The key blunder using Adsense as their monetization strategy is to overlook that Adsense is a CPC based network. Anyone gets paid per click in adsense. RPM may help but a good CTR is must for favorable earning from adsense. Many websites gradually increase their traffic but keep on struggling against low CTR. To make visitors click on the ads displaying asides your content is a big task. A single click on any ad in your website can earn $0.1 to $1 for your adsense account depending on CPC and competition at your website. The more the clicks, more will be earning. Bloggers and web pages don’t lay out their ads on their sites to maximize their income potential in a right way to get good click through rate.
Traffic does matter to get good CTR but it’s not only traffic but there are other factors too that grabs high CTR to your webpage. Forgetting traffic for right now, here are 11 effective Adsense tips to increase your income through CTR from your existing traffic.
What is Adsense click through rate CTR?
Google Adsense Click-through Rate (CTR) is the number of clicks on your ads for the number of times they’ve been displayed to your site visitors. If any website get 5 clicks out of 100 displayed ads, your Adsense CTR is 5% then. For now my website average CTR is 7.1% on google search console, as my website getting 7 clicks on every 100 displayed ads.
While from adsense dashboard, average CTR is 4.19%.
A simple formula Google uses to calculate Adsense CTR is
Total Number of Ad Clicks ÷ Total Number of Impressions = Click-Through- Rate (CTR)
CTR is the most important factor that impacts your Adsense earnings. A high traffic can’t help an increased income if CTR is low. You’re not earning as much as you can from your ads. The question arises is why and how your CTR is low even with high traffic. Your adsense CTR is low when you’re not putting sensible effort to incline the traffic on your website to click on your ads.
How is CTR calculated?
Adsense CTR is calculated by dividing the total number of ad clicks to total number of impressions at any website.
If anyone holds more than one website with same adsense code then Adsense CTR is calculated for adsense account, not for individual account separately. A low CTR at any one website will affect the overall CTR.
Why Adsense CTR low?
There can be three main reasons behind low adsense CTR
- First your content is not engaging and people don’t stick long enough to click on your ads.
- Your target country as Google CTR is different for different countries.
- You’ve not optimized your ads in a right way.
What Is A Good Adsense CTR?
You may have listen at and read a lot on it but no one knows exactly what a good adsense Click-through-rate CTR is. There is a general observation viewing different websites’ earning and CTR that
A CTR between 5%-7% is a good to fetch consistent dollars to your adsense account.
A CTR between 3%-5% also works well with high CPC niche and country with higher CTR rate.
A CTR between 1%- 3% means an attention is required.
Let’s jump to 12 most effective tips to get good CTR in Adsense.
1. Create Engaging Content For Adsense
A content type and quality are the top factors that impact Adsense CTR.
If content isn’t engaging then people will leave your page early. In this way you will not get any clicks on ads no matter how wisely you put them on. An engaging, well researched, focused content keep people scroll down and there are more chances to get click on ads. A good content ranks your website and pulls it at google first page. The posts at google first page get 75% of visitors and get more clicks. More clicks mean more money to your adsense account. An engaging content can be
- Focused and close to queries of visitors
- Having Images to support your posts
- Something that is not written before on Google- Yes, there is much (This is where I got highest traffic and an increased CTR)
- Reviews
- Entertainment & gossips
- Trending
- Daily life tips & tricks
A few content types though well researched and long, don’t get good CTR because of niche and low Google search inclination. They of course are important for SEO and ranking of website so don’t underrate them.
2. Enable & Use all ad types from adsense
Creating new ad units of all types i.e. Display ads, In-feed ads, In-article ads, Matched ads, search engine and link ads boost the chances of getting good CTR in adsense.
Earlier it was only three ads per article allowed but now you can put number of adsense ads on your content without restriction now. Use all ad types wisely but don’t mess up the content with too much ads. It is also one factor where people leave your website annoying of frequent ads.
Put ads according to content type will not affect user experience. Here is a wiser way to maximize adsense ads potential for good CTR.
- Display and In-feed ads perform well in long content i.e. above 800 words.
- For information giving, job & educational updates type content, I found “Link ads” and Search engine ads” the best to get about 90% CTR through them.
- For sale, tips & tricks, social and essay type content or articles, put “Display” and “In article” ads that have 70%-75% of clicks on your website.
- For short length, trending, entertainment, gossip and news type content, “Matched content” ads at the end of article have 60%-70% chances of clicks resulting good CTR and increased income.
Putting your ads according to content is best tip to get high CTR. Of course, no one is going to click on ad of GUCCI SALE on your page if he is looking for date sheet for exams at your website but any of link ad have more chances to get clicks.
An article of 800-1000 words can have 3 ads within the post content without hitting user experience on your end. A display and in feed ad after first paragraph works well. Link ads in between and Matched ads at end can get higher CTR, higher clicks and higher income to your adsense account. I use to copy all ad type codes on one page of Ms word with proper titles once and use them according to content type where I needed.
