Where To Place AdSense Ads For Earning The Highest Revenue?

August 18, 2012 by

I have seen Google AdSense ads placed at various spots on several sites, including spots that are known to have ad-blindness. In the case of WordPress sites, and other sites that use ready-to-use themes and templates, I find some typical patterns followed by publishers for placing ads.

Whether webmasters knowingly do so or not, I have strong reasons to believe that these ads are not placed as per the choice of the respective site owners, but they are placed according to the design of the themes or templates that finally give the look and feel of the sites.

It otherwise means that the ads are not strategically placed so that the site owners are able to generate the maximum Click Through Rates (CTR) and ad revenue. In fact, some personalized tips from the AdSense team advise the publishers that they lose as much as 60% (or more) of their ad revenue because of ads that are placed at spots that do not give good conversion rates for ads.

Earn More Money By Placing AdSense Ads Closer To Your Unique Content

The most preferred locations for AdSense ads are spots indicated in the Google AdSense heat map. But that need not be the ultimate guide for optimized ad placing in view of the fact that the actual structure of site templates vary vastly and the ad units placed nearest to the content get the most content-specific ads served and in most cases they attract the best ad rates per click.

However, the pattern followed by some AdSense publishers show that their decisions on where ads are to be placed are dictated by the designers and developers of their themes and plugins. This observation is typically true of WordPress sites as well as publishers using Blogger/ BlogSpot platforms both of which I have been using.

The reasons why some publishers follow these wrongly conceived ad placement ideas are as follows:

  • There are several WordPress themes that are predesigned to accommodate AdSense ads. If you make a Google search for AdSense ready themes, you can find hundreds of them, both free themes as well as commercial (premium/ paid) themes. So, most publishers just place their ads in the predesigned widget areas and ad spots without thinking whether these ads are placed at the appropriate places to attract maximum ad clicks.
  • There are several WordPress plugins that make it possible and easier for publishers to place AdSense ads at the desired locations, especially aimed at those who either do not want to mess around with the code of theme files or do not know how to place ads in between codes in theme files. But these plugins too do not tell you which ad spots are the best for your content, or by placing the ads in which spots you can earn more.
  • Most WordPress themes, as themes and templates designed for other CMS software, have built-in provisions for placing text widgets in predesigned spots. AdSense ads can be placed using these widgets also. Again, these also need not necessarily be the most paying ad spots.
  • Some publishers who can customize their themes place their ads at spots where they find the most suitable for placing ads and that too at locations that can be easily customized without breaking the theme’s functions. Unfortunately, these easily customizable areas need not be the best paying ad spots.
  • Some others who can afford to pay for custom designed themes place AdSense ads at locations mostly decided by their designers. Such designers need not necessarily be experts in optimizing ad placement for maximum AdSense revenue. This is not to say that theme designers do not know AdSense Optimization. There are good designers who take care of not only ad placement, but also other aspects of how a well-optimized site should function.

Well, I am quite aware that several of my readers are well-versed with AdSense optimization, theme designing, content writing and similar aspects and how these together can work wonders just like a well-oiled machine to generate the highest revenue out of their sites.

So, in a sense, this small how-to tutorial is written to help the beginners who are new to blogging, AdSense, WordPress, theme designs, etc. and also experts who might have overlooked these aspects. So, here below are a few handy tips that can help those who are new to AdSense as well as blogging.

