Need help with placement - low CTR

Hello,

Can you please check this site: http://www.canonphotographers.net

my ctr is below 1%

here is the break down,
My skyscraper is at 1%
My Content (medium square) is .40%
But my forum leader board is below .25%

1) Should I just let go of the forum leaderboard? what would be the best approach on putting adsense in a forum?

2) How do I improve the ctr on my medium square (content)?

3) Is a leaderboard better in the front page instead of the skyscraper?

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the help I can get

Rhommel

 

It's not just your placement; your ads are unrelated to the content of your site on the first page of the site. You need to use adsense optimization.

 

yes, i was wondering about that.. so how do i optimize it? the contents are pretty much about photography/canon but it shows cms and web templates....

the weird thing is... the front page is where i get my clicks... and i get higher eCPM/earnings

I get less $ on the ads that do show relevance to my site

 

Vary your keywords a bit. Instead of repeating 'canon photographers', use 'canon photography', 'photography', 'canon camera's' - etc. That will help you rank in google (this way it looks over optimized) and it will also help google adsense realize your site is mainly about photography, not about canon in general.
In this case it may take a while for google to realize the main theme of your site - because canon is such a general and probably popular keyword.

To help speed this process up a bit, I'd advise writing some canon photopgraphy tutorials. What's a neat trick that beginners using these camera's won't know? Write a tutorial on that. It can be any photography trick - doesn't have to be specific to Canon, though of course where applicable do specify how to do it with a canon-camera. This will make the 'photography' theme more clear.

Having ads on the left generally doesn't work very well. People expect ads there, so they generally have a low CTR. Try the same lay-out but with that right column on the left.

 

Thanks, I'll revise my front page and see what happens..

I do have the articles section. I currently have 2 writers under the articles section.. I will probably put a 'preview' of their section in the front page (title and brief description)

Thanks!

 

If you had a box like: Latest Reviews but placed a google block ad instead, I think it would work much better

 

thanks ... ill try this over the weekend and let it run for a week, i hope it works!

 

I changed it over the weekend... I think im getting better results now! CTR is still low but the eCPM is getting better!

thanks guys!

 

Looks good, but you could make the Recent forum posts, and latest articles have the same font as adsense.

 

Great pictures, but I only see one adsense block. Is that a large rectangle, if not, I think that you should make it one and add some adsense to the page.