Tips for Improving AdSense Performance

Tear Down the Borders

Remove borders on your AdSense ads. Web visitors eyes wander around the screen; borders stop them from wandering.

Removing borders from your AdSense ads can lead to a significant boost in CTR.

Use Matching Fonts

Match the font of your site content to the fonts of your AdSense ads.

Use Matching Colors

Match the colors of your AdSense ads to the colors of your site content. Make the ads look like content and more visitors will look at them.

One exception to the color matching rule is sites that are designed to appeal to scammers and spammers. Those sites sometimes perform better with highly contrasting colors.

Use Blue Links

Another exception to the color matching rule is to set the links in your AdSense ads to blue. Blue links tend to have a higher CTR than other link colors, because people have become used to clicking blue links.

Use Large Ads

Larger ads outperform smaller ads. Wider ads also outperform more narrow ads.

The Large Rectangle (336x280) is the best performing ad unit.

Use Lots of Ads

Google allows you to use three ad units and one link unit on each page.

Use them all. The more ads you have, the higher your Page CTR will be.

Place Ads Above the Fold

"The fold" is industry jargon for "the part of the page that the user sees without scrolling down". This will vary depending upon the resolution of the users screen and the size of their browser window.

Place as many ads as possible above the fold. Ads placed below the fold are seldom seen and seldom clicked.

Place Ads on the Left

Web users are accustomed to seeing menus on the left side of the web page. Move your menu to the right and place your AdSense ads on the left.

Use the Heat Map

Use the Google AdSense Heat Map to determine where to place ads. The darker spots are areas where users spend more time looking. Place your ads in the darker areas.

Integrate Ads with Content

Visitors will be reading your content. Keeps your ads as close to your content as possible to ensure that the visitors also look at your ads.

Use Custom Channels

Use AdSense's Custom Channels to test the performance of different ad sizes, placements, colors and fonts.

Don't use Low-Paying Competing Ads

Don't clutter your page with competing ads that don't pay. If a user clicks on an ad that pays you $.01, they are not clicking on an ad that pays you $.30.

Use URL Channels

Use AdSense URL Channels to determine which pages are making you the highest CTR, CPM, and earnings. Focus your efforts on building pages like those.

Use an AdSense Reporting Package

Google only supports 200 channels. If you have more than 200 pages, use AdSense reporting software to give you more insight into your AdSense earnings.

Don't Compete for Other Peoples High Paying Keywords

If a keyword is on a list of high-paying keywords, that means that thousands of spammers are already competing for that keyword.

Don't be a follower. There is no money in being one of the crowd.

Do Compete for Your Own High Paying Keywords

Monitor your AdSense URL channels to determine which keywords are making you the most money. Compete for those keywords. Build more pages optimized for similar keywords. Get inbound links for those keywords. Spend your time and efforrt on the keywords which are making you money.

Increase Traffic

In the long run, the best way to increase your AdSense revenue is to increase traffic to your web site.

Will Spencer is the author of The Internet Search Engines FAQ, Entrepreneur Support and Find A Job.