AdSense Optimization -Tips To Make More Money With Google Adsense
March 23, 2009 by Erich Mosier
Filed under Adsense Secrets
The most important thing is that you want your ads to be where they are looking. How do you know where your readers are looking? In short, you don’t. But we can make some educated guesses and use some tools to help us find out.
Heatmaps -The best places to put your ads
So what is a heat map? A heat map is a way to show the most likely places that people click on ads. Using data that Google gathers from all of the sites show their ads, they have been able to develop a map show the best places for your ads.
What the map shows is that the strongest performing ads are right in the middle (dark orange), while the weakest performing ads are shown in yellow. One thing you should notice is that the majority of the best performing ads are located above the fold. Also ads that are placed close to rich content (images, videos, etc.) and navigation tend to do better.
Keep in mind that this is just a recommendation, and does not guarantee that these places will improve your CTR ( click through rate). You will need to decide based on the layout of your site and other factors where the best place to put your ads is.
Usability Testing - Know where your readers are clicking
Similar to the concept of a heatmap, but these are direectly tested on your website to see where people are clicking.
There is a company name Crazy Egg that you can set up an account with and track your sites. As of this writing, their plans range from $9 per month to $99 per month depending on how many visits and how many pages you want to track.
Make sure they see it - Always have an ad unit showing above the fold
It’s a well-known fact that the majority of people that visit websites spend their time above the fold. What this means is that most of what they spend their time looking at is what they first see when a site comes up. Anything that they have to scroll to see is not considered above the fold. Unfortunately, what is considered above the fold varies depending on the individual’s screen resolution of their monitor.
So while a person with a 17 inch monitor with resolution set to 800 x 600 will see something like this:
A person with a 22 inch widescreen monitor with a resolution set to 1680 x 1050 will see something like this:
So it’s important to keep in mind that just because what you are seeing on the screen when you are setting up your site, is not necessarily what everybody will see. Most people will assume the lowest common denominator (800 x 600) and make sure everything is above that. But again, the choice is up to you and it will depend on how your site is laid out.
Here is a handy free tool that will let you test your site on various size screens:
Tips and Tricks - Sneaky but useful
- Put an image close to your ad unit. People will always look at an image on a page, no matter what the text is on the page.
- You can also put it next to a button, like a "submit" button, a "next page" button, or any other type a button and it works on your page.
- Next to a search box may also be a good place to put something like a link unit.
Eye Tracking - Find out where they are looking
Eye tracking can be a bit of an expense, but depending on your budget and your expected AdSense revenue, it may be worth it to invest in having some eye tracking done on your site.
Like heatmaps, eye tracking determines where people are actually looking at your site, as opposed just to where they are clicking.
What Eye Trackers Can Do
- Tell whether users are even looking at the screen.
- Tell whether users are reading or scanning.
- Learn the relative intensity of a user’s attention to various parts of a web page.
- Determine whether a user is searching for a specific item.
- Compare user scan patterns.
What Eye Trackers Can’t Do
- Let you know whether users actually "see" something.
- Prove that users didn’t see something.
- Determine why users are looking at something.
- Test everybody.
If you are ineretsted, here are some good sites related to eyetracking:
Remember to make sure you are not leaving any money on the table when it comes to your AdSense revenue, as with all things in internet marketing, you need to be constantly testing. Don’t be afraid to try new, or "out of the box" ideas. You never know what may work in your particular situation.
That is one of the reasons Google is such a successful company. They know that they don’t know everything and they are willing to try every idea. They don’t turn any idea down until they test it. And they don’t stop testing until they know it will absolutely won’t work.
Best of Luck
Erich Mosier
Please leave me a comment and let me know if this was useful.
