Google Adsense is a contextual PPC Network. In other words it grabs the text around your page and serves an ad that is related by keywords to your topic as best as it can. Optimizing your adsense ads will dramatically increase your click through rate. Since you get paid only on clicks, increasing the click through ratio should be your main goal with adsense. Some of what I say below what I researched from reading other peoples opinions, looking at very high ranking bloggers, and based on my experiences with adsense on some of my websites.

Optimal Adsense Banner Ad Size:

The first thing we will talk about is colors and size before I talk about adsense placement optimization. Unfortunately, most novices think “bigger is better” when it comes to ad unit sizes. In some places the opposite is true! As a result, in their articles they will plaster a 250 X 250 ad smack dab in the article. When I start to read something and I see that I usually try to quickly move over it to get to the content. A ad like that just screams advertisement. And that’s the last thing you want to do. What would be a better choice instead, is a smaller 125 X 125 right inside the article. When someone starts reading your content they will see this small ad and will more likely want to focus in and actually read it.

Optimal Adsense Text Link Colors:

Color is another one and almost no one seems to do this effectively. People think they need to announce to the reader it’s an ad, by use of off colors to try and draw attention to it. News flash people, you do not want it to look like an ad! If it looks like an ad, your click through rate will be poor The first rule of thumb is don’t put any colored borders around it.

When putting ads inside your written articles/blog posts, the link url and text inside the ad unit should all be the same color as the text on your website. It should not be the same color as the links of your website. This may sound backwards as it may confuse the reader on what is the text and what is the ad, but by looking like regular text on your site it will blend in better and look less like an ad. Confusing the reader and blending it in is exactly what you want! The less it looks like an ad the better.

The only time the links innside your ads should be the same color as links elsewhere on your page is for all link units and for the ads at the top or sidebar/column of your page. Colored links on banner ads on the top or side will blend in with the other links around them. Link units look like navigational links already, so using the same color as other navigational links on the website will make it look like just another link on your website. One small tip about the url text that is below the ad description. People leave that as the green default. Big mistake! What you should do is (if your article text is black on a white background) then make that url text color a light to dark grey.

Best Adsense Placement:

Now let’s get to optimal adsense placement starting with Google adsense link units. Google’s link units for the most part are not as optimal in earnings as regular ads. They don’t contain the text description that will grab a person’s attention. They also require 2 clicks before you get the money.

For this reason there is only one spot I will recommend the link units. You can put the 5 link horizontal link ad unit (728 X 15) right across the header of your website. This will especially work well if you have a navigation bar there at the top of your website page. Put the link ad unit about 3 line spaces below that and then your main content 3 line spaces below the link ad unit.

The reason why this link ad will be VERY effective is it blends in with your website’s navigation at the top. Many users will be moving their mouse towards the navigation bar at the top of their website. Even if you don’t have a navigation bar there, the link unit will look like one itself! It doesn’t scream “ad” and that means its more likely to be clicked on. I believe that this is the only instance where a link unit is effective. A 728 X 90 banner ad is alternative option at the top of your website. Depending on the website and how it’s structured, one may work better then the other.

For the bottom of your website it’s probably ideal to keep it small at 468 X60. If you have a blog, 200 X 200 or smaller ad unit at the end of your blog articles would be ideal.

If your website is geared around articles or blog posts you will want a small ad, such as a 125 X 125, inside your article. Place it on the right side of the very beginning of your article/blog post. In addition, a 468 X 60 horizontal ad unit will work well blended in immediately after a article or blog post.

If you have a blog, having a 200 X 200 or smaller ad unit show one to three times between your blog posts on your front page is another slick way to blend ads into your content.

If you have a forum, putting a 728 X 90 banner ad at the end of each forum thread is a good spot. Users are more likely to click on an adsense ad after they are done reading the thread. An horizontal link unit (728 X 15) is good to put between the top of the threads and the forum logo.

Images vs. Text Links In Click Through Rate:

Users tend to click on images less, so make sure you have all your adsense ads set to text only. Over the years, people have become “ad blind” and their eyes will quickly pass over a image ad without much thought.

Website Sidebar/Column:

Users tend to click on links in the sidebar/column to the left much more then the right. If you have adsense on your sidebar, then you should flip it to the left side(if it’s not there already) to increase it’s click through rate.

Adsense competitive ad filter:

Adsense advertisers often target ads for keywords they shouldn’t, often for nefarious reasons. These websites sometimes are parked pages or other types of MFA(Made for adsense) websites, offering little or no real content. These types of sites geared for you to click on the PPC ads. Usually the keyword bids they buy are low priced, so through a process called adsense arbitrage( which Google doesn’t allow anymore), they can make a profit.

It’s important to eliminate these kinds of ads to increase your profits. Whenever you see an ad that doesn’t seem to really target the demographics of your visitors or it’s a long/odd domain, name chances are it’s a MFA website. You can type in the url of the ad in your browser to check out the website to verify.