Google's AdSense program is probably the best affiliate program on the internet today. With it's content scanning algorithm to adjust advertising and the fact it takes in to account the users location as best as it can, it has proven to be one of the highest converting click through programs to date.
In this article, I hope to help you maximize your revenue earning potential with Google's AdSense by teaching you about how to display your ads, creative effective ads, and how maximize your click through rates.
Color Scheme
There is a couple different ways to handle your advertising color schemes. Some webmasters believe that they should keep the advertising as low-key as possible, these webmasters normally make the background and border on the ads to the same as their website. Often they do this in hopes that the user will not realize it is an advertisement. The other thought is to try and use colors to draw the users eye and force them to look at the advertising. I've read quite a few websites that analyze colors in advertising and how people react to different colors, they believe by selecting certain colors you can influence the click rate. I personally run several sets of advertising on my website, and it has been my experience that more colorful advertising seems to convert better. However there is many more factors involved, such as location of the advertising.
Location of AdSense Advertising
Almost every webmaster will agree that you can maximize your revenue and click through rate by the location of your advertising. Google's AdSense website suggests that you keep your advertising, "above the fold." Above the fold, means it doesn't require the user to use their scroll bar to see the advertising.
Keeping the advertising to the left of the page, such as in the navigation bar can also be a very important factor in converting those users. People read from left to right and you want the first thing they see to be your advertising.
The final tip for article location is inline advertising, ones that are integrated in to lists, and content. Many websites have bulleted lists or link farms, with the Google AdSense advertisings at the top of that list. This can often fool the user in to thinking it is part of your list, but may anger some users. I personally like to put a block of advertising in the middle of my articles, or near the end, so the user must read around or beside the advertising. This makes it more noticeable, and much harder to ignore.
Text or Graphical Advertising?
AdSense offers you the ability to put graphical ads, text ads, or a mixture of the two. Graphical advertising in general seem to yield far worse click through rates, I believe that users are used to viewing banners for so many years, that it is ingrained in internet society just to ignore them now. AdSense seems to have far fewer advertisers using graphical ads also, which may lead to empty advertising space on your website, if a graphic can't be provided.
Importance of Content
Making money on AdSense can only be done with content. If you don't have quality content, you aren't going anywhere. When you post the AdSense advertising code on your website, when it is viewed, the Google MediaPartners bot comes to your website, scans the website, then creates advertisements based on the content it scanned. Content reigns supreme when it comes to AdSense, the better your content, the more it will pay off! If you can have an average page of 300-500 words with a very specific subject you are going to do well on AdSense, try to keep your subject very tight and don't expand on too many subjects on one single page. This will keep targeted advertising on your pages, which should convert far better for a user that is looking for a specific subject!
Try to keep your articles under two pages in length, if you have longer articles, break them apart and make two pages. This will help by giving the website more advertising space, and hopefully if you have a user reading, twice the exposure!
Keywords, Relevant and Targeted Advertising
Sometimes no matter how hard you work at keeping a nice subject based article, you just can't get the keywords picked up for the kind of advertising you want to see. A prime example of this is with my own name! My name is Ken Dennis, often due to my last name, a page will return AdSense advertising about "Dennis the Menace" and though I am a bit of a menace, so are those kind of advertisings! There are two ways to handle advertising that doesn't match your content. The first way is to change your article, or add more keywords that will sway the advertisements in a different direction. The second way is to go in to the AdSense website and ban the websites that you don't want to see. Ad Filtering can be very helpful, and taking out ads you don't like or support can help increase your click through rates.
Google AdSense Search Engine
AdSense let's you install a Google search engine on your website, this allows users to search the world wide web, or just your website. This is an excellent way to help your users find the information they want inside your website, and it provides you with even more advertisings based on the keywords the search for. Even when they leave to do a search, all the advertisements if clicked are credited towards you! So not only does the search engine provide you with functionality, it provides you with one more revenue source, with targeted advertisements based on EXACTLY what the user searches for!
Ken Dennis
http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/