How To Maximize Visibility And Response

(Summary of chapter 5, from book “Adsense Secret 4” by: Joel Comm)

1. Ad Placement: Where To Put Your Ads?
   Location is everything. The world's best ad won't deliver if it isn't visible in the first place. What does work is ‘wise’ placement. Put them where your content is most likely to interest and engage your visitors.
   You can create several ‘points of interest’ with the wise use of graphics, tables and other layout techniques. Once you have your visitor's attention with engaging and meaningful content, they are most likely to read and click on relevant ads. And that is precisely what Google wants — ‘educated’ clicks from real prospects, not random visits from bored people. Here are a few simple tips to make your ads ‘click’!
2. Go With The “Flow”
   Identify the reading patterns of your visitors. What draws their attention first? What makes them 'click'? There’s no point in putting your ads in some out of the way place where no one ever looks. Your users will follow your content, so you need to make sure that your ads follow that content too. Look at the design and layout of your webpage, identify the places that you think most of your users look and mark each of them as a likely spot to put your ads. Google actually offers a pretty neat tool to help you identify where your users are most likely to look. Their heat map at;
   https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html
   
   Google says that certain areas are more effective than others. Researchers have also found that when people look at a website, their eyes start in the top left hand corner and then travel down the page from left to right. All of this is true but the hottest areas can vary from site to site. You will need to experiment to find the very best places for you.
3. Above The Fold
   The first thing people do when they reach a website is to absorb as much information as possible before they start scrolling. The part of the page that they can see without scrolling is called ‘above the fold’.
   That’s where you want your ads.
   The number of links that appear above the fold affect how likely people are to click on your AdSense ads. That’s why more ads doesn't always mean more money! Google always puts the top-paying ads on the top and the lowest-paying ones at the bottom.
   If you have a stack with three or more ads, the cheaper ads might steal attention away from high-paying ads and clutter up your website. You don’t want ads and links competing against each other. If you want to increase your earnings per click, remember: Less is More! And that’s particularly true above the fold.
   The moral of the story? If you want to maximize your AdSense clicks, give your visitors fewer choices above the fold!
4. Using Tables
   I’ve already mentioned that one of the principles of a high click-through rate is to make your sites blend into the page. The more you position your sites to blend into the page, the better your click-through rate will be.
   One very neat way to help your ads blend into the site is to place them in tables. Here’s example below;

Note how clean the tables make the ads attractive look and that turns AdSense into a new focal point.