AniCovers - First Experience with Adsense...

Hi,
This is my first time using adsense and I have been working on "optimizing" the placment etc. for a higher CTR.

I have placed ads in hotspots, put images next to ads, removed the borders, and matched the colors with my site. I have noticed a definite improvement.

However, I am getting about 1000-2000 page impressions per day and my CTR is very poor (Well below 1%)...

Am I doing something wrong? What can I do to fix it?

http://www.anicovers.com/

 

Well, I think there is such a thing as blending your ads in too well and that could be the case here. I would add a leaderboard at the top of the page right below your logo. Use a white background, the deep orange color used for your other headings for the Title of the ad and the grey color that matches your text for the Text and URL of the ad. Putting your main ad above the fold like this will a great deal more attention than lower on the page or burried in the lower portion of the righthand column.

BTW - Great looking site!

 

Thanks for the tip - I just implemented it...
Do you think anyone where else can be "optimized?" Specifically I was thinking about this page - http://anicovers.com/index.doo/covers/

 

I don't think the problem is your placement or blending, I think it's the content of your ads. Six of the seven ads were for generic CD labels, which are not why your visitors are coming to your site.

 

Well...They come to the site for dvd covers and dvd labels - So it is related...
However anime is the main theme - Should I use those tags that focus google's attention on a certain section over the anime RSS feed? Or is that against the TOS?

 

Right, that was my point, your visitors are looking for Anime. You can use section targetting to help focus your ads:

https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23168

 

On the front page their is VERY little text so really the only thing on the front page pertaining to anime is an RSS feed...Can I use section targeting on that even if it isn't my content?

 

Where is the link to the feed you're talking about?

 

It is under the heading "About Anime News"

On every other page it is, for the most part, ads related to anime...

 

Are you talking about the about.com links?

 

Yep...Those are the ones...

 

Yeah, I don't think applying section targetting to those will help your homepage.

You should consider adding a couple paragraphs of intro text that are dense with the word anime, and then apply the targetting to that text.

 

On your download page, you have a leaderboard at the top, then directly below that, a 468 ad banner. That's overkill. You're TELLING the surfer those are ads, and he should avoid them. Either get rid of the leaderboard or the 468. Cramming as many ads onto a page that can barely sustain one set of ads is not how you convert. More is not always better. If you must positively have both ad banners, change one of them to an adlinks unit.