How To Improve AdSense Revenue
By Dominik Mueller

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.


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.