Google earned over $2 billion from advertising in the first quarter of this year alone, and as it pays out up to half to sites displaying Google Ads, you could share a slice of an extremely lucrative pie. The reality for most people is that Google Adsense is a way to make a bit of pocket money rather than a get rich quick scheme, but even so it’s one of the easiest and fastest ways to monetise your website. Below we’ve provided some tips to help you increase your click through rate and make more money from Google Adsense ads.

Getting started with Google Adsense

If you’ve never used Adsense before, have a look through Google’s helpful support articles to set it up for your website. It’s vital that your website and your use of the programme adhere to Google’s Adsense policies to avoid your account being disabled.

Test your way to success

If you read any other Google Adsense tips articles on the web, you’ll notice there are a lot of contradictions between them. One post may say ‘Make your ad stand out on the page’ whereas another will say ‘Integrate your ads so they blend into your website’ and so on. The best thing to do is test, test and retest for yourself to find out what works for you and your site. It’s worth doing tests fairly regularly even after you’ve settled on colours and positions just so your visitors don’t develop ad blindness by becoming to accustomed to them.

Attract relevant adverts

Make sure your visitors see the most relevant ads possible on each page. To do this, ensure that each page you display Google ads one is centred around a particular theme. It also helps if your site is centred around one specific topic, but this isn’t always practical. Mention words and phrases related to the ads you want to display in the content of the page, for example if you want to display ads about garages, you will want to have body copy about cars, carports, vehicle storage etc. as well as garages. This way you should get a slightly more varied selection of ads that are still relevant for your visitors. It also reduces the possibility that Google will show completely unrelated ads in the event that they can’t make a ‘match’ of things to show.

You can tell Google which content to focus on for keywords and which to ignore, which is particularly useful if you need to have non-keyword content on the page (for example if you have instructions or call to actions). You can find out more here.

Bear in mind that your domain name may also have some impact on what ads are shown if Google isn’t getting strong enough on-page signals or your website doesn’t have a theme that is readily translated into a commercial ad. You can block ad sources in the Adsense control panel if you find you’re getting irrelevant ads. If you’re concerned that Google isn’t finding enough relevant ads, you can specify a source which will be displayed when Google can’t find ads – but remember that you aren’t allowed to display ads from networks such as the Yahoo Publisher network on the same page.

Choosing and styling your ads

Many people have found that using the same font for Adsense and the text on your website helps you to get clicks. Whilst you don’t want to deliberately try and mislead visitors by making ads indistinguishable from your content, you equally don’t want to turn them into something that your visitors will avoid (either consciously or subconsciously).

If you want to make your ads stand out, then use attractive colours which are in keeping with the shades of your website. You don’t need to use lime green and orange to give your ads high visibility!

Experiment with image ads and text ads. Adsense gives you the option of displaying either, or a mix of both, so monitor displays and clicks carefully to see which works best. Many people prefer text ads to avoid the banner blindness black hole, but it’s really up to you.

Google recommends certain ad sizes, and general consensus is that the large 336 x 280 rectangle is the best choice, particularly if you’re displaying text ads.

Positioning your ads

Play with your ad positions, and vary them throughout the page. If you only keep ads at the top of your page, e.g. with the intro text and in the sidebar, then visitors reading to the end of the article won’t be encouraged to click an ad. But it really depends on the structure and content of your site.

If your primary aim is to get visitors to click an ad, then cut down on your distractions. Instead of persuading them to sign up to your newsletter, view another page or leave a comment, keep it simple. Avoid call to actions at the bottom of posts that link to external sites and will encourage visitors to leave.

Some people find that positioning their ads one or two paragraphs down the page is the best place as visitors have often decided what they want/whether to keep reading quite early on. You can get more tips and advice on ad positioning using Google’s optimizer tool.

Watch your content to advert ratio

It’s common advice that a very simple website with minimal styling and colour encourages visitors to click ads to leave the site. However, the danger is that visitors will simply close the tab and never return. If you rely on repeat visitors (as opposed to first-time visitors finding your website via high Google rankings) this could be quite damaging in the long run. Developing a website that looks and feels like a quality source of information means you’re more likely to get repeat visitors and links from other sites.

Remember than advertising isn’t the be-all and end-all of your site, and to rank well in the search engines you need good quality, unique content updated on a regular basis. Don’t just create a website to earn money from ads.

Google is also increasingly focusing on ad to text/content ratios, so even though more ads may increase your CTR, you may find your rankings drop from Google’s updates. Aim to have at least 300 words (500 or more is better) on a page, and don’t have more ad space than content space. This is especially true if your pages contain other types of advertising; you may view them as individual ads, but your visitors will just see them as ‘a lot of ads’.

Cull underperforming ads

Monitor how each block of ads is performing on your page. It’s tempting to go for the maximum of three blocks, but more ads on show means more lower-paying ads will be displayed, causing you to earn less when people click through.

For most websites, getting the positioning right is the more important factor. The first ad block on your page will give you the best-paying clicks, so make sure it has the best position. Some people choose to block ads which pay less via the Adsense control panel, but ads can pay out different amounts in different countries so be careful.

Although your earnings will be capped to some degree by the amount of traffic your site gets, it also depends on how targeted that traffic is. Even if you only get 20 or 30 visitors a day, you can still earn a reasonable amount of money per month if your visitors are targeted and your click through rate is high (it also helps you to have a site focused around high-paying keywords of course!).

Don’t spread yourself too thin

Once you have some money coming in, it’s common to think that you should create more websites and increase your earnings that way. However, remember that more sites mean a lot more work, particularly if you want to keep them competitive with fresh content. Work on improving your first site’s rankings and ensure you get a site well-established before moving on.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you’re working in a small market if you’re not earning very much – earnings drop massively after the first two or three positions for a search term. Improving search results for your chosen terms or running a cheap pay-per-click advertising campaign can make all the difference.

Monitor carefully

Use Adsense tools, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to track which pages have the highest click through rates. Transfer ideas and layout to the pages with the lowest click through rates. In particular, compare what keywords you’ve used, where you’ve linked to the page within your website, where the ads are located etc.

Use heat maps to find out where your visitors are looking and clicking when deciding/altering the positions of your ads. If your ads are on the left but your visitors are looking and clicking on the right of the page, you’re likely to miss out on clicks. Google Analytics has heat map functionality, as does Open Web Analytics (which is available as a one-click install via your eXtend control panel).