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.


15 September 2008

5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.
The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on yourAdsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage. 2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

John Ugoshowa. You are welcome to use this article on your website or
in your ezines
as long as you have a link back to
href="http://www.quickregister.net/partners/">http://www.quickregister.net/partners/
For more information on Google Adsense see the Internet section of Quickregister.net Free Search Engine Submission Service

2 Surefire Ways To Maximize Your Adsense Earnings

Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the lists that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet, after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages, the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in.
What is it that they are doing wrong?

Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.

The thing is, to get visitors to your high paying keyword pages, you need to optimize your site navigation.

Stop for a moment and think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page, they have the tendency to click on another page that sounds interesting. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. This is site navigation. It is all about enabling visitors to move about your site. And one way of maximizing your Adsense earnings.
A typical website have menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what grabs a visitor’s attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have “free’ or “download” are oftentimes good attention-grabbers.

This navigation logic can also be applied to driving traffic to your high paying pages. There are some websites that are getting a lot of traffic from search engines, but have low earnings. The trick is to try and use come cleverly labeled links to get the visitors off that pages and navigate them to the higher earning ones. This is one great way of turning real cheap clicks to real dollars.

Before you begin testing if this same style will work for you and you website, you need to have two things. Something to track and compare and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is ensuring fast result to come by.

Now, the next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. Come up with a catchy description for that link. Come up with a catchy and unique description for the link. Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about.

You can also use graphics to grab your readers’ attention. There is no limitation to what you can do to make your link noticeable. If you are after the success of your site, you will do everything it takes just to achieve that goal. Just be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned, there are no written and unwritten laws to follow regarding what they write. Just as long as you do not overstep the guidelines of the search engines, then go for it.

Also remember that it is all about location, location and location. Once the perfect attention grabbing description has been achieved, you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page.

There is nothing wrong with visiting other websites to see how they are going about maximizing their site navigation. “Hot pages” or “Most read” lists are very common and overly used already. Get to know the ones that many websites are using and do not try to imitate them.

Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to mix things around also. Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom too. This is how you go about testing which ones get more clicks and which ones are being ignored.

Let the testing begin. Testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for you site.

John Ugoshowa. You are welcome to use this article on your website or
in your ezines
as long as you have a link back to
href="http://www.quickregister.net/partners/">http://www.quickregister.net/partners/
For more information on Google Adsense see the Internet section of Quickregister.net Free Search Engine Submission Service

Adsense Income Secrets to Success

Adsense sites need planning and work to be successful. If you are thinking of producing sites for adsense income, or perhaps you already have sites that are not producing a good income if any. To be successful, takes a lot of work no matter what you may read because there are so many people promoting products that promise to make adsense income easy.

Well some of these products may help, but there is no simple solution to receiving great income quickly.

Extensive planning is required before you start. It is important to carefully consider the topics or niches that will be targeted. It is very important to see what type of competition there is for certain niches.

If you are beginning with your adsense sites, it is better to start with niches that are not too competitive. The reasons for this are that in any niche it will take time to get traffic to the sites and make money.
Extensive keyword research must be carried out before building new sites. It is far better to target say 20 keywords that are not at the top of the keyword results.

Many newcomers make the mistake of seeing the high prices that certain words achieve, but do not realise what is involved to compete with these words.

So choose 20 related words to the main keyword, and then build a page for each of these sub keywords. It is very important to have closely themed sites as well, meaning that you are not trying to offer information on a variety of subjects.

Search engines are now looking for sites that offer their visitors good quality information following the keyword searches entered.

It is also important to have sites that are easy to navigate, so that visitors are able to find what they are looking for easily. Clear navigation linking is essential.

Another point to remember is that search engines will reward sites that are constantly updated with new content. It is best to work to a plan with new sites that allow new content to be added on a weekly basis.

Incoming links to sites are very important to achieve good rankings in the search engines. There is only so much on site optimisation that can be done. This includes different keywords and descriptions for each page, use of H1, H2, H3 tags etc.

It is essential that good quality original content is offered to visitors. Due to the abuse that occurred in the past where many people were using various software to produce hundreds of pages of worthless content in literally a matter of minutes to try to make money with adsense.

It is a good idea to work on getting links back to sites on a weekly basis also. Another good idea is to register with directories also on a regular basis.

Adsense can be a good source of income, but it involves a lot of work before the results appear. Extensive research must be carried out to check competition. It is vital to do thorough keyword testing. Then produce sites that are closely themed with a separate page for each targeted keyword. Then new content and links must be on the agenda for good adsense results.

John is the owner of 1st Make Money Online, the site that will offer help to anyone looking to make money online. http://1stmakemoneyonline.com