Placements

AdSense Checklist

Mark

Jun 8 |17:09

Have a website with no AdSense on it? But if you are considering to do so, then we’ve compiled a list for you so you know exactly what to do and don’t miss out on anything. You can also make a visit to our Complete Adsense Guide on DuoBlogger.

Step 1: Signed Up?

Already signed up with AdSense? If not then read our sign up for AdSense post and follow the steps, as well as tips, there.
If you already have an AdSense account then you’re good to go.

Step 2: Review your possible placements

Review your own website where you want your ads to be placed.
If you think logically here:

Do I want to maximize my earnings?

Inside your content
Mainly above the fold
Aggressive placements (ever visitor MUST see the ads, every visitor that has not seen a ad is a potential loss of click)
Place link units at your site’s navigation menus
Place all possible ad units possible per page. (depending on how many advertisers there are for that specific niche)
- 3 Content Ads
- 3 link units
- 1 or 2 custom search boxes
General niche site? Consider placing the ads only on subpages and not on homepage as that will only give you unrelevant ads
To solve that part, if you’re using a blog, go for 1 post on the homepage
Ads on individual pages instead? -> more relevancy

or:

Do I want to keep my website user-friendly?

Ads should jump out more, meaning other URL/text/title color, making it look more like an advertisement (let the visitors choose to click the ads if they are interested in it, don’t draw attention to them instead)
Placing your ads at positions which already contain links to other resources (bottom of page or post)
Below the fold and right sidebar
Make sure that the ads are not in the way for browsing visitors
Ideal for webmasters that want to use AdSese to cover the costs of their website

Step 3: Creating the Ads

Did I choose the right ad formats?

Make sure you avoid Banner Blindness, by making sure you don’t choose leaderboards or horizontal ad formats
Make use of Rectangles/Squares
Am I using Link units? They always bring in a buck or two
Use image ads or not?

Did I choose the right colors?

Am I using the standard ad colors? (better for non-profit websites)
Am I blending the ads using the same colors as my website does? meaning:
- Same title color as the link colors, usually something like: standard #0000ff or navyblue #000080
- Same text color as my websites content colors, mostly black #000000
- Using the same URL color as text color? (light grey is also an option)
Is the background color the same as my websites default background color?
Never ever use borders, period.

Am I tracking each ad unit per page (and per website) with channels?

Did I create a channel for every ad unit?
Did I include a description for every channel? (why? see further below)
Are the channels targetable? (same reason, see below)

Step 4: Implementing the Ads

This part is completely up to you :) If you are unsure how to add AdSense to certain parts of your website then drop a comment below or send us an email.

Step 5: Review your website again

Are you happy with the placements? Are the colors ok? Are the Ads not too aggressive (within the TOS)?
Tweak a bit in the coding whenever you feel like AdSense in not yet placed correctly.

Step 6: Promote your Website using Google Ad Planner

By creating your own promotion page for AdWords user to placement target your channels (which are linked to your ad units – that’s why I told you to include a description for every channel, let the advertiser know which place the ad is and how it will perform vs other places on your website. This simple system from Google could massively increase your CPC by a whole lot.
It’s best if you read our Google Ad Planner blog post, as it’s more detailed
Example: D3scene

There are 2 ways to quickly promote your website to AdWords users: place a link to your Ad Planner page at the bottom or top of your website. And search google for your keywords and therefore advertisers and send them an email instead to placement target your website. Give them a good reason to do so, else they will just ignore the mail.

Step 7: Watch, Learn and Enjoy

Now that you completely integrated AdSense into your website, you can site back and watch your money flowing in. However it does not stop here, there are always ways to increase your earnings – which is good – but it sucks up time.
Because you, if you followed step 3, integrated channels into your ads, you can monitor how each is performing and tweak the placement/colors a little.
AdSense comes down to experimenting experimenting and experimenting. There’s no way around it, if you want maximum profit from it. Try a different set of ads and placements each week and see how they perform, you can always revert back to your original placement set.

Some other things of note:

Do not, and ever, click your own ads, even with proxies or whatever – Google will know in the end and won’t pay out, simple. (you might even want to consider keeping your websites private from your family as they often want to help you get money and click the ads which might get you banned) – it’s nice if they want to help you, but you must think about the advertisers as well. They have to pay for those clicks and they aren’t getting any conversions for it. Which could lead to Smart Pricing.
When in doubt of your placements/colors or anything else from AdSense, consider taking in AdSense Consulting from us.
Stuck on increasing CPC and CTR? Your only option for increasing your revenue is increasing your traffic. Try targeting other keywords to drive in more traffic.

