Mar 21, 2012 3 min read

How to Increase Your Adsense CTR

As you know from recent posts, I was able to sit down recently with members from the Adsense team. They are making their way across the country in a attempt to get out and meet more publishers. In the last post, I talked about how to improve your adsense revenue. Today we are going to … How to Incr

Today we are going to talk about increasing your Adsense CTR. CTR is the click thru rate that you have on your site. For every 100 visitors, how many of them click on your ads? You can find your percentage inside your Adsense account.

Unfortunately, I cannot share with you any of our specific numbers as it is against the Adsense Terms & Conditions. However, I do want to share with you some optimization tips that the Adsense Team shared with me. Some of these I already knew about and a few others were new to me.

Just before I share these tips, it is important to mention that providing optimal user experience should always be a priority. Some bloggers lose sight of this. In an effort to maximize earnings they go over-board on ads, just to make a few more bucks. Everything should be done in moderation and it should never mask or cover up good, quality content.

1. Improve Your Ad Placement

Like I mentioned before, more is not always better. The goal is not to clutter your page with as many Adsense ads as possible. The goal is strategic placement. Below you will see a few of the most optimal places to put ads.

Placing ads in content can be a good idea. The left side seems to be an optimal place. It is where the eyes follow and your ads will get noticed.

Near the navigational menu at the top is another ideal spot for Adsense. Whether you choose to use an Adsense search box, 728×90 Leaderboard Ad, or an Adsense Link Unit is up to you. Strategically placing your ad can increase your CTR.

2. Consider Color Blending

There are debates all over the internet as to whether you should make your Adsense ads ugly enough to get noticed or blended in to make it fit with your site. Bob and I take the blended approach. I like to remove any contrasting background color and borders for this reason.

I have also experimented with what color to make the link text and I think the regular blue color works best. Everyone knows that a blue link is clickable. When it comes to the rest of your text ad, match the font color if possible or shade it a bit lighter.

Whatever you do, feel free to experiment and see what works for you.

3. Keep Ads Fresh for Returning Visitors

This last point was made by the Adsense Team and to be honest it has not been something that I have done (not as a strategy at least). They suggest that if you have a high amount of return traffic on your site, then you should consider moving around your ad placement ever so often. Their reasoning is that visitors can become dull to the ads and not really pay any attention to them. Changing up the ad placement can cause them to take a bit more notice.

Whether you take that approach or not is up to you. Some bloggers install a plugin that turns Adsense ads completely off for returning visitors. I guess it all depends on your goals for the site and what you are trying to accomplish.