How to Optimize your Google AdSense Ads

Learn how to optimize your Google AdSense Ads to make more money - experiment with layouts, borders and backgrounds.

My first attempt with Google AdSense involved placing a skyscraper ad down my side margin. The click through rate was abysmal, far less than 1%. My first reaction was definitely the wrong one. I suggested in the text that people should look at the ads. This is a definite no, no. (Google reps please note, the last sentence was a meta-sentence and was not an encouragement for people to look at ads!)

Fortunately, the maintainers of the Google AdSense system are not the ogres that some people make them out to be. They sent me a friendly missive suggesting I should cease from directing people to the ads. I complied. But then I was back to my abysmal CTR.

After reading the Google AdSense help pages, I came across the hotspot diagram. This gave me the inspiration to put more ads on the page, and in better positions. There is no need to spell this out, I'll just say I placed ads in the hottest spots that Google suggested. To my amazement the CTR rate shot up! It went far above the CTR rate induced by my misdemeanour.

I was worried for a second, thinking, "It's doing too well, Google will ban me." But I quickly relaxed. All I had done was follow the hotspot advice. Could they kill me for that? Indeed, for the last few years I have enjoyed the high CTR rate; and without Google deciding I was doing too well!

Although placement made the biggest difference, there were other optimization tactics that I found to be incredibly effective. For instance, I found matching the background of my ads to that of the site worked very well. In fact, Google recently made white backgrounds to their ads the default. This has the added advantage that less JavaScript code is now cluttering up my pages, making them easier to maintain and quicker to download. They are also (probably) more attractive to the search engines as the proportion of "real text" is increased.

Adding images, or buttons, at key points on the page also works. This draws the attention of the reader to areas containing ads. Keeping the web page simple keeps the CTR rates high. If the ads are the most noticeable thing on the page then they are more likely to excite your visitors. Some grey hats recommend making your page look awful, and your text garbage, so visitors will click on the ads to get away! But I would not recommend this. It's likely to get you banned by the search engines, and it is unnecessary.

If you have visually simple, but not awful looking, pages you will attract your visitors to stay in the nice surroundings for a moment before leaving via the ads. By writing the best content you can you will be doing your best to make the web a better place. And that's worth more than money.