide to go to another site. No adsense click for you.

If you have adsense ads above the fold of the page, there is the possibility one of the ads titles could be what he is looking for. A click, kaching!!

  • Adsense in page hot spot

Studies have shown that there are certain areas on a web page that attracts the eyes. these are areas that we instinctively look at. The hot spots of the page.

You want to include an adsense block in this area. Most of your web page's visitors will look at this spot meaning most of your web page visitors will see the adsense blocks displayed there, increasing the chances of them finding something of interest in the block. And clicking on it




  • Adsense within body of content.

A really useful tip if used properly. We know that having an adsense block withing the top part of your content increases the click through rate, but this has to be done with some style.

You will see hundreds and thousands of web pages with the 300 by 250 block as the opening of the first paragraph. But the problem is they look like adsense ads camouflaged in content.

And no-one likes being tricked into clicking on an ad. You'll find that the regular Internet user has developed blindness to these ad blocks.

So I put adsense high in the body of my content, but I make the adsense blocks stand out. No tricks, no camouflaging. Just an adsense block breaking up the content

To Sum it all up, your adsense block needs to be displayed above the fold of the page, in the hot spot of your page and preferably with the body of your content

Before you run out and start pasting adsense all over your websites, a word of caution.


YOU ONLY NEED ONE OR AT THE MOST TWO ADSENSE BLOCKS PER PAGE TO MAKE THIS WORK


Hey?


You read this right. There are web pages out there with adsense pasted all over each page leaving the content, which is why the visitor came in the first place, difficult to decipher. Doesn't work.

I'll go into details of how many adsense units you should work with in another post

Before we finish, you must understand that each web page is unique. Above are GENERAL adsense position tips. But what will work on your web site or blog may be different.


You MUST TEST EVERYTHING.

Apply the tips above and see if there is an improvement in your click through rate for the next 100 visitors you get to your blog or website.

If there is no improvement , change the position and run things for another 100 visitors. For some pages it may be the link units that perform better so test those.


Till next time

7 comments:

Roshan said...

Provided more information about optimizing AdSense ads. It’s very informative especialy for beginners.

ami said...

Roshan, thanks for your comment. Unfortunately adsense is such a large topic, it wuld be impossible to put it all in one post.

From time to time I'll post about adsense and how to maximize your income legitimately with adsense

If you are in a hurry, I would suggest these adsense training videos

Hope you find it useful

Millionaire Acts said...

Hey, nice tips you've got here. I have one question.

What do you think of my adsense positions? I was thinking of maybe deleting the image ads only at the top of every post and instead transfer the ad block that I have in my right side in that poasition.

Looking forward to your response.

ami said...

Like your blog millionaire acts. Very clean

Your question about the ads postion. Personally I do not use image ads. The CTR for me in the early days was not very good so I abandonned them
I think only you can answer the question. You just need to test different adsense formats to see what sticks.
On your blog, the only image I could see above the fold of the pages was your adsense ad. So It does draw the eye and this alone may help CTR

But it reaaly is about testing

Nyubi said...

Great tips. I will learn much here

Rex said...

I drove over 2000 visitors to my website and did not have 1 click through. My Adsense was at the top of the page. Is there any reason this could happen?

ami said...

Thanks for dropping by Rex. I think perhaps you need to analyse what type of trafic you are getting. My experience with adsense is that the best conversions are from search engine traffic. get google analytics on your site. It's a free and reasonably useful traffic analysis tool. Good luck.