The Best Spots For Placing AdSense Ads

  • Instead of the commonly used above the fold option (at the top of everything else on the site), AdSense publishers must place larger ad units such as the 728×90 ad banners closer to the rest of the content of the posts or pages, even though they can still be above the fold, that is the spot just above the beginning of the post. This position is more preferable because when ads appear as the first item at the top of the page, they rather respond to the nearest content that are common to all pages like the general site description, site title, navigation elements, etc. This tends to make AdSense think that all posts and pages are similar and either lesser number of ads will be served, or irrelevant and less-paying ads will be served, and that can drastically reduce your click through rates (CTR) and consequently your overall advertising earnings can decrease. You can still use the same spots for non-AdSense ads, and earn quite a good amount of extra advertising income as many advertisers prefer this slot from where you moved your main AdSense banners.
  • Ads that appear on top of the pages are typically placed in the header section, or above the header. Moving larger ad units just above your post or page content will bring AdSense ads closer to the content.
  • Side bars are another preferred spot for placing ads. If you are placing ads on your side bar, try placing them almost at the top of the sidebar. Do not place more than one large ad unit on the side bar. If you feel like placing more ads, you may place an ad link unit below the main ad, but after a few other widgets on the side bar.
  • Placing ads within posts and pages will bring AdSense ads closest to your unique content and they can get you the highest click through rates, the highest rates per ad, almost a sure possibility of ads being served and hence the highest overall advertising revenue from AdSense.
  • Though Google allows three ad units and three ad links per page/ URL, do not try to use all of them unless your posts and pages have large amounts of textual content. Sites such as photo blogs, video blogs, etc. that do not have much text-based content may do well by placing lesser number of AdSense ads per post, keeping a balance between your content and the ads being displayed. That otherwise means, you may reduce the number of ads, if you have lesser text-based content.
  • And here is a confusing piece of advice that can come from Google AdSense. Often you will find notifications or personalized advice/ tips from AdSense team telling you that you are losing opportunities to earn more from a large number of ad servings because you do not place all the allowed number of ad units and link units. My personal advice is: Don’t jump for that, just ignore it. The reason is, if you follow the advice, in most cases where the sites are not rich in unique content, soon you will get another notification telling you that you do not have enough content to place all those ads and they will tell you to remove some ads so that the ads are content-oriented and proportionate to the content of your site.

It is expected that those who follow the above steps can earn over 60% more than their current AdSense incomes, as various notifications, blog posts and Google AdSense guidelines show, and as revealed by top AdSense money makers.

However, what you find above is NOT a complete solution, and you can find many more other options to improve your AdSense revenue. The final answer to how to earn the maximum from AdSense depends on your unique content, spots where you place the ads, the structure of your themes, and several other factors.

In view of the above observations (which at any cost is not a sure formula to earn more from ads), it is for you to experiment with placing ads at various spots and observe how each ad unit returns revenue and to decide on which option pays you well. Keep on observing and experimenting; that is the name of the game to earn more!

And here are two most important practices that you may avoid:

  • Do not place ads (especially ad links) in such a way that your visitors are misled to believe them as your other links and click on them. AdSense policies specifically tell you not to do so.
  • Most site users suffer from what is referred to as ad-blindness. It is especially true of ads above the folder almost at the top, sometimes at the footer and sidebar where several other ads, links, etc. clutter and compel the visitors to ignore them. Placing ads in spots that are known to induce ad-blindness can reduce your ad revenue drastically.

Come back soon for more useful info on AdSense

Filed Under: Blogging, How-to, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Some strange facts about SEO and keywords

July 29, 2012 by

How important are keywords for better search engine rankings of your site?

Well, this is not a quite new question or answer on the relevance of keywords and keyword phrases. In fact this question has been asked and replied millions of times in as many websites and blogs dealing with the subject, especially when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Then what is new or important in this article?

I used to see this kind of SEO questions and tried to understand the replies given by SEO experts and tried to implement them in my own sites. The earliest website that I tried to implement it was setup in 2006. I basically knew nothing about the relevance of keywords or SEO then, excepting that I have to use some such keywords. So, I used some such words in my keywords meta. The site now has about 150 pages, hand-coded using the old style simple HTML and uses no themes or templates, or content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress.

The above said site attracts 500 to 1000 unique page visits per day (keeps on varying) though I have never tried to improve traffic or ranking by link building, internet marketing techniques or any such efforts.

Interestingly, some of the pages that I have meticulously setup after the best possible keyword research rank the lowest compared to other pages that I hurriedly uploaded with some random keywords.

And more interestingly, some pages that I expected to rank low have ranked better than my well-researched pages.

The site itself has somewhat behaved erratically in search results and overall ranking in the past. It has had the highest ranking of Google Page Rank 3 and the lowest of PR 0.

Initially, I used to work hard on improving the SEO, site traffic, and all other aspects of ranking of the site. But, after a year or so I left the idea and just used the site as a tool to understand the changes brought about by changes in Google Algorithms, and other aspects of SEO.

Also I would like to mention that I do not have much control over the contents of the pages, as each page contains free ads submitted by users who seek pen friendship, email friendship, hobbies, etc. For the same reason, the keywords/ keyword phrases for most of the pages are similar because of similar content in almost all pages.

Why do some pages rank better and why does the site gain or lose Google Page Rank?

