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Since many blogs got a CTR drop during the past few days, I’ve decided to make this blog post to help them out. Luckily, I’m not affected by the CTR drop.
First, what is CTR? CTR stands for click-through rate. It is the ratio of the clicks to the ad impression. Which means that if you have 2% CTR, you got 2 clicks for every 100 times the ad is displayed on your site (ad impressions). Having a higher CTR means more clicks and more clicks means more earnings.
I’m not sure about what a healthy average CTR is, Yugatech says 3% CTR is a good number for blogs. This blog’s CTR is way higher than that. 
CTR is affected by many factors. Ad placement, ad format, source of visitors, visitor’s profile and blog design to name a few. Let’s tackle them one by one.
1. Ad Placement. Our target here is to place the ads so that your visitors will be able to read it and click on it when interested, NOT to place the ads where they will get clicked accidentally.
- Above the fold. An ad placed above the fold gets higher CTR than an ad placed below. The reason is obvious, people can’t click an ad they don’t see, right? Putting your ad above the fold gives the ad more eyeballs and more chances of getting clicks.
- Below your blog post title. An ad placed below your blog post title gets a higher CTR too. This is because people tend to read the ads first before your exact blog post. If they get interested, they’ll click on it. You lost a visitor and a potential regular reader, but they gave you money in return.
Update: As of March 28, 2008, this technique is already illegal. - At the right sidebar just beside your blog post. While reading your blog post, they might get interested on the ads on the sidebar related to your blog post. Another lost visitor but a money in return.
- After your blog post. Putting an ad after your blog post is a good idea. After reading your blog post, you’re giving your visitor an option to further read the comments or to click an ad related to your blog post.
- Near Search boxes. Putting link units near search boxes will give your visitor an option to type keywords on the search box on what he’s looking for or to click a link on the link unit if he found his keywords listed on it.
2. Ad formats. An ad that doesn’t look like an ad gets higher CTR. Format your ads so that it blends well with your blog. Use the same color schemes as what you’re using on your blog. Make it blend. Don’t use borders. 336×280, 160×600 are the best performing ad sizes. Use them well.
3. Source Of Visitors. Visitors coming from the search engines are the people who click your ads. This is because they are searching for something, if they find what they are looking for on the ads, they will click on it. Regular visitors don’t click your ads, and don’t even think of encouraging them to click it. That’s illegal. So, to increase your CTR, learn SEO to get visitors from search engines.
4. Visitors’ profile. Adsense-ignorant visitors will click your ads. People who knows about Adsense will not click it. Blog post talking about making money online thru Adsense and optimizing CTR like this one will not get clicks. Target Adsense-ignorant readers on your blog posts. Talk about topic totally not related to Adsense and see your CTR increase.
5. Blog design. I’ve only realized this after an experiment. A 2-column simple blog design has a higher CTR than a 3-column blog. Minimize the number of outgoing links. Too much links on your blog page gives too much competition to your ads. Having less links give a higher CTR for your blog. Do yourself a favor, remove the unnecessary widgets and buttons that slows down your blog and gives competition to your ads. Do you really need those widgets? I don’t think so. I’m actually planning to give a new look to my text messages blog.
These were all based on my experience, which you could see I’m applying on my blogs. If they worked for me, they might work for you as well. Try them, there’s no harm in trying.
Technorati Tags: Google Adsense, CTR
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December 5th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
thanks sa tips.. nice new template huh…
^_^
December 5th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I’ve been using 2 column layouts in 4 of top performing blogs for almost 2 years now. They are doing quite well until now. My daughter complains that the theme is so plain. hehe. .However for my personal and work blogs which I don’t really monetize, I use 3 columns. Strange thing is my personal blog earns quite something despite minimal google ads. It’s because I only monetize the high traffic entries.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Hello there, pardon me but… i cant fix the bug on my comments how can i fix it do you have some idea? ps. you can erase this i you want after you help me…:)
December 5th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
i fixed it already pala… nasa function.php ang problema… thanks for visiting idol kita sa blogging… :))
December 5th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Tnx for the tips! Followed your tips and might as well, change my template to 2 column.
more power!
December 6th, 2007 at 3:00 am
[...] was going over the article in marhgil page and found some disagreeable matter. His entry #4 says ” Visitors’ profile. [...]
December 6th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Nice post macuha. I just wonder, Is to much blending againts the TOS? Our forums blended a large square just like the a board in the forum. Do you think this is OK? Our site is posted in the Website field in this comment.
Thanks
December 6th, 2007 at 9:32 am
@PinoyBusiness.org … I checked your website. I think, it might violate the TOS. Kindly check this blog post from official Adsense blog and it looks like that your implementation falls on the same category of their second example. You can e-mail adsense-support@google.com to get a clear answer from them.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
3 and 4 is very effective
December 6th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Very nice article, I would be considering change of layout and different ad placement.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
i am trying my luck with seo and i will be using this theme, lets see what will happen applying this..
December 8th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
This time i’m gonna focus more of your genius talent. Take it from the expert sabi nga. Grabe Mar nag try ako last night ng mga advise mo. Tumaas nga ang ctr ko. Ganun kabilis ba yun? Kelangan kong kalkalin tong blog para makahanap pa ng madaming ideas hehe. What can you recommend na post mo about seo? I’m having trouble sa seo ko. Remember the Pinay Scandal? Dati nasa front page ako ng yahoo, ng inayos ko seo plugin ko nawala na ako sa almost 5 pages.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
@Ambo… di naman ako expert. medyo nauna lang sa inyo ng konti, just teaching based on experience
ganun talaga kabilis yun, especially kung may traffic ka na from search engines, your CTR will increase overnight lalo na kung hindi masyado optimized yung dati mong ad placement. Buti naman at effective sa iyo yung advise ko. Regarding SEO, dami ko na naisulat eh, kalkalin mo na lang yang SEO category ko. Hehehe.
December 9th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
[...] this is another secret, Macuha teaches us 5 ways to increase your CTR. In simple words, increase your ad clicks which would lead to an increase in [...]
December 10th, 2007 at 1:10 am
Whoa! Mar i would like to thank you for this post. You know what? Good news! I followed your advise and CTR after two nights i think, from .75 to more than 4%. Yahoo! You’re the best Mar!
December 14th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
[...] There are some secrets to make it happen. After reading CTR Doubled With My New Layout! and 5 Ways To Increase Your CTR by Marhgil i’ve decided to make my own experiment to prove [...]
January 10th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Thanks for the link to this article! I think my problem is Google referrals. I get only 1% of my traffic from Google, it could be because my niche is not so popular and I haven’t done any adword marketing or much SEO research. I do have a SEO plugin installed for wordpress which supposedly does it automatically and I’ve installed a Google Sitemap plugin as well. Thanks for this great article!
January 10th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
@soundtrackgeek… you’re welcome. that SEO plugin only do one portion of SEO, on-page optimization. you need to learn offpage optimization to increase your traffic from search engines.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
ayus ung teknik mo master marghil.. hehehe.. pero need mo din sumugal jan xempre no pain, no gain
or
no experiment no gain…
March 28th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
[...] means that my tip on ad placement on this post is already illegal now. I updated my template and as you can see now, my post wraps around the ads [...]
September 30th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Really good tips! I’ll try them right away!