09 December 2008

Match Google Adsense Font Type and Size to Increase CTR

Everyone talks about rotating and blending Google Adsense ads with your site layout and theme to increase CTR (click through rate). Basically there are 2 approaches to this - contrast the ads or blend them. Those who like the blending way, it is essential you match your ads exactly to your text in terms of font style and font size. This is a standard trick and probably you already knew it, but seems helpful enough to share it.

How to find the Google Adsense Ads Font Type and Size?

Remove the guesswork out of your web design. If you view the source code of the page, it will only reveal the javascript code.

In Firefox - Right click the ad, Select “This Frame” then “View Frame Source”. A new window shows you the whole source code with the CSS code too.
In Internet Explorer - Just right click the ad, select View Source.

For the leaderboard
Title
line-height: 12px; font-size: 11px; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;
text
line-height: 12px; font-size: 10px; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;

For the large rectangle

Title
line-height: 14px;font-size: 11px; font-family: arial, sans-serif;
text
line-height: 14px;font-size: 10px; font-family: arial, sans-serif;

Remember, it is right click. If you left click, the ad will click through. It is better to try on someone else’s ads rather than click your own ads by mistake. Always avoid these common adsense mistakes. In a similar manner as above you can easily find what the exact Google Adsense size font face / font family and font size is and blend your website better.



Tips Adsense 3, Dramatically Increase CTR

Here are three Adsense Tips, together with the required HTML code, to dramatically increase CTRs and Google Adsense revenue.

1. Correct HTML Code to Include Images or Graphics Above An Adsense Leader Board Block:

Expert SEO Forums have been abuzz over a new Adsense tip which has seen a dramatic increase in CTR's.

Many webmasters have reported increases over 400 percent after adding four images, expertly positioned horizontally over a 4 block Adsense Leaderboard, with no border.

I don't see any reason why this would not work on smaller blocks, but you would have to alter the following HTML accordingly.

Here is the HTML code you should use to align the images directly over the ads -- please be cautioned, so as not to breach Google's TOS, you should not use any other text around these images, apart from the required Adsense code:

[table cellspacing="0" width="728" border="0" cellspadding="0"]
[tbody][tr]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td colspan="4"]
GOOGLE AD CODE HERE 728x90
[/td]
[/tr]
[/tbody]
[/table]

NOTE: Please do change all [ ] brackets above, to the required HTML brackets < >.

Here is one of the relevant threads at SEO forums that has a clear "graphic" example, with before and after pictures clearly depicting how to add these images:

Forums Digital Point - Quadrupled Adsense CTR's thread

A website with thousands of drawings of little Piggies, was responsible for starting the above thread!

2. Maximize Google Adsense CTRs using the Competitive Ad Filter to exclude low-paying Blog related URL's:

Have you ever had days where 50 clicks would pay you the grand total of $1.50 - well that's the combined power of 3 cent clicks or low-paying Blog related ads. working against you.

This post Maximise CTR with Adsense for Blogs at the Shaolin Tiger blog gives you a good list of around 50 URL's to include in the "Competive Filter" of a Google Adsense account:

This will naturally filter out the low-paying Ads which Blog software and related domains seem to serve up.

3. Adding a Double Block of Large Rectangle Adsense Blocks at the End of each Post or Webpage

A number of the high-trafficked blogs, add a double block of 336x380 "Large Rectangle" blocks at the very end of a Post or Webpage, just as the visitor is about to leave.

Makes sense - a visitor is about to leave, and has one of two choices:

(a) visit another page on the site, or

(b) click on a high "paying" Google Adsense ad, prior to leaving the site

Serving them with a wide-choice of Adsense ads in the format which is statistically proven to have the best CTR, is an obvious choice. Trialling this placement has made a dramatic improvement in CTRs for the Marketing Defined blog.

So go ahead, use these 3 Adsense Tips to make a dramatic increase in your CTR's.

Copyright 2005 Roseanne van Langenberg

Roseanne van Langenberg is the Editor of the Marketing Defined blog which shares expert tips and strategies on how to increase Adsense CTR and Increase Targeted Traffic to a website using only current SEO and Marketing strategies.


15 Effective Tips to Increase Google Adsense CTR

How to make more money with Google Adsense? Get more clicks on ads. We all want to increase Google Adsense CTR i.e. click through ratio, because the higher times the surfer clicks the Adsense ad, higher is the payout to you. So here are 15 effective ways to improve your Adsense CTR.

How to increase Google Adsense CTR?

  • Post Adsense ads them on text rich pages and make sure that Adsense had a bunch of keywords to work with. Getting Higher paying keywords is better of course.
  • Get rid of public service ads, which pay you nothing for your efforts. Here are some ways to avoid getting PSA’s.
  • Avoid titles like the approved ‘Sponsored Links’ and ‘Advertisements’ above the Adsense ads. Why do you want to tell the world they are ads when google already puts ‘Ads by Gooooogle’ with them. These two terms are the only ones allowed by Google TOS. Any other terms will get your account terminated. Remember to avoid these 15 Adsense mistakes.
  • Use section targeting - you can target an ad unit to a specific section of your blog, as well as block out irrelevant sections like navigational links. Useful to get more targeted ads.

What is the best Google Adsense Placement for CTR?

