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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: , , , , , , ,

Google faces malware scare

March 8, 2011 by

Android, which had lately become the second most used mobile operating system in the world market and is bound to overtake Symbian has been lately found to be under malware attacks. It has been revealed that many Android apps may be sending personal information like IMEI numbers, phone numbers, E-mail addresses and other information to advertisers.

Google Android Logo

Google Android Logo

In the latest attack this past week Google has admitted about 260,000 devices had been affected by these malicious apps before Google removed them. Now Google has activated a remote kill switch to remove about 60 odd apps found to be Trojans. This has raised a global concern about the mobile and personal data security on Android Phones. Experts advise having a good antivirus to be installed on the devices and to exercise caution while installing apps from the Android market.

Filed Under: Apps, Reviews, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: , ,

How to manage bounce rate

January 12, 2011 by

Before going into the question about managing bounce rates of your blog or site, it will be better to understand what bounce rate is, especially for those who are new to it, or those who really never cared about bounce rates.

One of the sources that explains bounce rate is the Wikipedia article on bounce rate, which I read quite some time back and find it remains more or less the same now. Anyway, it explains bounce rate as ‘a term used in web site traffic analysis… It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site…’ and gives the formula for calculating bounce rate as:

‘Bounce rate = total number of visits viewing only one page / total number of visits’.

According to Google, ‘Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.’ Google also advises as to how you can minimize bounce rates by ‘tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run’.

I feel the above advice is not practical, as you can only know which landing pages have high or low bounce rates only after quite some time. At that stage, how can you re-do the landing page to match each keyword and ad that you run, unless you want to rewrite the entire page or post? It may be practical for small static sites that are used for selling your products or services. For larger sites, you have to engage SEO professionals who may optimize the whole site for you. Moreover Google does not specify what high bounce rate is and what low or desirable bounce rate is.

Wikipedia quotes ‘Google Analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik’ as having stated, “My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying. I stress that this is my personal analysis…”

A more practical and insightful advice can be found if you read the article, What Is High, Normal And Low Bounce Rates? by Daniel Scocco, the founder of DailyBlogTips, who writes, ‘If you don’t have many ads on your blog and your priority is to grow your traffic and audience, then your bounce rate should be between 40% and 70%…’ Scocco also opines that ‘if you have exceptionally engaging content and a very user friendly design’ you can get your bounce rate below the 40%.

Bounce rate is one of the few metrics that caught my attention when I started my first website way back in 2006, a friendship and dating site offering free services. Then, it was my pet project and I was hell-bound to improve its performance. I had enough time to sign up for e-mail newsletters, visit top SEO forums, and read articles. I tried to follow all the tricks and hacks offered by top-level SEO professionals. But the site’s bounce rate always hovered around 50% to 60%, and it continues to do so. After sometime, I stopped worrying about bounce rate.

I started some blogs initially as a support for my main site. But I also experimented with all sorts of SEO tips and tried them on a few blogs. And I have placed AdSense ads in my blogs and sites. Also, I continued to monitor bounce rate, though I stopped doing anything to reduce high bounce rates.

Recently, that is a few months back, I noticed in my Google Analytics account that one of my blogs showed bounce rates as low as less than 1%, and another showed a bounce rate around 7%. However, though it surprised me, it did not give me any reason to celebrate, as my other metrics, including earnings from them, remained the same.

I think, the very low bounce rate might be because of the change in the algorithms used by Google, and they keep on changing, though you can never know what changed, and why.

In view of the above, though I endorse the highly researched opinions of Daniel Scocco, personally I feel that a bounce rate between 50% to 70% is not bad, as long as your Return on Investment (ROI), and other targets are good. Also, I feel a very low bounce rate, though desirable, cannot get you anything extra, including an improved page rank, though, low bounce rate is a very good indicator of how much your visitors are interested in your site, and how many pages they visit.

If you have your own experiences and observations about bounce rate, feel free to use the comment box and share it with our visitors.

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

How to Use Google Reader to Read News and Blogs

December 25, 2010 by

This short video clip explains in a lucid way how to use Google Reader to read all your favorite news sites and blogs in one place and share news with friends. This video is amazingly simple, yet, makes it easy for anyone to use the application to the best use of the available time to read news and blogs. Now read on some essential facts about Google Reader.

Google Reader is an aggregator to enable you read Atom and RSS feeds online or offline, and released by Google in October 2005 on beta status, followed by major revisions to its user-interface in September 2006, and in 2007 it was out of its beta status.

The application enables users subscribe to feeds with the use of its search or by entering in the URL of the RSS or Atom feed, after which new posts from those feeds are shown on the left-hand side of the screen. It also allows for organizing the feeds by date or relevance, or with labels. And it allows sharing with friends and other without sending the links by email or other means as it used to be.

The mobile interface for Google Reader was released in May 2006, and it can be used by devices that support XHTML or WAP 2.0, and it was followed up by a version for iPhone users. Also, Google Reader is incorporated within Mozilla Firefox and the browser SeaMonkey’s feed recognition which can automatically redirect users to Google Reader’s Add Subscription screen.

In order to use Google Reader, you need a Google Account that is free, and web browsers such as Google Chrome, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Windows Internet Explorer, or Wii Internet Channel, and JavaScript must be enabled.

Filed Under: How-to, RSS, video Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,