Google Adsense - 5 Keys To Empire

You put up with this down to here, so here are the real 5 "secret" keys to AdSense.

1. The best performing AdSense type is the large rectangle. This has been tested over and over.

2. The best colors are blue for the link - surfers know that blue means click me. And darkish almost black and grey for the text and url. No borders. The same background as your page. Will it merge into your content? No, that's bogus. There are maybe 4 surfers in this galaxy who can't tell a Google ad when they see one. They are not going to believe it's part of the text. Wake up, OK?

3. Another format which is being reported to more or less work is the full wide banner type layout with text ads and images directly above the links. Try it and see if it works for you. Maybe it's a fad.

4. Keywords and related content are critical if you want targeted ads. If you want high paying clicks you need to target the costly keywords AND have content that supports the keywords.

5. You need traffic interested in the ads. Which means your traffic generation techniques have to be targeted not scattershot. You might hear that 1% or 1.5% clickthrough rate is OK and 3% is good. Nonsense. Really successful people get CTRs that are often well above 30%. Even with modest efforts you should be getting an average 6 to 15% CTR (per ad impression, not pages).

Those things are true to some extent but the ad size, color mainly depends on the type of site and site's layout. Just my opinion.

And don't try to force people to click on your ads. This will only get you banned.

I agree with the 5 points, you don't need any classes just carefully follow the 5 steps above. Good post!

[DerekForeal]

sherytiger, that was excellent. I have read industry standard publications on AdSense and I am having a hard time believing you explained it in 5 bullet points in a single post. Great job.

[creativityunlimited]

Well put, Sherytiger. That's exactly perfect. As far as I can tell from my work, the large rectangle does work well. It's not because you're fooling anyone into clicking them. It is nearly impossible to have someone click a Google ad and not know they clicked on it. It's actually because these people have decided to click on the ad for a reason. They found a product or service that sounded like something they would want, and they clicked on it. The large rectangle just seems more up front and honest to a lot of surfers. You're making more money by the direct, honest route.