Quick Tips
If you are just starting out, there are several things that you should absolutely do in order to get the most out of AdSense. The official guides offered during the signup process are fairly limited, not offering any particularly noteworthy advice. You may already be implementing many of these, but there are likely some pieces of low hanging fruit among the following.
21. Change the Link Unit Color. Link units will default to the traditional blue color normally associated with links, because this setting generally has the best performance. But in many cases a bolder color will work better, especially if links on your site are a color besides the standard blue. (For example, on MonetizePros.com we would try out orange link units.)
22. Put a Link Unit Under your Nav Bar. This is within the terms of service, and will become a top earner immediately.
23. Insert Banner Ads Into Your Text. Ads inserted into content can be very effective at attracting attention (and thus engagement). Here’s an example of a 300×250 ad that appears between two paragraphs of an article:
24. Move Your Leaderboard Down. It’s common practice to put the leaderboard (728×90 ad unit) at the very top of the page, with the goal of making it be the very first thing people see. The drawback there is that as soon as visitors scroll down–which most do almost immediately–the ad unit is gone. Here’s an example of such an implementation:
That leaderboard is just about worthless; in order to view any of the content (not even the entire headline is above the fold) visitors need to scroll down and put the 728×90 ad unit out of view. Here’s a better implementation, with the leaderboard much lower on the page: 
25. Ditch The Leaderboard. Almost every site that uses AdSense features a 728×90 leaderboard ad unit. While this size is very popular, it isn’t always the best performer because it is inherently separated from the content. Ad units that can be integrated into a site’s content, such as a 300×250, often perform better.
26. Shift Right to Left. All else being equal, content on the left side of your site is viewed more than content on the right side (due to the fact that most of the world reads left to right). If you have a skyscraper on the right side of the page, try moving it left.
27. Re-position Right Rail Ads. If you have a section of your right rail dedicated to ads, try moving it up and down relative to other content and measure the impact on earnings. For example, the screenshot below from CNN shows four of the “zones” in the right rail, with an ad in the first slot. An experiment could involve moving it to “zone 2” and measuring the impact.
28. Align Ads With Content. In the image above, the 160×600 ad is adjacent to the intro video. Most visitors will skip to the start of the article, which puts the ad out of sight. Moving the ad down might actually be better in this case.
29. Put Ads in the Comments Section. The comments section of a site is generally well below-the-fold, but typically received a very high level of engagement (which, of course, is good for ad visibility and earnings potential). SBNation.com is one example of a site that has implemented this layout:
30. Shut Off Other Revenue Streams. We’d generally encourage running other types of monetization efforts besides traditional banner ads and link units, such as Outbrain. But it’s worthwhile to experiment with shutting these other efforts off and analyze the impact on AdSense performance. If low paying monetization implementations are cannibalizing higher paying opportunities, you could make more money by removing the laggards.
No comments:
Post a Comment