How
To Improve AdSense Revenue
Dear
Reader,
This
e-commerce article will help you make more money with Google
AdSense and Yahoo Publishing Network. All information given
below do not infringe any TOS of the respective service, of
course.
First
of all, PPC ads like those provided by AdSense or YPN are
great ways to earn money online. Especially if you have got
an established and content-rich website. AdSense ads are targeted
ads, which means they fit to the site's content. Therefore
it's likely they will meet the visitors' interests. This usually
leads to a high click through ratio on AdSense ads compared
to the CTR of normal non-targeted banner ads.
Now,
how can you increase your AdSense earnings once you have placed
the ads on your site? Don't worry, there is much you can do.
First,
let's take a look at the factors which directly influence
ad performances:
*
unique visitors and page impressions * CTR * targeting * CPC
You
will increase your ppc revenue by improving one or more of
the above factors.
1.
Improving the website's traffic
By
driving more visitors to your site you will probably increase
the number of ad clicks, because there are more people who
see the ads. In addition, if you can get more page impressions
on your website you will also have more ad impressions which
might result in higher ppc earnings.
Attracting
more visitors can be achieved by optimizing your website for
the search engines, but also by adding more high quality content
and unique services to your site. Also, your site should have
at least an "okay design", because your visitors
will probably not go to your site again if it looks too terrific.
In case you don't know how to do search engine optimization:
I will write an article on this topic as well in the future.
Better
traffic stats will increase the number of ad impressions.
However, this does not mean you have got a higher CTR. The
CTR could still be the same or even lower than before though,
so you also need to improve another of the above factors.
2.
How to get a higher CTR
There
are many options you can choose to get a higher click ratio.
For
instance, you have the possibility to change the ads themselves.
2.1
Ad Colors
In
general you have two kinds of ad colors to choose from: ads
that stand out and ads that blend in.
Both
may have their positives and negatives, but all in all you
need to experiment with those types of color palettes to see
which works best with your site. In my personal experience
(and what I have been told from most webmasters I have talked
to) colors that blend in perform better. Others have experienced
better click ratios from outstanding ad colors though, so
this is something you really should try out yourself. Whatever
option you choose, you should at least try your ads to fit
to the website's design and color scheme though.
My
personal tip is: Match the ad's text color with the color
of your website's content's text color and match the link
color of the ad with your site's link color.
2.2
Ad Placement
Another
factor incluencing the CTR is the placement of your ad. AdSense
ads should not be hidden from your visitors, but they should
be visible at first sight. Again, there are still several
places you can choose for your ads to appear.
Text
ads seem to attract most clicks at the top or in the center
of a website's content area. Especially on websites with much
text content.
Do
you already know the so-called "heat map" by Google?
It illustrates profitable ad placements on an example site
layout. The fields which are colored dark orange experience
the best performance while those fields with a brighter color
do not perform that well.
Anyway,
the heat map is only a tip for you. It's based on Google's
researches from many different websites with AdSense ads,
but the heat map possibly does not show the perfect ad placement
area for your own site. So - again - it's up to you to try
where on your website ads work best.
To
give you a direction: On sites with an article, ads which
are placed directly below the article seem to do quite well.
In addition, you should also place an ad above the article,
so people can click on it at the top and at the bottom of
the page.
Important
is that ads are placed where the user's eyes are likely to
focus on them. You should also try to place the ads throughout
your whole site, because this adds variety across your site
and users have more selection. Also, more ads mean more revenue,
in my experience.
In
case you're running a forum please pay attention to the "AdSense
on Forums" section below. There I will discuss the specific
placement criteria for forums.
2.3
Ad Format
The
third way to improve ad performance is to choose another ad
format. AdSense provides you with many different ad formats.
In
general, wide formats seem to perform better than narrow formats.
This is because people can read more words at a time without
having to skip a line. I've experienced that the 336?280 large
rectangle, the 250?250 square and the 160?600 wide skyscraper
have done best on my sites. These are quite big ad formats,
of course, so they need lots of space, but if they're placed
well they usually generate more income than the smaller and
narrow ad formats.
In
general, wide formats seem to perform better than narrow formats.
This is because people can read more words at a time without
having to skip a line. I've experienced that the 336?280 large
rectangle, the 250?250 square and the 160?600 wide skyscraper
have done best on my sites. These are quite big ad formats,
of course, so they need lots of space, but if they're placed
well they usually generate more income than the smaller and
narrow ad formats.
Another
good format is the wide 728?90 leaderboard, which does best
under the editorial content of a web page or directly under
the page header, in my experience. The 468?60 banner format
does not convert that well, but it can still be placed in
areas where there isn't much space available, i.e. directly
in the page header (next to the logo) or within articles.
3.
Targeting
The
targeting of ppc ads is very important, because targeted ads
perform much better than untargeted banners. Therefore you
should make sure all ads on your website show targeted ads
which fit to your site's content. This will increase the CTR
of the ads and also result in a better branding of your site,
because people only find content and links that fit to your
site's topic.
Many
webmaster have problems with ads that don't show proper text
links. Anyway, it's quite easy to target ppc ads.
