How to maximize clicks and what to do with site in general?

Hey all, I have this

www.dailylatvia.com website and wonder what would be proper optimization principles to use in order to get more income from this site?

your feedback would be appreaciated!




Sandy

 

Riga, and yes, Riga is more than 800 year old city!

Make that Riga, and yes, Riga is more than 800 years old.

I'd say not enough ads, and I don't like the blue font on the titles of the ads. It makes them look to me exactly like an ad. You also have some room on the right hand side of them, why not adding 4 pictures there of cities. Don't put in pictures of latvia or riga cause google doesn't like that, for the pictures cannot be connected with the ads.
Maybe at the end of your site ad a horizontal link unit by all those other links.

 

Put a block link unit at the top of your navigation (left column) with the same colors as your navigation.

I wouldn't worry about Google complaining about photos of Latvia near the ads. The advertisers might be selling trips to Latvia, but they're not selling Latvia itself

Don't put photos of hotels, airplanes, or cruise ships near your ads, though. Those could be things the advertisers are selling. Photos of scenery, old architecture, people, etc. are probably good. I do like the tower photo, but I'm not sure how well it would work if you removed the tower block in the right column.

Remove the "Advertise on this site" from the ads by changing your AdSense settings at Google.

Consider making the site narrower by removing the right column. Instead place a large or medium rectangle block below your statistics on Latvia. A leaderboard block below your form might be a good idea, too. Generally it's a good idea to get your AdSense where it's immediately visible when the site is loaded in an 800x600 browser, but having a large or medium rectangle above your main content seems to be questionable these days. Maybe a banner block (two ads side-by-side) above the text and photo would work. Or perhaps a banner block to the right of your page header.

I'm not sure about the blue on the ads. The rest of the ad colors blend well, and blue is the color you have for navigation on your site, so it may be OK. Also people are conditioned to see blue as the "click here" color on web pages.

Experiment and see what works best on your site.


Scott

 

Thanks guys for your ideas, at last I have some good directions now this site was hanging for 2 years without changes, so decided maybe to try to redesign it as everyone claims to earn 100'000k and more last year, just I have been left out of the boat

 

I would definitely put a link unit on the left side of the page and maybe a medium rectangle under your article/city information.

 

That image is acting as a very deffinate boundary to the ad skyscraper. Put the image on the other side of the ad, move the ad to the left side or use other ad formats. A square would go well in the content.