CTR is short form of click through rates. A higher CTR means , the ads are being clicked by more and more blog visitors and more clicks mean more income.This is the reason why a blogger monetizing his/her blog with adsense should be serious about CTR.In this post I will talk about some tips to increase CTR of adsense ads.


But before I start with my tips , I would like to tell about CTR in some detail. Mathematically , CTR can be calculated as-

CTR= No. of clicks /No. of visitors * 100


So, if a blog or site has been visited 100 times and 10 ads has been clicked then CTR will be-

CTR= 10/100* 100 = 10

Most of the blogs have a CTR below 1 and on an average a CTR of 3-5 % should be regarded as decent. Although there are some reports that some site owners have got a CTR in double figures but there are no evidences in support of this.


With so much of background , I will now quickly jump over to the point , tips to increase CTR.

CTR depends on following factors-

1. The ad positioning or ad placement
2. Ad relevancy
3. colours of the ad
4. No. of links (both outgoing and incoming) on the page
5. Reader type
6. Season
   

Ad positioning or ad placement-

Ad placement is a vital factor which affects the CTR. Cleverly placed ads can increase clicks thereby adsense income.Furthermore, there are no hard and fast rule for ad placement. Better ad placement varies from blog to blog and also from page to page.It is a matter of research and you have to research to find what placement fetches you most.

In general, ads at the top ,left and near the blog content has higher CTR.

One of the things which you can do to research your ad positioning is to create a heat map of your blog.Heat map of a blog or any site can be created using Google Analytics.Note following points-

1. Average time spent on your blog- If people are spending more time on your blog or your posts it means that they are really reading your whole content and in this case it is probable that ads placed at the bottom of your post will be clicked.
2. What are the top entrance and top exit pages- Top Entrance pages should contain links to specially adsense optimized pages and top exit pages should have ads placed on the top and in the top of the sidebar.
3. Where people are clicking-Anaytics can show you what are the areas where links has been clicked.Placing ads in the areas where links are being clicked can increase CTR of adsense.

Ad relevancy-

Relevant ads are more oftenly clicked than irrelevant ads.So, a blogger should apply some of the tricks to get relevant ads from adsense.Here I would like to talk about a point.Adsense bot (mediabot) is a sub-division of google bot and so, it crawls the pages in similar way as googlebot.

This means that if you are making your keywords bold or italic , using your keyword in the title and using your keywords time and again in your post you will get relevant ads.These are basic SEO techniques which also work to get relevant ads from adsense.

There is one more tec hnique which makes use of section targeting.In this you tell mediabot , what is important and what is not by inserting a small piece of code in your content.I will talk about this in a bit more detail when I discuss ad relevancy in detail in some other post.


Ads colour and design-

There is a long article available at google adsense help centre on coloue of ads. I recommend you to go through that article.But in short, I will discuss three points-

Blending- Here you choose the ad colour in such a way that it matches with the background and margin of your blog.

Stand out- Here you choose the ad colour which is contrasting to your background.

Complement- Here you use a colour which is already present in your blog.

You can get the details here.
You should research to find what colours are bringing higher CTR and use the same.


No. of Links-

More no. of links mean more options to click and less links mean less option to click.The adsense optimized pages should contain no or fewer links especially outgoing links.I know some of the folks who don't provide any link on their adsense optimized pages , so, visitors have the a few option of either closing the window or,hit back butoon or click some of the ads which sounds appealing to them.


Visitor type-

A blog with more number of repeat visitors experience lower CTR than a blog with new visitors. The reason is, repeat visitors or loyal readers get well acquainted with your ad position and so, there are lesser no. of clicks , a phenomenon called as ad blindness.If you have more number of repeat visitors , you should frequently change your ad positions and colours to negate the effect of ad blindness otherwise you should stick with what is working best for you.


Season-

This may sound incredible for some but it is true.I myself has experienced this on one of my travel blogs.I have seen a rise in CTR in summer season on that blog.


I have just guided you towrds the right path to get higher CTR.But higher CTR can only be get if you research and observe what is working best for you.I would once again repeat that CTR varies from blog to blog and from page to page , so, you must research yourself to see what is working for you and what is not.

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One of the factors that can skyrocket your adsense income is the high paying ads.I must say this is not the sole factor which operates to generate income from adsense program but this is clearly one of the important factors which can make a great difference to your income and money making potential of your blog.Here in this post I will talk about some tips to get high paying adsense ads on your blog.



Before I start with my tips , I would like to tell you a bit about the the procedure google follows to deliver ads to your blog.The ads appearing on your blog comes through adwords.Upon signing up for adwords program advertisers has to choose certain keywords related to their websites, products or services.After choosing the keywords they have to bid on each keyword they have selected.The bidding amount is the amount they will pay when somebody clicks their ad.



So, if you are targeting a keyword with high bidding amount then the amount you will be paid will be higher.This is the basic concept of getting high paying ads on a blog.Now, million dollar question here is , How one could know what keywords will fetch high paying ads? I will answer this question in the paragraphs that follows.



I have found three sites that provide you with the list of high paying keywords also called as PPC keywords.These are-

1. Google Adwords keyword tool
2. Rumler Internet Services
3. Keyword Country

Google Adwords keyword tool-

This tool was originally devised for advertisers but a publisher can use it for his advantage.Upon entering a keyword this tool produces a list of related keywords with average CPC values, advertiser competition and search volume as shown below in the image.

