AdSense Placement Critique of My Site

I have AdSense on a small website I've been running for a few years now, and I was wondering if there was more I could be doing to enhance my CTR and revenues. I am hesitant to resort to some of the more aggressive placement tactics for my site, as I'd rather not turn it into a billboard. I have been reading a fair bit regarding other folks approximate CTRs and revenues, and I feel like I am down there below the 5th percentile in taking advantage of my earning potential.

MDapplicants.com has about 2,000 unique vistors viewing 18,000 content pages each day. My traffic has doubled yearly each year the site has been in existence. I have ads currently placed on about 2/3rds of my delivered pages.

Sample pages showing the appearance of my advertisements are:
http://mdapplicants.com/viewprofile.php?id=4302
http://mdapplicants.com/schoolsummary.php?schoolid=26

While I am certainly not disclosing my average CTR, I would say that it is the rare day where it exceeds 0.02%. Not 2%. It is consistently less than 0.02%. It could just be a factor of my audience, or it could be my layout...which is why I am asking for help. I am making enough to pay for the hosting...and a few rounds of golf a year...but it would be nice to, essentially, make more money for nothing, obviously.

Tasteful suggestions would be the most helpful, certainly.

Thank you to all who took the time to read this post.

 

Well, it took me two clicks to get to the first ad.

Your page have so much content that ads are irrelevant because they don't provide anything interesting to those who are browsing your website because what you provide is actually what they are looking for.

You might want to change the scrapper to a 780x92 banner at the top, just below your menu. It would be one of the first thing people would see thus giving you better chances of them being clicked.

 

I will definitely set up some channels to compare the CTR of the left-sided boxes vs. a horizontal banner.

Clearly, the first thing I did wrong in generating revenues was thinking too much about providing content and not enough in terms of product placement....

 

A quick update...I went with a couple channels, testing within-the-text borderless horizontal banner vs. small boxes on the far left, and I found no appreciable difference in the CTR. Just my experience on my site.

Overall, the basic trick of deleting the borders did coincidentally double my CTR, as well as more than double my eCPM and daily income. If I want to do more with my site, I'll have to offer more in terms of tools and content to show more ads, rather than try to slip more ads onto existing pages.

 

I think you have some great potential for ads on your site.

You mention the fear of becoming a billboard. I understand that fear, but I think you have a way to go before that becomes an issue for you.

To start, just place a horizontal adlinks bar under the nav bar on your home page. Make it blend in well, and I think you might be pleased. It won't look intusive...in fact, it should look just like the nav bar above it.

I'd love to hear how that pans out.

Also, you are in a great position for testing. With that many uniques/day you can try something for a day...if it doesn't work, remove it.

Good luck