When you login to Google through the AdSense login you can get to a page that contains a series of optimization tips. Although this is a useful page, it can take awhile to read through. So let me present you with a no nonsense quick overview of these tips. The first thing that Google recommends is that you keep track of all changes and test the performance of your ads using channels. You can set up a number of channels using the Google statistics. This enables you to track the performance of, for example, different ad formats, different ad colors, different ad sizes and even different pages. You can create channels that are specific to an ad format or you can create a channel that is specific to a page on your website. You definitely need to create channels because it is one of the best ways to continually tweak and improve your AdSense performance and boost your AdSense earnings. Next it talks about where you should place ads on your pages and it includes what is called a heat map, showing you the hot spots on an average website. In general, its common sense if you place ads towards the center or upper regions of a page as youre likely to get a better response. Placing ads on the right hand side, at the top right hand side or at the very bottom of a page leads to very low response rates. Your best bet, in terms of getting the most click-throughs, is to try and make the ads become part of the content. Place the ads right in the middle of the content or place your content around the ads. Also, if you use ads that blend in with your site youll get a far better click-through rate. It then talks about using multiple ad units and whether or not you can do this effectively. My experience is that pages for forums, for example, perform particularly badly. Ive yet to find a way to use AdSense on a forum and generate a significant amount of revenue without first annoying all of the forums users. Obviously, one of the biggest questions you need to ask yourself as an AdSense webmaster is which ad format to use. Google gives you a massive selection from skyscraper-sized ads to standard banner-sized ads and really it will come down to testing. The more you can test and the more you can judge by the results, the better your conversion ratio and click through ratio will be. You may also want to experiment with link units. As opposed to straight-forward ads, link units contain a series of links through to further pages of actual ads. So for example, people may click on a link unit that says 'click here for ads about shopping'. You only get paid, not if people click on the first link, but if they click a second time on an actual website. Again, Ive tried these and not found them to be amazingly successful. But I havent tested them extensively; you will need to do that. The best way to get immediate access to all the test information, without having to go down the painful road yourself, is to watch the AdSense videos that Ive created (see below). |
