Using AdSense on your pages is an excellent way to make money from your content as Google keeps the AdSense content relevant to your page all the time, making it more likely that people will click on the ads, making it more likely you’ll get paid. Here we’ll be looking at things that you can do make sure that effort is seen, and that the ads are going to pay you well for your effort.

Placement of the AdSense Code

OK, the first thing we’re going to look at is where to place the AdSense panel on your page. The bad news is that there’s no set formula as to that golden spot where the ads will convert best as this varies depending on the content. In general terms ads that are placed toward to left or central score higher than those off to the right of the page, and ads that are integrated as closely to the meat of the content are better too.

One very important point is that the AdSense panel should compliment your content and not dominate the page. In trying to maximise the effectiveness of the ads a common mistake is to do this at the expense of the content. If visitors can easily read the content without have to scroll through ads, they’re much more likely to return, increasing your chances of one or multiple hits from them.

The layout used for this article is a good example of ads that are placed in primary positions on the page, without detracting from the content. You probably noticed them as you read to this point, maybe even clicked on them and came back to read the rest of the article if I got lucky!

Formatting of the AdSense Code

AdSense allows you lots of flexibility in the use of different size panels and colours so that you can integrate the AdSense ads into your content how you’d like. This flexibility lends itself to the temptation to make the ads mimic your own content so that visitors click on them thinking that they’re still navigating your site. This is against AdSense policy and while you might get one click from that visitor once, having duped them you’re unlikely to ever see them again.

To get the most out of your ads you should be honest about what they are, use colours that compliment your site but try and make them standout. Don’t forget these ads should be relevant to your content so highlighting them will only serve to improve your chances of a visitor finding them of interest.

Another temptation is to label the AdSense panel as something other than ads, “resources” for example. Again, this is against AdSense policy and is an attempt to dupe the visitor, the suggestion for the “resources” example being that these are hand chosen further reading by the content producer. Of course they’re not so you’re only upsetting the visitor by trying to fool them and Google by breaking the terms of service.

Check Your Implementation

OK, finally you’ve created an AdSense panel that suits your content, integrated the code and are happy with how it looks on the page. Ask a few friends to take a look at the content but don’t tell them why. Once they’ve looked at it, ask them for some general feedback about what they thought and see if you getting any negative feedback about intrusive ad placement. Once you’ve got that ask them if they noticed the ads.

Creating effective placement of AdSense is a balancing act between making sure your visitors see the ads without detracting from their experience with your original content. The answers to this small and simple test should tell you where you need to go in terms of that balance.

Once you think you’ve got it right test it on a sample area of your site. A good idea here is that if you’re unsure between two or three different placement ideas test them all out on different sections of your site. Let these run for a while then rotate the placements until each area of the site has had a period running with each style.

Once you’ve tested the different formats all you need to do is look at the results to discover which method yielded the highest click through rates in each area. Depending on the content you may discover that each area of your site works better with a different format.

Remember to revisit your AdSense placement and formatting styles regularly to see if there’s more you can do to improve your click through rates by testing different ideas and styles as you think of them, or see another examples used elsewhere.