(Click to enlarge the image)

For getting high paying ads you should target a keyword with high average CPC.In the image above you can see that the avg. CPC for keyword "SEO" is $4.18 and for "SEO Companies" it is $7.45. So,by targeting the keyword "SEO companies" you will be able to get higher paying ads than targeting "SEO" as your keyword.

Apart from average CPC you should also pay attention to 'Advertisers competition' column.This column gives you an idea about number of advertisers who are targeting a particular keyword.You should target a keyword with higher no. of advertisers.



Rumler Internet Services-

This is little known website but they have got a giant list of high paying keywords listed in alphabetical order.They also tell about maximum CPC of a particular keyword which adwords keywords tool doesn't tell you.

The only disacvantage I find with this website is that they don't provide you with a list of related keywords at one place.Sometimes it becomes time taking to use this tool.



Keyword Country-

This is the best tool to find high paying keywords for your blog because it provides many information which you won't find anywhere else.It will suggest many high paying keywords, it tells exact or near exact number of addvertisers who are targeting a particular keyword and much more.

The biggest cons is that it is not free.You have to pay to make use of their services.


Using the above mentioned tools you can get a list of high paying keywords.Remember keywords decide what ads will appear on your blog and it is again keywords which will decide what amount you will get when someone clicks ads on your blog.So, pay a particular attention to keywords, do keyword research if you wish to get high paying adsense ads and earn more money from this program.

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Earlier in of my posts I have told you about the five factors that increase adsense income.The five factors ,I talked about are-

1) Blog traffic
2) High paying adsense ads
3) Ad placement
4) High CTR
5) Ad relevance

In this post I will talk about ad relevance and how to get relevant adsense ads on your blog. Relevant ads help in increasing CTR and thus income your b log generates for you.But before I tell some tips to get relevant ads ,I would like to say some sentences about how ads are delivered on a site through adsense program?

How adsense delivers ads on your blog?

Once you install the ad code on your blog the adsense bot (popularly known as mediabot) visits your site and crawl it. After crawling, the bot gets an idea what your blog is all about.It analyzes different words and phrases (Keywords) and based on those keywords it delivers ads on your blog.
Furthermore, adsense bot is a subdivision of the google bot and thus, its basic algorithm is similar to that of google bot.

How to get relevant adsense ads?

As I have already said, adsense bot is a smaller division of google bot and thus, the basic programming of both these robots are similar.So, to get relevant ads you should-

• Use your primary keyword in title- As you might be knowing, google bot takes a close look at the words or phrases in the title.Similarly , adsense bot determines gives utmost importance to the things in the title.
• Make use of html tags to make your keyword bold and italic.
• Use your keywords time and again to get the preferred keyword density of 3-6%
• Don't make use of frames and javascripts as robots are blind to it.
  

Make use of section targeting a tool provided by google to get relevant adsense ads-

Section targeting is a method provided by google to tell the mediabot what is important on your blog.It simply tells the bot about the sections or part of your content that should be focused upon to deliver ads.

You can get the details of section targeting at help page of google adsense.

Although google says it can't guarantee relevant ads through this or it may take a couple of weeks to crawl any changes in the pages but most of the times it works quite fine. In addition ,you should include a significant amount of content inside the section to get relevant ads on your blog.

Relevant ads are one of the determinants that increase your adsense income and so, it should be particularly taken care of.Traffic and high paying adsense ads are of no value if the ads are not relevant to your blog's theme.

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Without any introduction and undue delay lets come to the point. I will start this post with a small question.


How adsense works?

I am sure most of you are able to answer this question.But let me answer this question for someone who don’t know the answer of this question.


“When a site/blog visitor sees an appealing adsense ad and clicks it you earn a share of money that advertiser pay google once ads are clicked.”


I think most of you will agree with me.( because there is no point to disagree in this !!)

OK, lets go one step further.Now I will extract some of the words from the answer I have given above.



1) “site/blog visitor”-

This is important as it is visitor who will click the ads and more visitors mean more clicks and more adsense income. In internet language we call no. of visitors as web traffic or blog traffic. So , more traffic means more income in general.


2) “sees”-

A visitor will click an ad only when he/she is able to see it first. If you have placed ad at some corner where visitor seldom scroll then that ad will not be seen, will not be clicked and you don’ get single penny. So , you have to place ads at a place where people are focussed.Placing an ad is referred to as ad placement.




3) “appealing ad”-

A visitor will click an ad only when he/she finds it appealing. An appealing ad is one which is on a subject or topic in which visitor is interested. In general if you have a post on dogs then your ads should also be about dogs. The idea is a visitor is on your page because he is interested in dogs , so , an ad on dogs will be appealing for him. In technical terms we call it ad relevance.



4) “Clicks”-

You will be paid only when some visitor clicks on your ad.So, if you are able to increase clicks you will increase your income.In technical terms we call it click through rates ( CTR).



5) “money that advertiser pay ”-

All ads don’t fetch you equal amount of money .Some ads pay you more and some less. Actually what you will be paid for a click depends on keywords you have used on your blog. So, if you are targeting a keyword for which bid amount is more you will get more money per click.The cost that advertiser pays for a keyword is called Cost per click (CPC).



So, now I think you have a fair idea about adsense and how to increase adsense income.To sum up the things-

1) Build traffic to your site.
2) Place the adsense ads properly.
3) Get relevant ads
4) Increase click through rates.
5) Target keywords for which average CPC is high.

You have to take care of all these five points in order to make handsome income from adsense. You won’t see results if you omit even one of the above mentioned point.


I will come up with details of each point in my upcoming posts so, check back soon or just subscribe to my feeds.

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