Steps to success with AdSense:
Language of the website
English is the best option. Period. The number of consumers on the U.S. and British markets alone exceeds 300 million. And you should note that the other English speaking countries are not included, not to mention the consumers using this language. Russian, although widespread, is not a good option either, especially bearing in mind the anomaly that Russia is the only country where the local search engine – yandex.ru, enjoys bigger market share than Google.
Color of the banners
It may sound ridiculous but the color of the banners can boost the CTR by several percents. When you have a banner in colors that are different from those of your website and it easily stands out, the consumer considers it an external object, advertising or something else that is not in the proper place. That is why the chances of clicking on it are decreasing. You should make a banner that has identical color to your website’s color. You should even use the font of the banner for your website.
Banners have a framework that separates them from the website but you have control over its color. Make it identical to the website’s background and the banner. This way the framework will disappear and the text content will seem as being part of your website. Consumers will make no difference between the advertisement and the content of your website. Of course, this will be true, if your website is well indexed and the banners show logical advertisements. This is 99% guaranteed if the website is in English. If the website is in a different language, there is a great risk of inadequate advertisements popping up.
Positioning of the banners
The place where the banners are positioned is as important as the aforementioned features. People often put them in the place they find most suitable, usually under the article. This is good, it does not spoil the aesthetics, but then no one sees them and respectively no one clicks on them. My experience suggests that the banners are more clickable when they are positioned in the central part of the website. The second-best place to put a banner at is in the website’s header – above or under the navigation menu. Vertical advertising positions to the right and banners placed under articles, under a website, or somewhere at the bottom, where no one sees them, are least clickable.
Since we want people to click on them, we should place the banners at the places where they expect to find the content you offer. The least we want from them and the less we make them think, the better. Many of my friends have asked me what one of my AdSense projects feeds on. When I tell them it is thanks to the banners, they are surprised to hear it and rush to correct me that there are no banners on the website. According to the ordinary consumers, there aren’t any, but I know they are there.
I learned about this model of positioning by accident. A cousin of mine was visiting me and one day he decided to check where we could stay in Barcelona if we left on a trip the following week. He searched for “hotels in Barcelona” on Google and visited the first 3-4 websites to compare the prices. One of the websites provided information that textbook positioning – it had the colors of the website, it was positioned in the central part above the information the consumer was looking for. My cousin clicked on four advertising links in the banner and then went to examine the results of the clicks in question, which indeed offered information about hotels in Barcelona. He made the owner of the website a couple of euros richer and at the same time, he satisfied his information hunger.
I did the same experiment with more people by making them search for different things online. Everyone acted the same way. No one skipped the banners when trying to find the information they were looking for. In less than an hour, I reorganized the arrangement of my banners and my CTR jumped from 5% to 12%.
Traffic
The issue about the website’s traffic is always topical but we will examine it in a different article because it is important for all type of websites and not only for the AdSense-orientated ones.
Follow the rules
I would like to, yet again, remind you that you must observe all Google rules and requirements. They are not many in number, and they are not too complex. What you are required to do is not to try and cheat the system so as to make a profit out of it in the best and longest possible way. All kind of schemes and tricks for more banner clicks made by your relatives, friends, anonymous proxy servers, and whatever else you have thought of, are doomed to failure. If you choose this money-making method, then you should give up on your idea from the very start and go to the market to sell potatoes and deceive clients with the weight. Your schemes may work there but not on the internet. Here everything is strictly monitored and analyzed and everything comes to light eventually when money is involved.
