LOW CTR, please review.

Please rereview my ad placement and blending. I've been getting very low CTR, like less than one percent all of the time.

Any recommendations? I can't seem to find the problem.

Link: http://conradmiguel.com/blog-renovation

 

i think putting a box on that horizontal ad at the top maybe is making it too visible and people notice it as an ad...other than that site looks great...

 

Aw, okay. I intended that to happen. I'm preventing too much blending. ;D

Is it really looking that bd?

 

i don't know...but it reflects in your CPR i think, ...because the top ad in my experience has the highest ctr in my site...

 

Same here. I have a high CTR on my top horizontal ad, but still low like 1%.

 

I have a non-changing but interactive page that displays Iranian calendar. I am not happy with CTR. I would post it but I don't think it is allowed by Google. Would you please review to see if it has room for improvement.

Thanks

http://alavi.us/jcal

Edited: OOPS!!! I meant to open a new thread. The forum I usually use has Post Reply at the bottom and Post New at the top. I am used to click the one at the top for new thread. Sorry for this.

 

Hi conradmiguel,

1) You are wasting the best possible space for an Ad on your site with a picture (headerpic.jpg), the menu and a a banal text on the right.

2) You are leaving the visitor too many other choices to leave the page. Ideally the only clearly visible links should be the ads but you have tons of other links there like the comments, categories etc. etc. Make these links black if you don't want to remove them. If they just can click on Adsense ads then they will do so of course and increase the CTR from alone.

3) Your site links are confusing. You are using red color and a kind of blue color for the links. Just use the standard blue link for Adsense ads and everything else should be less visible or just black.

Gunter

 

namaki,

My guess is that your low CTR is not a placement or layout problem but a topic problem. Somebody who comes to your site to check the calendar date or whatever is not really interested in Ads.

Gunter

 

Thanks, Gunter.

I agree with you. Another thing is the type of ads that I get. I get a lot of printed calendar ads that are irrelevant.

Is there anyway I can improve the ad placement?

 

namaki,

is the ebay thing on the right side making you any money? I guess not. I would remove it and put the menu on the right instead and put Adsense on the left where the menu is.

Gunter

 

Your are great, Gunter, and you are 100% correct. I have no made a penny in eBay. I'll do what you suggested tonight. I used to have a couple of lines of instructions on the right. Should I moved it to the left? Should I move the ad link to the right? It's doing relatively good.

I post when I have done it and ask your advice again.

Thanks

 

Gunter,

I put the site the way it used to be. Do you suggest I just swap the right and the left columns as they are?

 

very good placement in my opinion.
maybe the problem is not the ad placement.. maybe it's the traffic that cause the low CTR
anyway- you have a new reader for your blog

 

I want to apologize to conradmiguel again for inserting my question into his thread by mistake.

Should I open another thread?

 

namaki,

looks better. But I think you still afraid of throwing the Ads into your visitors face. That's what you should do if you want to make money.

On the right side you have an explanation "Arrow keys are used...". That would be a good place for an Ad. I would move the explanation to the bottom of the page.

On the left side: You still have the menu there. I would test two things: a) Replace it with Ads and move the menu to the bottom of the page or b) Insert a table on the left side with two columns. First column is the Menu, second column fill with ads.

Gunter

PS: don't open a new thread