Some of the reasons I understand for the change in Page Rank and SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are as follows:

  1. The periodic changes in SERPs and the page rank of the site as well as individual pages change mainly based on the change in search engine algorithms, and to some extent depending on how visitors use keywords and phrases to find sites of their choice.
  2. Though I myself tried very little to increase inbound links, users whose ads appear in certain pages do link those pages in their profiles and other features of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Again, these also change; as such links are either deleted or made dead links by the users themselves. These activities do change the ranking of the pages and the site in general.
  3. The pages that had the best keywords/ phrases, other well-planned meta such as title, description, and anchor tags on links and even better internal linking, did not rank well because of poor content (as I said, I do not have much control on content as the pages contain free ads on the same subject submitted by visitors).
  4. The pages that ranked better had better content, the advertisers in those pages had addresses and other little cared for information such as places, street names, and even country names that people search more, but I knew little about.
  5. Political, financial, climatic, and other changes that have nothing to do with my site also change the rankings and other aspects of my site. For example: when there were times when earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and other calamities in some parts of the world, the pages containing names of such places received more visitors than other pages. Similarly, from the beginning of the Arab Spring, people searching for information on Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, etc. brought in more visitors to certain pages that contained references to places or other aspects of these countries, though my site had nothing to do with such events, excepting some people whose personal ads were in those pages.
  6. In recent times Google Panda and Google Penguin knocked many top ranking sites off the first few pages of SERPs. These changes benefited several other sites that came to the top of the SERPs. This alone shows that you, I or anyone else do not have total control on SEO, SERPs or traffic. The sites that suffered also lost heavily in traffic as well as advertising and other revenues.

The above views shall bring forth an important question. You may ask: “Do you mean to say that SEO, keywords, etc. are to be ignored or cannot be implemented for the better ranking of my website/ blog?”

Well, the answer is: No. You have to try your best to use the known aspects of improving SEO of your sites. Those who do better SEO implementation will definitely have better ranking than others who do not care about SEO, keywords, etc.

That being said, however you may try, your ranking and traffic shall keep on fluctuating depending on how search engine algorithms change, as well as how your competitors perform better than you.

And most importantly, as the old saying in SEO world goes, content is the king. I have seen sites with very good content, but not even with any meta tags ranking better than sites with meticulously implemented SEO parameters. That is mainly because major search engines including Google have given up over-reliance on keywords, description tags, etc. and give more importance on content, user-friendliness and user-interaction, and other factors.

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Venus presents a rare show to stargazers

June 7, 2012 by

Video: Stargazers and astronomers have been observing the planet Venus crossing between the Earth and the Sun

As anticipated, the stargazers in several regions of the Earth had once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view the rare celestial phenomenon of Venus moving across the face of the Sun. The event is also so important for scientists — especially astronomers — that the next time Venus makes a similar transit will be only after 105 years.

The planet touched the edge of the Sun’s disc at 22:09 GMT on Tuesday and left the disc at 04:49 GMT. The next transit will be seen only on 11th December 2117, when possibly and unfortunately, none of the people who observed the event now may live long enough to witness it.

The Venus transits take place in pairs of events with a gap of approximately eight years because such transits occur only four times in 243 years (224.7 Earth days to be precise). After the invention of the telescope, such seven pairs of events took place in 1631 and 1639, 1761 and 1769, 1874 and 1882, the only and last such pair of this century being in 2004 and 2012.

Interestingly, the gap between the years of one occurrence of a pair and the other is 8 years. Hence, the next pair of Venus transits will take place in 2117 and 2125.

The present crossing of Venus across the sun is of great significance from the scientific point of view because earlier the scientific equipments and knowledge to study such events were rather crude or not as developed as in the present times.

The transit of Venus also gave a chance to scientists to conduct experiments to probe the possibility of the existence of Earth-like planets elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy, and the existence of life elsewhere in other galaxies. They also can probe the Venusian atmosphere that is structurally and compositionally very complex.

About 96.5% of the gases in the atmosphere of Venus are carbon dioxide (CO2) and most of the rest is nitrogen with a very miniscule percentage of other gases. Sometimes the Venus atmosphere is covered with an opaque and dense layer of reflective clouds of Sulphuric Acid (H2SO4) because of which its surface is not clearly seen from the space in visible light.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that once the surface of Venus had oceans and water bodies but now its terrestrial structure is desert-like with very high temperatures soaring to about 460 °C.

The gases rising up on the atmosphere of Venus do not get into cyclic conversions such as carbon cycle, water cycle, etc. because they rise up and get mixed into the interplanetary space because Venus has no planetary magnetic field, and the free hydrogen in its atmosphere get swept into space by blazing solar winds.

This could be one of the possibilities of life not existing on Venus despite its several similarities to the Earth, despite the two planets having almost the same size, orbit, gravity, chemical composition, and at about the same distance from the Sun. For these similarities, it is often referred to as the Earth’s Sister Planet.

