LINK UNITS
People often ignore link units because of their size and focus on large text and image ads. That’s a big mistake. Why?
Proper positioning of the link units could prove more profitable than text ads. The best place to put a link unit is near the site navigation link. Imagine your visitor searching for your archive and then the link unit catches his eyes. He will be tempted even more if a link unit is well blended and is of the same color as your navigation links. It becomes click bait!
From this theory you can conclude that a vertical link units usually functions better than horizontal, but that depends on the placement of your sites navigation links. On a site that’s configured like my blog horizontals would be pretty much useless!
TEXT ADS
Like I mentioned before that link units have to blend with your site, the same rule applies with text ads. However, there’s an ongoing discussion regarding this strategy.
One group of people says that it’s better to make the ads stand out more so they’re easy to be noticed. For example, if they have a white background and their ads are red, they can’t go without being noticed.
The second group believes that blending ads with the background is the way to go. I’m more for this option because it’s not aggressive and it looks far more professional than the first option. Frankly, just seeing an ad that stands out too much makes me want to leave the site immediately, regardless of the quality of its content!
After we discussed blending, it’s time to move on to the placing of the ads.
It’s a fact that the skyscrapers (160x600) don’t function very well on the two column blogs; they escape people’s attention. However, 3 column blogs like mine where the majority of ads are squeezed in the middle make it easier to be spotted by the visitor.
The most effective ads seem to be (250x250) squares integrated under post titles. I can’t implement this on my blog (I believe someone knows how). If you have an interesting writing, be sure that people will read it until the end, so you could place a nice large square at the bottom of your page.
I don’t want to trouble my readers so I avoid placing ads at or near the top of my page.
SEARCH BOX
There’s not much to say about placing of the search box. It’s proven to be most profitable on the right top of the page.
Set your search box to open results in a separate window. This will make people stay on your site!
Posted in Labels: ADSENSE
