Google AdSense Placement

Without correct placement of you AdSense ads you will never earn anything.

There a couple schools of thought when it comes to the placement of your ads on your pages.

The first is to make your ads stand out. Use bright colors or colors that clash with the page their on. Anything to distract the visitor and divert their attention to the ad.

Most visitors find such ads as obnoxious and quickly learn to ignore the ads.

Some visitors will leave your site prematurely if you have obnoxious ads.

The other ad placement strategy is to blend the ads with your content. The goal here is to actually make the ads seem part of the page’s content.

If a visitor sees the ad and thinks it’s part of the content they won’t ignore it. If it seems like something of interest they will click on it.

Now Google allows you to have a variety of ad shapes and sizes on your site. I recommend using the ad that is the widest: 336 pixels by 280 pixels.

The reason for this is simple: Most people read from left to right. Choosing the widest ad makes it easier for people to read and makes it blend into your content better.

The best place to put your ads are at the top of your main content. When someone visits your page this is the first place their eyes go.

Another good place to put an ad is at the bottom of your main content. When a visitor reaches the end of the main content they invariably ask “Where do I go now?” You should answer that question with an relevant ad.

Google has provided an AdSense Heat Map that shows the best locations to put your ads.

I successfully implemented these strategies on my famous quotations site:
MyFamousQuotes.com

Making my content and ad colors match and placing them in the right location has boosted my AdSense earnings by a factor of 10.

When I first created the site I put ads to the right of my content (160×600 skyscraper) and it would get just a few clicks. I thought this was the best strategy because that was how I saw others doing it.

My CTR (click through rate) was poor and my earnings were dismal.

Just for fun I tried putting an ad at the bottom of my content and with color matching my content. I also had switched to the wider ad size (336 pixels by 280 pixels).

The result: My CTR and and revenue went up by 4 times.

I was shocked the first day I saw this. I didn’t believe ads at the bottom of my page, which no one ever saw without scrolling would have a higher CTR. It had to be a fluke.

After a week the bottom ad was still 4 times as profitable and I was a believer.

Next I tried putting an ad at the top of my content and my earnings more than doubled.

I asked a friend to go to my site and tell me what he thought of how I had placed my ads. After looking at my site for a few seconds he said, “What ads? I don’t see any.”

The ads on my site blend in with my content and that has made a tremendous difference.

When it comes to AdSense, there is a lot of good advice out there. Just keep in mind that you can read all the good advice out there but there is simply no substitute for testing different strategies on your sites.