Thread: Improve Your AdSense Performance

Oh, I definitely agree with you -- I'm just sad that I have great processes in place now to crank out MFA sites and I know they don't work well anymore.

dang they aren't that great then Ultimately only the results matter.

I'm working on a similar project now too, the key is to make them look real, grow natural, have good niches etc.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

Oh, I definitely agree with you -- I'm just sad that I have great processes in place now to crank out MFA sites and I know they don't work well anymore.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

I've tested an enormous variety of layouts using two and three AdSense units. The layouts with three AdSense units consistently outperform the layouts with two AdSense units.

I have not seen a niche with a shortage of of advertisers in quite some time. If there were a real shortage of advertisers, the third ad block might not get filled with ads.

One mistake that often trips people up when adding multiple ad units is making sure that the ad code in the HTML source is in the best order. For example, if you have a simple layout with a content ad and a footer ad and you add a banner ad to the top of the page, you can completely screw your CPM. Why? Because if you are not very careful, the simple thing to do is to put the top banner ad code first in the HTML source. This means that AdSense will place the best performing ads in the banner spot -- which is a low-CTR spot. Instead, you want to use CSS to make sure that the best-performing ads appear in the highest-CTR slot -- the center ad. You can still have a top banner ad, you just need to make sure it loads last in the HTML source.

I've been reading the thread and have done some updates on my site South Carolina Vacation Rentals

I added two additional link units on the top and in the footer. I also added a 120x160 ad unit on the left and a 336x280 ad unit at the bottom of the page. I also used your suggestion of changing the link text to blue and placing the first 336x280 ad on the left.

The site has kind of died so I'm hoping that this will be the first step to bring it back. I was running some cj on the site but that was a big bust.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

Not for my main sites. Those are all still hand rolled in `vi`.

I've got a bunch of new sites where I'm testing Drupal and WordPress. I killed off almost all of my Joomla sites.

Why did you kill off the Joomla? I'm working on a Joomla site at the moment.

Originally Posted by bogart

Why did you kill off the Joomla? I'm working on a Joomla site at the moment.

Ahh... that was an old post. I switched back to Joomla.

I have Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal sites -- in addition to static sites.

I think I hate every CMS ever created.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

Ahh... that was an old post. I switched back to Joomla.

I have Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal sites -- in addition to static sites.

I think I hate every CMS ever created.

I switched over to Drupal. It's working better for me on my current project. Wordpress is good. But all the CMS have issues.

I have tried both Drupal and Joomla. IMHO, the learning curve is too long and the benefits are too few.

When you have a one-horse consulting company, standardizing on a single CMS platform has benefits. I already have substantial experience with WordPress, so that will remain my choice until I see a larger benefit from something else.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

Use Lots of Ads

Google allows you to use three ad units on each page. Use them all. The more ads you have, the higher your Page CTR will be.

Link units, referral units, and Google AdSense for search boxes, will also increase revenue, but not as significantly.

Is this really a good thing? I've heard that if you place a lot of ads on a page (i.e. the maximum number, 3 content ads), the $ value of a click will decrease. Is that true?

Originally Posted by dmi

Is this really a good thing? I've heard that if you place a lot of ads on a page (i.e. the maximum number, 3 content ads), the $ value of a click will decrease. Is that true?

As you add ad blocks, the average value of a click decreases, but the overall revenue increases -- unless you do it wrong.

The way to do it right is to place the first ad block in the spot which will receive the highest CTR. This is because Google puts the ads with the highest eCPM in the first ad block.

What people most often screw up is that they put the first ad (with the highest CPM) into an ad spot with low CTR -- such as the upper right corner away from all the content.

People often get confused because they don't remember that Google doesn't know where ads "appear" on a page; Google only knows the order of the ads in the HTML source. With CSS, what you think of as the "first" ad may not be the first ad at all.

Designs with skyscraper ads in the left column are often very bad for eCPM -- exactly because of this. The left skyscraper (a low CTR spot) often appears in the HTML source code before the high-CTR in-content ads block. In that situation, removing the left column skyscraper will often increase revenue.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

The way to do it right is to place the first ad block in the spot which will receive the highest CTR. This is because Google puts the ads with the highest eCPM in the first ad block.

Do link units count as ad blocks you are referring to? (i.e. the first code which appears in the source is a link unit, then an in-content ad and then a siderbar ad)

Originally Posted by TopDogger

I have tried both Drupal and Joomla. IMHO, the learning curve is too long and the benefits are too few.

When you have a one-horse consulting company, standardizing on a single CMS platform has benefits. I already have substantial experience with WordPress, so that will remain my choice until I see a larger benefit from something else.

I not a fan of Joomla. Drupal and Wordpress both use php and a sql database. So, in a way they are essentially both suitable as a cms. The issue with wordpress is that it needs to be heavily modified. Drupal is a better cms for a large website for the reason it is far easier to create menus and organize the site layout. It seems to me that Drupal is a better solution for a large reference site. Whereas, the wordpress site is a lot more demanding in terms of maintenance.