The planet Venus is named after Goddess Venus, the mythological Roman goddess of love and beauty, whose Greek equivalent is Aphrodite. This also indicates that the ancient Romans and Greeks too used to study Venus and associated it with life, love, intrigues and beauty of Goddess Venus.

Venus is the third brightest celestial body visible to humans after the Sun and the Moon, and hence it is one of the first planets of our solar system that attracted human observation. Venus is also known as the Morning Star or the Evening Star because it appears the brightest just before sunrise or just after sunset.

During its transit across the face of the sun the planet was visible as a small black circular dot and it took about six hours and thirty minutes to come out.

Among the most preferred Venus gazing sites were locations in Central America, the northern South America, southern North America, Canada, the Arctic region, Europe including the British Isles, the Middle East, eastern Africa, East Asia the western Pacific and Australia.

Hawaii in the United States turned out to be one of the best places to see the whole event with the Hawaii University’s Institute of Astronomy setting up telescope stations on the world famous Waikiki beach.

Some of the best photographs of the Venus event were provided by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a special observatory positioned at a distance of over 36,000 km above the Earth.

After the invention of the telescope at the beginning of the 17th century, Tuesday’s Venus transit is only the eighth and the only event so far with a spacecraft (SDO) near Venus when it occurred.

Filed Under: Technology, video Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Red-eye effect in photography

April 27, 2012 by
White cat with red-eye effect

A white domestic cat’s photo with red-eye effect (not the natural color of its eyes), wallpaper size: 1280 x 960

This is a picture of a beautiful white cat lazing on a pair of blue jeans carelessly thrown on the floor carpet. Those who have observed the habits of domestic cat know that they may choose the cleanest and the softest of the cloths, bed spreads, etc. to take rest or to sleep on. So, this cat had two choices, one is to laze on the carpet, and it needed the denim, and it just pulled it down. So, the clothing is not carelessly thrown there.

The other choice the cat did not have is the opportunity to avoid being photographed. And the chance it did not give the photographer is to photograph it without the much malice-stricken “red-eye effect”. So, the cat’s eyes are just normal, but in the photograph, it has red eyes.

The red-eye effect is a very common occurrence in photography, especially when compact cameras are used. It also happens when the photographic flash is very close to the lens in the case of better or larger cameras.

Red-eye effect occurs when the flash falls too fast for the pupil of the eyes to close and the blinding flash passes through the pupil and reflects back from the fundus of the eye that includes the optic disc, retina, and posterior pole. The camera records the reflected light that carries the red color of the blood in the choroid behind the retina. The eye also has several photo-sensitive pigments that absorb the lower wavelength components of light such as violet, indigo, blue, etc. and reflects higher wavelength components such as orange and red. This also contributes to the red-eye effect in photography.

However, red-eye effect in photos can be rectified using photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, Apple iPhoto, Corel Photo-Paint, GIMP, Google Picasa, and Paint.NET, etc.

Filed Under: How-to, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Windows 8 Will Have Only Four Versions

April 18, 2012 by

In a blog article on the Windows 8 Editions, Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc announced that the next edition of the operating system will come in four versions: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows RT, and Windows 8 Enterprise. That is, the new version will have fewer versions compared to Windows 7 that came in six versions.

The new version of Microsoft OS is expected to take away a lot of confusion for home users, who had three versions to choose from in Windows 7: Starter, Home Basic and Home Premium. That otherwise means, home users can simply opt for the basic version called Windows 8, unless the user has to use a more technically advanced version in which case the choice could be Windows 8 Pro.

Though, the name of the new version has been confirmed as Windows 8, it is neither announced when it will be released to the market, nor its price whenever it will be available to the consumers. The release of the new OS to the market may take a few months more, it seems.

The basic version Windows 8 is designed for home users who run a PC or a laptop. For technical and professional uses, there is the Windows 8 Pro offering a wider set of technologies such as encryption of file systems, domain management, virtualization, etc. The Windows RT version (aka Windows on ARM or WOA) is a new product that cannot be individually purchased but may come loaded with devices running ARM or preinstalled on tablets and other devices running on ARM processors and mobile apps. And the Windows 8 Enterprise is typically designed for large enterprises.

The new version of MS OS offers more flexibility and enhanced and better user-experience as it can be used with the conventional keyboard and mouse as well as with touch screens, and the user can switch between the two.

Filed Under: Apps, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,

Amazing Nature video

April 20, 2011 by

An amazing Video shot by Terje Sorgjerd from Spain’s highest mountain, El Teide, shows the sky and Beautiful view from the mountain top and is termed “The Mountain”.

