Adsense Optimisation and SEO

There are a lot of sites out ther trying to learn about SEO very quickly because they display Google Adsense ads in order to add to their income. The thing is that the secret about these sites is that not only do they have to be optimised for search engines, they also have to have their adsense ad placement, adsense colours, adsense frequency and adsense advert type optimised for that exact site. Successful adsense optimisation can mean an increased click through rate and increased income for that site.

Too often I see sites displaying adsense that have shown no imagination in their placement. The adsense adverts look like big ugly banners that no-one will ever click.

There is no exact rule about what suits every site in adsense terms. Actually, that's not true. The one rule to stick to is Do Not Violate the Adsense Terms of Service. Read them, know them and refer to them if you're ever in doubt.

Once you've got those nailed, it's time to start experimenting with Adsense.

The first step for just about every publisher is to get rid of those adsense borders and blend the background colour to match your site. It's easily done through your adsense control panel - setup a custom colour pallette and set the border and background colour to match the site background colour where your ads have been applied. Where you have multiple ad units on different background, create a custom pallette to apply to each one.

Placement of the ads on your site is another major issue. Publishers displaying lots of articles often get the best click-through rates when the adsense box is placed at the bottom of the page. Some people split up their articles with the ads, and I find this to be particularly effective. This page gives Google's own advice on the hotspots where you should consider putting your adsense ad's.

A lot of people have started displaying generic images near the adsense ad's in order to draw the users eye to that part of the page and hopefully encourage a click-thru. You have to be really careful when doing this though as you cannot draw any undue attention to the Adsense ad's.

Consider carefully how many ad units you want on your page. You are allowed three, plus and adsense search box and a link unit. Show too many ads though and your visitors may be more tempted to click on the ad's further down the page which are more likely to be lower paying ads so you wont get paid as much. Often one set of ad's will generate a lot more income than two or three units.

There is a lot of good adsense optimisation advice already out there on the web, and one of my favourite places to browse for it is at the Digital Point Adsense forum.

3-Oct-2005