AdSense Optimization Tips

Google AdSense scheme has been around for years now. And over time hundreds of thousands of Webmasters have experimented with various aspects of AdSense in order to maximise Click-Through-Rate's (CTR’s).

Optimization has subsequently become an art:

But even though there are no hard and fast rules relating to how best to place, size and present your ads there are some general design tips that every Webmaster should be aware of before placing AdSense ads.

The best design schemes are often finely balanced between familiarity and originality. Original, clever designs can work but it is a risk. It may be too clever and loose a large section of the traffic that visits the site or it may inadvertently break Google’s strict AdSense rules. On the other hand, it might just work.
What a Webmasters decides is their choice but more often than not simplicity and familiarity works. People come on to the net to obtain quick, relevant results. They don’t want to have to work around a dazzling, intricate navigation system or wait too long for video or music web elements to download.

 Reasons for poor AdSense results:

The reasons why people get poor AdSense results could be simple. It is possible that their AdSense ads are not visible enough. This could be due to number of reasons:

• Poor presentation of ads (bad color choice, wrong fonts etc...)
• Poor positioning of ads
• Too much clutter on your websites pages (poor page layout)
• Too many ads
• Not enough ads

Proper optimization of AdSense websites for maximum CTR is sometimes overlooked by Webmasters. The fact is that there are lot of elements that can be tweaked on a webpage to maximise CTR without breaking any Google AdSense rules.

Optimum color choice for Google AdSense Ads:
Without doubt the optimum color for the text in AdSense ads is blue. All over the Web there are numerous articles that have discussed the benefits of using blue to display AdSense ads.
The reasons for this universal agreement is mainly historical. Links on websites have traditionally always been blue, so visitors always expect them to be that color no matter where they see them. Familiarity always trumps originality on the Web, so if possible keep your AdSense text blue.

Optimizing AdSense Ads for visibility:
Ideal optimization for AdSense ads is about attaining balance. You don’t want your ads to be too visible because they’ll be seen as blatant advertising, which often just gets ignored. But you don’t want your ads to be too invisible either because they won’t be seen.

Good placement of AdSense ads is crucial:

So location is important in attaining high CTR’s. Ads has to be placed in areas where the content is most engaging, areas of the web page that visitors are most likely to view and areas they are likely to interact with.
These areas can be emphasized through the clever use if graphics, multimedia elements and layout techniques.
Google released a heat map showing the most clicked areas of an average site. As you can see from the, certain areas are more effective than others where it comes to displaying ads.

 

The heat map gives us general idea of the highest performing areas of a typical web page.

The strongest performance regions (deep orange) are the locations around the navigation bar and content area.

The heat map tell us that users are primarily focused on the content material of the site. Therefore good content is necessary to draw a users attention to your carefully placed AdSense ads.

So considertaion of user behaviour is important when deciding how best to optimize your AdSense ads.

Make sure you give your users the option of AdSense ads after they have read your satisfying content material by placing them where they're most likely to look. 

 

Users focus around the region that contains the content:

Just above or either side of the primary content areas are usually good spots to experiment with AdSense ad positioning. Also regions around the navigational elements of a page are good spots to place ads.
But remember when placing ads, no site is average. You have to play around with ad positioning to see which locations work best for you.
Don’t put borders around AdSense ads. Borderless ads are regarded with the same kind of attention as the content. If the content material is informative and relevant there is every likelihood that your ads will be seen in the same light.

 

Don’t over-use AdSense ads:

Too many links on a page is very unattractive any distract the user from the quality of your content. Google’s rules limits the amount of Ads you can place on any one page anyway but using a combination of different ad types and poor ad placement there’s still a lot of room to clutter an average web page. In addition, if you include all the natural links of your own the potential exists to create a site with nothing but pages filled with links.
Remember less can be more. Optimization is about balancing the looks and feel of a site with its maximum earning configuration. Only through experimentation can the right balance be struck.

Other general AdSense tips

• The best color schemes for AdSense websites are those that use blue color links, white backgrounds and black text for their design.
• Place your ads above the fold (the part of the page that first appears when it downloads). Relevant content material can be placed below the fold because a user will always scroll down to view content whereas they are unlikely to scroll down to specifically view AdSense ads.
• Leaderboards work extremely well near the top of web pages.
• Borderless skyscraper columns perform well if arranged around the content areas of web pages.
• Rectangle ad units perform very well within the content areas of web pages. They are known to be the best performing types of ads when used correctly