Best Tips to Increase Your AdSense CTR
(Click Through Rate) and CPC (Cost Per Click) in your blog or website
You all will get high cpc if you use this all ways in your blog or web.
The biggest mistake I see with people using Adsense as
their monetization strategy, is they forget that Adsense is a CPC based
network. You get paid per click, not by impression.
Yet over and over again I see people not laying out their
ads on their sites to maximize their income potential.
Forget traffic for right now. I’m going to show you 8
effective Adsense tips on how you can double your income from your existing
traffic with a few optimization tricks I’ve picked up over the years.
1. Place at least 2 ads within the post
content
I
know, it’s ugly to have ads mixed into your content, but it’s where your ads
can get the most exposure. I like to place at least 2 ad blocks within the
content itself: 1 at the top and 1 at the bottom.
What
works best for me is to put the first ad right below the
first paragraph, and the second one right after the content.
2. Use all your ad blocks, and make them big
Starting off simple.
Use all your ad blocks. In addition to increasing your chances for a click, this increases the ad spaces on your site advertisers can bid on and gives you a better overall RPM. You’re allowed to use 3 ad blocks and 3 link units for each page of your site. While I don’t normally use link units at all, I do use 3 ad blocks no matter how short my content is.
Forget all the other size options that AdSense gives you. Bigger is better. Forget trying to blend it into your content, just make them visible so people can’t miss it. I’ve done extensive testing colors and came to one conclusion: blending is not always the answer. As long as people can see them, they’ll click on it if it’s something they’re interested in.
3. Use Red Instead of Blue
For
the longest time, I had the same color scheme to my site: black text and blue
links. It worked.
But
I noticed that using red links throughout my site instead of blue worked so
much better. Maybe it has something to do with people’s natural
blindness to blue link ads, but red far outperforms blue.
Try making all the links on your site red, and then use
the same red color for your AdSense ads. Don’t use a bright red, but more of a
maroon color so your site doesn’t look like it was built in 1999.
4. Use a Scrolling Ad Block
Google does list this as not-allowed in their policies. However, I’ve
been using it for years and have even passed a manual review on my site. Use
this at your own risk. It may be a case-by-case basis. If they see you are
using it to manipulate clicks, you are putting your account as risk.
Ever
visit a website and see the ad follow you down the page as you scrolled down?
Implementing that into my websites dramatically improved my CTR and overall
RPM.
Even if you do get permission to use it, it’s only
against the policy if you cover it over your content. For example, if you had
an ad block above your post title and it covered your content as you scrolled
down, that would be against the rules.
If
you have it in the sidebar, away from any content on the site, you’re allowed
to use the feature.
For
this, I like to use the Q2W3 plugin, which is free for WordPress
users. Just activate the plugin, and you’ll see an option in your widgets to
make them sticky.
Sidebar
ads really suck for AdSense. But with this scrolling plugin, I improved my
sidebar-ad CTR by over 150%.
The
best ad unit for this?
The giant 300 x 600 large skyscraper ads.
5. Use Text & Image Based Ad
With
AdSense, you’re allowed to choose whether your ad unit is image based or text
based. Unless you’re seriously in love with one type of ad, try using Text
& Image based.
Using both text and image options allows more advertisers
to bid on it (text ad bids and image ad bids) and increases your overall Cost per
Click.
Don’t
expect to see an instant jump in CPC. From my experience, it’s not a huge
increase, but over time, it does pay more per click than an only text or only
image ad.
6. Create a Short code
For Word Press users.
This involves editing some PHP files, but don’t freak out
if you can’t code. This is really simple stuff.
What it does is it allows you to create a simple short
code that allows you to add in ads wherever you please.
So while you’re writing an article, all you have to do is
type in [ads] wherever you want the ad to be, and it will place it
there. This is useful if you want to control your ad positions on shorter and
longer posts, or for different kind of posts such as a video or image heavy
posts.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Go into your Word Press editor and open the
functions.php file.
2. Paste in this code:
|
|
Don’t forget to delete the line that says
ERASE-THIS-PART-AND-PASTE-IN-YOUR-ADSENSE-CODE-HERE and paste in your AdSense
code.
You can put in styling along with your AdSense code to
center them, float them, place 2 ads side by side, etc.
It’s awesome.
Now, when you’re writing or editing your posts, wherever
you type in [ads], it will show the AdSense code and whatever
styling you applied to it.
7. My Favorite Ad Position:
Under 1st Paragraph
My best performing ad position is usually the large
rectangle or regular 300×250 ad block placed right under the first paragraph of
the post or page.
From my own testing, these performed better than floating
it to the right of the first paragraph or having it right under the title.
Here’s a simple function you can add to your
functions.php file. It will add in your AdSense code right after “x” amount of
paragraphs. For me, I choose 1 to put it right after the first
paragraph, but you can choose any number you want.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Go into your Word Press editor and open the
functions.php file.
2. Copy and paste this in:
|
|
|
Don’t forget to delete the line that says
ERASE-THIS-PART-AND-PASTE-IN-YOUR-ADSENSE-CODE-HERE and paste in your AdSense
code.
Just like the first one, you can also apply any styling
you want to it.
8. Control Your Sidebar Ads
Depending on What Page You’re on
Maybe a sidebar ad performs well on the homepage and
archive pages, but not in your individual posts. Well, this can easily be fixed
with a free plugin called Display
Widgets.
I use it for almost all of my AdSense sites because
sidebar ads don’t perform the same on every page of the site.
Simply install and activate the plugin. After that, just
go into the Word Press Widgets section of your admin and you can control each
individual widget and on which pages it’s hidden and which pages it’s shown.
Note: If you select “Show
on Selected Pages” it will hide it on every page BUT the ones you
select. If you select “Hide on Selected Pages “it will show it on
every page BUT hide it from the ones you select. You don’t have to configure
this for every single one of your widgets, only the ones you want to control.
If you don’t touch it, it will just go with your theme’s default settings.
Conclusion
As you learned from these AdSense tips, there are a lot
of things you can do to increase revenue off of your existing traffic.
If you’re serious about your site (i.e. it’s making you a
lot of money and you want to squeeze every penny out of it) then a
one-position-fits-all ad layout isn’t the best option. You may be leaving a lot
of money on the table by just installing a plugin that lays out the ads at the
top and bottom of every post.
While a lot of things with AdSense are out of your
control, you can use these AdSense optimization tips to experiment with your
own site.