3. Use LAYOUT to fix ads in header, footer & sidebar
Go to “layout” and put adsense AUTO ad codes below header, in sidebar and after post footer. They’ll be fixed to your website and you don’t need to put them every time. For ads between content go to HTML of post page and paste ads manually there for better user experience, and for high CTR. Utilize header, sidebars and footer to place auto ad codes to get high CTR is best strategy.
4. Use images to support content
Images in between your content can be best tip to get high CTR. Placing ads between images; one image then adsense ad code and then another image. People usually stop by images and gaze on them. They try to enlarge or zoo them. There you can get high RPM and Higher chances of clicks. Images mostly provide information of long article in short and sometimes users stop there to take screenshots. There can be pictures of celebrities matching to your content that will engage the visitors to your site. High quality, unique and matching images don’t only make your website SEO Optimized, user friendly but gets high clicks. Try to put more images in your content and observe overall positive experience.
5. USE LINKS IN YOUR POST
Using links in your website increase the chance of getting clicks. As per my experience as soon as I click any link in website to get desired information, an adsense ad appears in front of me. After passing that ad, I reach to my desired page. This means the website holder successfully got click from my side even I didn’t go for it.
Using appropriate links to your content from your website will not only increase traffic on your website but it’ll increase your CTR. You can also use backlinks to other popular sites at the end of article as reference to get click. For example, you can provide backlink of any newspaper site if it is referring to your content.
6. Use Text & Image Based Ad
According to adsense emails and help articles Display ads based text & Image ad work well for good CTR. More advertisers bid high for text and image ads. This way you get high income on clicking text and images ads. There is more competition on text and image ads. Placing text and image based ads in your website properly you can get high income even with 1 click. For example, an ad click lending to GUCCI SALE with text and image type results high bid at your website. It will increase overall ranking of your website too.
7. Place Ads According To Operating System and devices Driving More Traffic
Go to stats and check out highest traffic driving operating system at your website. Also check which devices are getting more traffic to your website. Place the adsense ads according to that. For example, if your most visitors are coming from android phone then putting Skyscapper ads at side bar will not help to increase RPM and CTR. As sidebar ads also show below the post in mobiles, then two back to back in feed and display ads will have more chance to get a click. In this way, you’ll manage both windows and android visitors to click your ad.
8. Allow more advertisers to bid on your website
For this, you must enable all ad types and categories. Blocking any ad can affect the viewbility and ad displayed on your site. Advertisers are more inclined to adsense ads nowadays so make sure to give all viewable placement to boost the competition at your website.
9. Use adsense dashboard wisely
Visit your adsense account not just to check your balance but analyse that which ads are performing well at your site. Increase using that ad type which is getting higher clicks. Also try if any new ad code is available on ad formats. Regularly check on Ad format reports. Ad format reports help you to understand how your newer ads are performing compared to existing ads. Do experiments with sizes and ad types. You can run these type of experiment to get good CTR.
- Try native ads
- Try all ad sizes
- Try changing ad colors
10. Check Google analytics
Regularly check reports from Google analytics that which part of your website is searched most. Which content is top ranked and what the visitors’ queries at your website are? After placing survey on Google analytics place best ads on most crawled content. Write more content that is driving traffic towards your website. More traffic will increase the chance of getting more clicks. And CTR will improve gradually then.
11. Make your
website load faster
Use tools to improve
loading time of your website for high CTR. According to adsense, 53% of visitors’
leave the page if page take longer than 3 seconds to load. A slower page
loading mean to miss out revenue from adsense ads. A fast loading page pulls
the adsense ads load faster and users have 90%-95% chance to view them. Here are chances of getting more clicks and increase in CTR. For
this use, use web responsive designs. Use page speed insight tool, light house
too or follow google webmaster.
12. Keep your moral high
I know, this frustrates a lot when CTR at your website improved i.e. your website start getting more clicks but you can’t earn enough because of low cost-per-click CPC at your region. This should not bother if you’re producing quality content with consistency. You must hear that Slow & steady wins the race. Keep on working to increase ranking of your website. There will be time when your website will compete for high bids from advertisers. If you just follow then you must catch many websites earning high at your places. Just check on their strategies to optimize adsense ads to get good CTR.
I’ve written this article after observing audience click on ad patterns for the long time. There is no fixed rule here but a combination of above effective rules will aid you to increase in your adsense CTR. Every niche and audience has diversified approach. A constant learning and experimenting is needed to keep the pace of good CTR.
What should you test in Adsense ads?
• Test different ad positions
• Test different ad types and unit sizes
• Test different link CTA colors
• Test different background colors
The more you test, the more you’ll learn and improve.
Are You Ready To Increase Your Adsense CTR?
As you learned from these Adsense tips, there are a lot of things you can do to increase revenue off of your existing traffic.
If none of these works for you, you may consider looking for an AdSense alternative.
If you’re serious about your site (i.e. it’s making you a lot of money and you want to squeeze every penny out of it) then a one-position-fits-all ad layout isn’t the best option.
You may be leaving a lot of money on the table by just installing a plugin that lays out the ads at the top and bottom of every post.
While a lot of things with Adsense are out of your control, you can use these Adsense optimization tips to experiment with your own site.