Unfortunately, I had to change the video, which can be viewed here, for some software compatibility issues. In place of that view another video depicting the views of the top of El Teide, and views from the top of the mountain, while traveling in a cable car.

Truly Life is beautiful

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Browser Wars get Hotter

March 23, 2011 by

Now that all three major players have come out with their latest browser versions, the Battle of the Browsers has just flared up a little more. There is Google chrome version 10, Microsoft IE9 and the Mozilla firefox 4. And the initial outlook is that Microsoft have erred in leaving out the Windows XP users. By releasing IE9 which works only on vista and upwards they have left out about 50% of the internet users out of the loop. And firefox seems to have benefited directly from it. At the time of writing this article within two days Mozilla claims about 7,373,811 downloads and counting. Compare that to IE9′s about 2.5 million downloads.
DOwnload Firefox

No Doubt Microsoft has come out with a vastly improved product than their last version namely IE8 . There is major improvements in various aspects like speed, stability, looks, customization and all . All the same microsoft had a lot of catching up to do too. But leaving out the majority internet users seems a little foolish. Microsoft justifies there being no version for windows XP by stating that modern graphics and security infrastructure of browser requires a modern operating system to utilize the latest hardware and software enhancements. And by utilising the enhancements in Windows 7 they have indeed come out with the best browser from its stable. All said and done Microsoft loss is Mozilla’s gain and firefox is bound to close in on the browser leader sooner than later.

Filed Under: Reviews, Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Nokia E7 – Latest smartphone

March 15, 2011 by

The much awaited Nokia E7 is finally out and we did a spec and feature search of this new smart phone which has been pitted against the likes of Samsung Galaxy,Htc touch,Sony’s Experia etc.
Nokia E7 Smartphone

It has got a 4″ AMOLED touchscreen display with clearback technology for outdoor viewing.Then there are Orientation sensor (Accelerometer), Compass (Magnetometer), Proximity sensor and Ambient light detector. The other striking feature is the slide out full QWERTY keyboard. Plus there is finger touch support for text input, UI control and handwriting recognition. You can create, edit and share office docs and view PDF files with Adobe Reader.

Its easy to set up your calendar and sync it with Microsoft Outlook. Plus you may get emails direct from Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail, Ovi Mail and others. On the social networking front there is support for live updates from Facebook and Twitter on the home screen itself. You can update your status across all your social networks at the same time, follow your conversations easily with threaded SMS chats.

Then there are Apps like Ovi Maps with free lifetime GPS navigation and voice guidance, F-Secure Anti-Theft for Mobile, Vlingo, the voice recognition app, World Traveler app and many apps at Ovi Store – business, messaging, entertainment and more.
nokia E7

On the entertainment front besides the video and music players and FM there is HDMI out to view HD videos and images on your compatible TV. You can watch and upload videos straight to YouTube too. Then you can capture high-resolution photos and HD video using the 8 MP camera.There is Dual LED flash and face recognition software too. Plus there is a Secondary VGA camera for video calls.

Its powered by 680 MHz ARM 11 processor and 16 GB of internal memory . A drawback is the absence of memory card slot. The OS is Symbianˆ3 as opposed to the Android offered by the competitors. Nokia claims you can enjoy over 250 new features from the Symbianˆ3 operating system.

Filed Under: Gadgets, Reviews, Technology Tagged With: ,

Japan Quake and Tsunami

March 12, 2011 by

Japan has been dealt a double blow of a devastating earthquake and Tsunami . And within seconds the whole world were witness to the live feeds of the catastrophe thanks to internet and streaming videos . Todays technology has really shrunk the world . No place is far from any one.


Coming back to Japan , an earthquake measuring about 8.9 magnitude struck northeast Japan which was followed by Tsunami waves upto 30 feet high and upto 10 Km from the shores.Tsunami waves mixed with mud and brought along ships,boats and cars and smashed against the buildings and wooden structures and destroyed fields and towns. A major oil refinery caught fire in the wake of the earthquake. Further a nuclear alert also has been raised. The following days will reveal the total damages incurred.

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9/11 Attack – New Video

March 8, 2011 by

A new video of the World Trade Center attack that was shrouded in mystery has been released. It’s claimed that this video, shot by a NYPD Police helicopter was obtained through Freedom of Information Act by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Institute was investigating the attacks.

This video has again refueled the conspiracy theory allegations and is worth watching. A brief of the investigation can be found at the institute’s web site.

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