100% AdSense placements – 200% more revenue

Hendrik

Apr 7 |22:00

Are you using the best AdSense placements? Since starting our consulting service we noticed that almost every publisher screws up with proper AdSense placements. Nonetheless, placements are more than crucial for 100% traffic monetization. Repositioning solely one ad could already have a major impact on your earnings. Don’t screw it up!

As usual for every post part of our AdSense guide we include a video, explaining everything excessively. We recommend watching the videos for relatively unexperienced AdSense users. If you consider yourself an expert you should skip watching and continue reading with the straight to the point explanation below. So, where to place your AdSense ads?

Placing your AdSense ads – video

Placing your Ads the 100% proper way

As previously said, proper placements are crucial. In order to get your ads clicked you have to place them where your visitor looks at. What’s the point of an ad in the footer if your audience can get all the information above the fold?

Check out the following 3 resources. The first one is an in detail scientific eyetracking research which shows where your visitors look at. The second one, published by Google, is more newb-friendly version. The 3rd one is for forums.

All 3 case-studies are different but nonetheless suggest you the following 4 essential points:

Place your ads in the top left
- …That’s where usually either where your navigation is…
- …Or where your site’s content starts
Place your ads in your primary content
Place your ads directly below the content (NOT in the footer)

What are our visitors doing?

It’s essential to place your ads right there where your visitors look at. Your visitors don’t scroll up and down several times just to find the ads (except for the nutless monkeys, which are only 0.001% of your visitors ;P). Furthermore, they aren’t interested in your ads at all.

Do you watch advertisements on television? We have to draw our visitor’s attention to the ads, or else they don’t even have the possibility to decide whether they want to click or not. When your visitors open your website they always look at the top left. It’s an habit, people always look first at the top left for the following 3 reasons:

People got used to navigating around on websites using a navigation in the top left.
The top Google search results are in the top left, they catch the visitor’s attention. When clicking on the link and being forwarded to your website the attention remains at the same location.
Except for the length of the content a website isn’t much different to a book. A book is read from the top left to the buttom right (ever read a book?)

This is where the previously mentioned eye-tracking research comes into play. Look at the pictures, all the pictures show that the visitors at least once look at the navigation, which is placed in the top left usually. When redesigning your website, keep that in mind. People are used to a navigation somewhere in the top (left). Notice, that there is almost no focus on the top right or in general right. So placing your ads right there is an utterly wrong choice. Placing your ads where your visitors don’t look at is an unused click-opportunity.

We want our ads to be noticed

Place your ads in the top left area.

Short Question: Why do your visitors open your website?
- … because they are looking for information which is provided in your content.

Thus another essential placement (extremely important!) is in your primary content:

Place your ads in your content to make your visitor notice them
Wrapping content around your ads (preferably ad left, content right) will get your ad 100% noticed. (Exception: read next paragraph)
Place your ads directly below your primary content for two reasons:

Assuming that you have good content (which we hope) your visitor’s will continue reading your content to the end. Voilá what’s there? An AdSense unit!
As blogs and forums are getting more and more important people know that they can find other reader’s comments below the content. Those comments are usually helpful, so readers scroll down. Placing an AdSense unit there will attract attention.

Analytics together with AdSense

Tweaking placements using Google Analytics

Google analytics provide’s an handy feature: The so called Site Overlay. Using the site overlay you can quickly determine how your visitors navigate around your website and which content interests them in particular. Using that data you can adjust the placements to make your ads draw even more attention.

Most click activity show high attention regions
Place your ads there. Go for link units if you have used the other 3 content units elsewhere.
- Link units tend to work extremely well in your site’s navigation
- Don’t forget to blend your link units.

Banner blindness for AdSense users

Our Enemy: Banner Blindness

Yes, there is this so called phenomenon banner-blindness. It’s nothing invented by communists. Many webmasters have excessively used several banner layouts. We call them bouncers because either your visitor’s attention bounces away or in worst case, your visitor himself.

Countermeasures against banner-blindness

Avoid web 1.0 layouts i.e. leaderboard or in general horizontal banners
- Superior CTR option: Go for rectangles, they attract a lot of attention
- Design friendly: Anything possible, should just be squarish.
The first impression decides everything, read below.

The first impression decides everything

Opening our website our visitors don’t wait a minute to think whether they should click the ad or not. They subconsciously decide, click the ad, or not and they do so within milliseconds. Using proper placements without a good ad-design can still result in extremely poor-performance. We dedicated several articles to exactly that topic previously on DuoBlogger.