0.80% CTR - What am I doing wrong?

Hi DP,

Long time reader, first time posted (decided to finally sign up).

If you could be so kind to please review the adsense on my site http://www.freebooklinks.com (Sorry, I'm a noob, cant post links yet) and let me know if you see anything immediately wrong with my Adsense placement or can offer any suggestions.

The site is relatively new, I'm getting around 150 uniques a day organically and getting 800 - 1000 adsense impressions daily but a terrible CTR.

Is it because the site would attract mainly tech savy people who don't click ads or can I possibly do something to improve that rate?

Many thanks.

 

You have used just one block of adsense on each page. Its the main reason for less CTR. Use one skyscraper at left or right side of the page. And if you can adjust the large rectangle ad anywhere in the page it will be best. Because I have read at many placed that 336 x 280 is the most effective ad format to increase CTR.

 

Agreed.
Also get the ads on your cats pages and specifically on your home page with the thinking that if people who land on your homepage don't find that this is what they are looking for,there is a good chance they will click an ad to move on.

 

I would suggest that you're getting a poor CTR as you're not making the right hints to google.

For example, let's say I'm after an e-book on administering apache. You have a book in your list called "Administering and Securing the Apache Server"

But, the title of your page says "Download free books". Then there is an h1 tag saying Free e-book downloads.

So, not surprisingly, Google is serving ads about free e-books rather than about apache server books. I'd be much more likely to click on a link that was specifically for apache server books than a general free e-book link.

So, I would recommend getting the book title in your page title, and making the page shout the title in h1 rather than the free ebooks thing. And generally just making the content that the person is actually looking for appear more important on the page than anything else.

And, by the way, I couldn't actually download that e-book and suspect the image was stolen from amazon (tut-tut).

 

Hi - Thank you for both replying so quickly.

Do you mean I should replace the 468x60 banner on the category pages with the 336x280 ad unit?

Thank you MKInfo - I had not thought of that, very good point & idea.

 

Hi ecentricNick - you're spot on, I've been wondering why I keep getting useless ads on there, that's exactly what I want, targetted adverts relating to the topics of the books. I started adding those book sites to the filter in adsense but it seems thats really just masking the underlying issue. Thank you for your feedback.

I just tested the download link and it works fine

 

Where's your adsense placed? I couldn't saw any?

 

use horizontal banner instead of that little adsense block. or you can use both.
green rep. will appreciated.

 

Preyank you say use a horizontal banner but where do you think I should place this?

 

I would:
- solve the H1 and Title issue first
- add a link unit (728*15) between your top menu and the "Free eBook Downloads" page title
- remove the banner
- add a rectangle ad unit after the second e-book in every page (so when the reader scrolls he can't miss it!)
- remove the black border from all my ads
- add a small vertical banner (200*200...) below your left hand menu
- wait for the money to come! lol
Give me feed back.

 

Thank you.

I have tried to implement everything you have said. You have some very good ideas. Please re-review and let me know what you think.

http://www.freebooklinks.com

@MKInfo: Adsense block placed on cat pages - Cheers.

Thanks to everyone for replying, I really appreciate it. Please keep the suggestions coming.

 

I still have two or three tips but let us first see how well you do (compared to your old stats) with the new lay out and then I could decide if it is worth going deeper into optimisation.
Keep me informed

 

Will do. I'll give it 2-3 days to see if it picks up and report back.

Thanks again for your time.

 

just a small note;

adsense publishers are not allowed to publish their stats

i suggest you to edit your post for avoiding problems

 

Hi trichnosis, I don't have an edit button for my posts Must be because my user is so new. To be honest, I hadn't thought of that, I have been reading many threads with people posting similar information to me. All of the stats I posted were a bit of an average, nothing specific, even the CTR wasn't exact.

Cheers.

P.S - Things seem to be up already. I've got the highest CTR & ePCM I've seen since I started this thing. Don't want to count my chickens yet but something definately seems better. The quality of ads displayed has improved too by the looks of it. Thanks everyone.

 

more than three days now
how are things doing?

 

Correct, I also favor the 336 x 280 rectangle for my websites - try placing two 336 x 280 ad blocks next to one another - i often get 10% + ctr

 

Very well! The link unit is pulling the most clicks. My CTR has gone up 4 fold and now making $2-$3/day. A hell of alot better than the .20c I was making before!

I was giving it some time because I had a really good day on saturday and I thought it might of had something to do with this thread. But I've had similar results since.

I'm confident the adsense placement is working now, I just need to increase traffic to increase earnings.

Thank you for your input and thank you everyone else, I have implemented a mix of everyone's ideas.

 

How many pageviews and unique visitors are you averaging per day?

 

well just going by today's awstats so far I've had 102 unique visitors, 500 pages served and made $4.70.

Which I'm wrapped about.. Now all I need to do is increase traffic!