  • Place Ads above the fold, i.e. you dont have to scroll down to see the ads. Moreover it loads before your entire page does. The more the visibility, the more chances a reader will click the ad.
    Best Placement for Google Adsense
  • Provide some free space around ads so that they stand out and users know where to find them. Dont clutter up the ads inside your content.
  • Experiment by changing the location of advertisements. Track them by channels to see which location works. Sometimes unusual locations can can do wonders for your CTR. Google Adsense support provides some good ideas for better blending
    Google Adsense Placement
  • Many experienced Adsense users have reported better CTR with vertical ads rather than the horizontal ones. But that really depends on your site structure.
  • Usually it is recommended to place towers on your right, as users tend to use the mouse to scroll the bar on the right side wiht a higher chance to see your ads. Some have reported doubling CTR’s by placing towers to the left rather than the right, as people have got bored of seeing ads on the right, it has something to do with the sidedness of the brain which I do not understand and there is a tendency to read from left to the right.
  • Many sites will have small ads in the top right hand corner, as they claim it is the first place where the eye sees.
  • An excellent article on Eyetracking - What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes helps to tell you where users actually see first and in what order.
  • Forums are tricky becasue they have a different kind of navigation, readership and participation. Here are some ad placements suggested by Google which work best for forums
    Google Adsense for Forums

Best Google Adsense Link Colors to get higher CTR?

  • Match the colors of your ads with the colour scheme of your site. Blending with your sites color profile helps to identify them not as ads, but as links similar to those of your site. The more the AdSense looks like part of your site, the higher CTR you will get. You can also match the Adsense fonts with your website font design for great results.
  • Blend ads with your page - remove the borders by having a similar color as your background helps to show ads as being part of your site. Do not blend text or the ‘Ads by Gooooogle’ with your background color as it is against Google TOS (Google does not like hidden text!). However, such blending may not work for you always due to banner blindness. Neither do they see the ads, not do they click on them. So sometimes a bold contrasting ad may work better depending on your website design.
  • Experiment by changing the colors, background of advertisements. You have to find out what works best for your site, not others. You can also rotate Adsense colors to reduce ad blindness.

I hope these tips help to get your Adsense CTR up by at least 100% if not more. Good luck and make more money!

How to Remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense

Google adsense has become a very popular tool for making money from your site by showing advertisements. But sometimes you see PSA - better known as Public Service Ads on your pages. These ads are displayed because adsense has not been able to find suitable ads for your page. Without commiting these 15 Adsense mistakes, here are some ways to remove PSA.

Why Public Service Ads are bad?

  • Most important fact is that there are no payments for clicks on PSA’s. So even if you have a good CTR (click thorugh ratio), it is of no use.
  • It spoils the look of your site. Lets say you decided to place a big 160×600 vertical banner on your site and no ad showed, the PSA ads will have big monocolour fonts since one big ad wil be shown instead of 5 ads there, which looks bad to the surfer.

How to remove Public Service Ads?

  • Develop sufficient good content with keywords on your webpage related to the topic of interest. Google is a great fan of good content websites.
  • Ensure that META tags like ‘title’ & ‘description’ and the headings tags like h1, h2 etc. have content which matches the rest of your site. They are main ways google judges your pages content.
  • Add specific keywords in your text which will help the google bot to determine and understand the content of your website. Repeat related keywords which will better help to understand site content. Do not fill your page with simlar keywords, it might work against your favour.
  • Try to keep the entire website focussed on a particular theme, so that even if the content on a particular page is lesser, the ads wil show.
  • Do not place multiple ad units if there are not suffcient ads to display on all of them. Also Google TOS do not allow placing more than 3 ad units on a page.
  • Use section targeting - you can target an ad unit to a specific section of your blog, as well as block out irrelevant sections like navigational links. Useful to get more targeted ads.

Is your site Still showing Public Service Ads?

  • Google may take time to crawl your site. Although most of the times the ads show immediately, at times it takes upto 48-72 hours for google to assess the content of newly created webpage. This usually occurs if your site has not been indexed before by Google. The time is reduced on newer pages of a site already running adsense. Google claims the ads will get better and more focussed to your pages with time.
  • Your page may contain objectionable content. This may be against Google Adsense policies. If you feel your page has no such content, then look for any objectionable keywords or phrases which may be present accidentaly. Removing such content can cause PSA’s to dissapear.
  • Your site maybe using a robots.txt file, which will may not be properly set up and prevent the AdSense crawler from crawling your web pages. Add the following two lines to the top of your robots.txt file:User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Disallow:
  • Frames may occasionaly cause difficult in indexing your page. Always remember to tick the Framed page checkbox from the Ad layout code page when generating your ad code. Similarly IFRAME’s also prevent effective indexing and cause PSA’s
  • There may not be any ads configured to show in your region. Lets say that these ads may be working in United States, but maybe showing PSA is Zambia. This is because Google Adwords payers can select regions where to display their ads, where they believe their target surfers are. After all why should an eye surgeon in US want to promote his service in Zambia? Try using the Google Adsense Preview Tool (works on IE only) which helps to determine probable ads in different regions.
  • Recheck your Adsense code was inserted properly on your webpage. Do no attempt to modify the code in any way, as it is against their terms of service. Adsense gives enough options to cutomisethe ad colours and sizes to suit your site. USe only the official code available from their site.
  • Remove session ID’s from urls - they changes every time a different user views a page, and the URL will not be in the indexed everytime.
  • Reduce your filter blocked urls. This feature is in place to allow you to block competitors ads from showing on your pages. If you block too many such urls, there may not be any advertisers left to display ads.
  • Use the Google Adsense Sandbox tool Simply enter the URL or keywords in the box below, and you will see up to 20 sample AdSense ads for the URL or keywords.