SiteSell Blog

3 Tips for Best Site Design

Content & Article Writing

The best site design for your online business is a natural outcome when you follow these 3 tips...

1) Limit your color palette.

The use of too many color families is a tell-tale sign of an amateur. We amateurs love to snazz it up! But it distracts the visitor and "feels amateurish." So pick two to three complimentary colors.

Use a splash of color (spot color) for extreme accent points. Experiment with colorful elements within your site photos and other graphics. But limit the colors in the underlying images and background that make up your L&F.

The same holds true for font coloring.

Where Are You on the AdSense Pendulum?

AdSense & Contextual Advertising

It's all too easy to be seduced by Google into plastering AdSense ads all over your website ("adsense adnauseum"). Sure, it may (or may not) make you a few more bucks...

But, in the long run, your site's credibility and appearance counts, too.

In the "old days," website owners worried about placing AdSense ads, period. It made the site look "commercial." So if they did place ads, they'd make them almost invisible (ex., small and at the bottom of the page or tucked away in the right column).

A/B Split Testing for Your Google AdSense Ads

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

While quick and dirty testing of your Google AdSense ads can give you some answers over a long stretch of time, A/B testing can give you answers in a much shorter period. How? By testing two different formats, colors or placements simultaneously.

How To Do A/B Split Testing

Google has provided some code that will allow you to make a change to the ad you're already running, letting you run two ads, each one appearing 50% of the time. This will give you more accurate data than making changes one after the other.

There are a few things to remember when doing A/B split testing...

Google AdSense - Test Which Ads Work Best For You

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

We've covered various strategies for maximizing your Google AdSense income. But how do you know which ones work best on your site? Experiment and test.

How To Do "Quick and Dirty" Testing

Your testing does not have to be complicated to give you good information. You only need to track two things... the number of impressions, and the CTR. These two numbers will give you all the information you need to make the right choices.

A larger number of impressions will give you more reliable information. And as the CTR increases, the number of impressions needed to make an informed decision decreases.

For example, if you're getting a 5% CTR for one page and 1% for another, you may be able to decide that the increase (or decrease) is accurate and reliable after only 250 impressions. But if you're getting 0.1% CTR vs. 0.15% CTR, you may need 10,000 impressions to be sure (although you would probably want to change BOTH those pages due to the very low CTR).

Placement Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

The amount you make per click with Google Adsense can vary tremendously, and so can the actual Click-Through Rate (CTR). Consistently high earnings are possible, if you can manage to keep low-paying ads off your pages. It's a demanding strategic challenge but very do-able.

The following page placement strategies should give you a much greater Click-Through Rate for much less work.

Strategy #1) Draw subtle attention to the presence of the ads through smart positioning and formatting and frequency.

We would all love to increase the CTR. So yes... position AdSense ads most advantageously... and place them up to the maximum of three times per page.

Place an ad where your visitors' eyeballs are most likely to flow. That will vary from page to page, and even according to how each page is structured. Common "best locations"...

• above the fold

• in the flow of the content, and/or

• at the bottom right of a page (giving your visitor a place to go next).

Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income - Part 9

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

The last two strategies for maximizing Google AdSense income discuss Interest-based ads and Google's Ad Planner Publisher Center. Don't worry if you never heard about those features. It's easy to participate.

Strategy #13) Consider Interest-based Ads.

If you choose to offer Interest-based Ads (currently, the default is to show these ads), then Google places a cookie on your visitor's browser, and then looks for that cookie every time they visit a site with AdSense ads on it.

If that cookie shows that your visitor is very interested in American football (based on preferences he sets in the Ads Preferences Manager, plus the number of football-related Web sites with AdSense ads, plus the number of football YouTube videos he watches), for example, even though he's visiting your site about green energy, he will see some ads about football. This increases the likelihood that your visitor will click on an ad.

Note, however, that if ads based on your keywords have much better cost-per-click rates, you may want to deactivate this feature. Fewer clicks, each worth more, may be more valuable to you than a lot of low paying clicks.

You'll find the Interest-based Ads preference in the My Account tab after you log into your AdSense account. You must also change your privacy policy to reflect that Google is placing a cookie on your visitors' computers. Even if you opt out of Interest-based Ads, you still need to update your privacy policy.

Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income - Part 8

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

Monetizing your RSS feed with Google AdSense for Feeds seems like a no-brainer. However, there is a potential downside to this strategy that you need to know before deciding.

Strategy #12) Replace your RSS feed with AdSense for Feeds.

Google allows you to add AdSense ads to an RSS feed. This means that you can monetize your feed. However, each "article" in your feed (Google calls them "items") offers only a snippet of a page (approximately the first 150 characters of page content, plus the title). With so little content, you run the risk of alienating readers if you place an ad before or after every item.

Google uses a service called FeedBurner (a company founded in 2004 and acquired by Google in 2007) for their AdSense for Feeds option.

Unlike RSS feeds on their own, a FeedBurner feed...

Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income - Part 7

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

Placement-targeted ads are CPM advertising (AKA "pay-per-impression ads"). Each time an ad is served, the advertiser pays their preselected amount, and Google shares this payment with you. So, unlike the pay-per-click ads, you're paid for simply displaying these ads on your pages. Find out why CPM ads can increase your Google AdSense income, even if the CPM amount seems low.

Strategy #11) Google AdWords' Placement-Targeted Ads... Find out how its CPM Payments feature affects you.

Placement-targeted Google ads allow an advertiser to select the specific sites they feel are most appropriate to their campaign (for example, yours). They may run their ads only on those sites. This allows access to Web pages that may not be keyword relevant, but that nevertheless attract a highly relevant audience for their message (ex., running an ad for off-road vehicles on a site about hiking).

In CPM advertising, advertisers set the maximum amount they're willing to pay for each 1000 impressions ("max CPM") that their ad receives. The price paid is the same whether users click on the ad or not.

Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income - Part 6

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

Have you ever heard of "Link Units"? They are another form of Google AdSense for Content. In addition to your regular AdSense ads, you can have up to three Link Units per page. Placed well on your page, Link Units can contribute nicely to your AdSense income.

Strategy #10) Consider AdSense Link Units.

Link Units are another form of text-based advertising. They work much the same way as "regular" Google AdSense. Place the Link Unit code on your web pages....

• Select "Link unit" in the AdSense for Content section. Click on the Continue>> button.

• Choose the Format (ex., 200x90) and the number of links that should appear per unit.

• Choose the Colors (best to choose or create a custom palette that blends into your site).

• Specify a Channel to track the performance of your Link Unit.

Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income - Part 5

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

Most people think of "AdSense" as being "AdSense for Content." It's not. AdSense for Search is a neat way to increase your Google AdSense income AND help your visitors find what they are looking for on your site.

Strategy #9) Use AdSense for Search intelligently.

AdSense for Search is useful for...

• providing site search results, or

• providing Web search results (or providing both in different locations on your site), and

• monetizing via the Google ads that are targeted to the user's query.