The
first you should do is to control whether the site has enough
content. The more text content there is the faster and more
accurate your ads will be targeted by Google's bots. So you
should add additional content to your site to get better ads.
If
you still don't get advertising links that fit to your site's
content and thus to your visitors' interests, you should implement
section targeting.
Section
targeting is a very useful tool to help Google find the best
ads for your site. It allows you to suggest sections of your
text content that you'd like Google to emphasize when matching
ads to your site's content.
You
can implement section targeting by adding special HTML comments
to your site's HTML code.
The
HTML tags to emphasize a page section take the following format:
<
!- google_ad_section_start ->
<
!- google_ad_section_end ->
If
you want Google to ignore specific sections of your site when
targeting ads you need to use the following comment tag:
<
!- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) ->
Here's
an example of how your site's code should look like after
implementing section targeting:
<
html>< head>< title>Your Site's Title< /title><
/head>
<
body>
This
is text content of your web page.
<
!- google_ad_section_start ->
This
is the text which you want Google to emphasize when targeting
ads.
<
!- google_ad_section_end ->
Here
might also be some content.
<
/body>
<
/html>
Please
keep in mind a significant amount of content should be placed
within the section targeting tags, because insufficient content
might result in less relevant ads to appear on your site.
Also, it is against Google's TOS to use ad targeting to display
ads which don't fit to your site's content, so you only may
use section targeting to emphasize content sections of your
site which include proper content.
Another
way to improve ad targeting for your site is to emphasize
specific terms by making them bold (< b> or < em>)
or making them a heading (< h1> or < h2>). Google
will pay special attention to emphasized terms and phrases
within your web page.
4.
CPC
The
fourth way to improve your total advertising income is to
get a higher cost per click on ads displayed on your site.
But how to increase the CPC?
First
of all, you should do some research on different keywords
which fit to your site's topic. Go to Google and perform searches
for these keywords. The more AdWords ads appear in the right
bar of Google's search results the likelier it is that ads
for the regarding keyword have got a higher CPC. In addition,
you can take advantage of Overture's Bidtool to determine
which keywords pay well in terms of PPC advertising. Although
the Overture tool is a direct indicator for the YPN, you can
still use it to get a good idea of the keywords' click prices.
Now
that you know which keywords AdSense should display ads for
on your site the only thing you need to do is to target ads
for the keyword(s) you have chosen. You can do this by adding
additional and targeted content and by emphasizing words or
complete sections of your web page, as explained above.
5.
Google Search Box
AdSense
also offers the possibility to implement Google Search into
your website. Google Search is a useful service for your users,
it can search either your site or the whole Internet. The
search results pages can be customized to fit with your site's
theme, and you'll be paid for every valid click on the ads
that appear. The search box is also great to earn money from
visitors who did not find what they were looking for on your
site, because the search box allows them to search exactly
for what they have been looking for and it will display ads
that are targeted based on the keyword(s) they search for.
So
the Google Search Box can earn you some extra money. You should
not expect too much from the search box though. I have only
been able to increase income by 1 to 3 per cent through Google
Search.
6.
Optimization tips for forums
While
I have already written much about placing ads on "usual"
websites here are some tips on how to make more money from
PPC ads displayed within forums:
Ad
Format & Placement
160?600
Skyscraper ads placed above the fold on the left side of your
forum seem to perform very well. However, you should also
place a 728?90 leaderboard ad below the forum's header. The
combination of these two ad formats works well and results
in a high CTR, in my experience.
This
can also be seen in Google's Heat Map and I can only confirm
the ad placements suggested by the heat map.
In
addition, you should also place an ad between the first and
the second post of the threads in the forum. There already
exists a script for vBulletin which automatically displays
PPC ads in this place. You should integrate this script to
your forum to improve PPC income.
Above
I have written that a leaderboard ad directly below the editorial
content would work fine. This suggestion also works with forums.
Therefore it is a good idea to place a leaderboard ad directly
below the last post of the thread, because user's who read
the whole thread might be looking for the next link to click
on - and what's a better link than a targeted ppc link?
Anyway,
this would require you to remove the leaderboard ad below
the forum's header, because you may only display 3 AdSense
ads per page. I would recommend to do so, because the leaderboard
ad at the bottom of the page seems to perform better than
the ad below the header, in my experience (and against Google's
heat map). Instead, I would place one of Google's horizontal
link units below the header (a link unit may be placed as
an additional ad, so you can display more than 3 ads per page).
Over
all you should try to use ads that blend in, because people
spend lots of time in forums and the forum design should not
be disrupted by outstanding ad colors.
Google's
Search Box can also be implemented into your forum. I'd suggest
to place it directly in the forum's search tool. For instance,
dnforum.com offers its members to use both the forum's and
Google's site search.
Well,
that's it. I think I've written everything which came up to
my mind at the moment.
I
hope you have enjoyed reading this article and at least some
of the above information will be useful for you.
Thank
you.
Sincerely,
Dominik Mueller
Dominik
Mueller is Founder, CEO and Senior Domain Broker of dnbroker.us,
a domain brokerage company. In addition, he publishes a blog
dedicated to domain names, web hosting and e-commerce (dodo1.com)
and is a moderator of the domain name forum DNForum.com.
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