No More AdSense

I have decided to take AdSense of of the site because of a low CTR (Click Through Rate). Well it was really worse than a low CTR, it was more like a no CTR. Since the beginning of TWR I have tried multiple ad placement techniques and they have resulted in zero clicks. Not only that but it has brought down the CTR across my whole network of sites. AdSense seems to work better on niche sites but every other webmaster out there will tell you the same. You may need to evaluate how well it is doing on your site also. Now if you have only one site then it doesn’t really matter if you use it or not but if you have more than one site and site A gets a poor CTR then it will bring down the earnings of the clicks on all of your other sites. You can read about smart pricing over at Court’s blog. To sum it up though, Google will devalue the clicks on your sites because of a low CTR. You want to try and stay above a 3% CTR to keep from being smart priced out of your earnings.

Increasing CTR

How do you increase your CTR? Well ad placement is key. Now on some of my sites I have done well with link bars below the header. Different sites will have different results though for that type of placement. On Google they have recommendations for ad placement

In the picture the darker the area, the better the placement. Now this is just a general reference but it is a good start when trying to figure out what works best on your site. Now when you place a few ads, make sure you place each one in a descriptive channel so that you know how each ad performs. In your AdSense account you will be able to get fairly detailed statistics on each channel so that you can decide where ad perform best for you.

Ad Integration

You should also make sure that you blend the ad into your site well. It is not about deceit, it is about aesthetics. Just because your ad stands out doesn’t mean that it will get more clicks. It should look natural on your site. Below are two examples of ads, which one looks better?

The one on the left uses the same background and text colors as the content (close anyways) and the one on the right uses the standard ad layout and it stands out from the content while making the page look bad. Don’t know what colors your template is using? Download a color picker like ColorZilla that installs in your Firefox web browser. If you are not using Firefox then you can download
. You can get a lot of great ad ons to make Firefox an outstanding webmaster tool. Once you have the hex code for your colors then you can apply that when you build your ads in you AdSense setup console. There you have it, better looking ads that don’t make your site look bad.

How do you place your ads? When I first started I tried to place my ads out of the way so that it would not interfere with the viewers experience. As a result I seen a very low CTR and very little earnings. I adjusted the placement but have just now started really examining how well the ads that I display are performing. Don’t wait as long as I did, be proactive and get your site in order. Have you seen success with a unique ad placement? Well tell us about it in the comments. I would also like to know if the ad was helpful. Thanks for reading and good luck.